You may have seen Jay Berman on TV saying this on MSNBC last night, or read about how he doesn't think the 25th Amendment could apply to Trump (see Newsweek and interview with him in VOX ). He worked for Senator Birch Bayh when he crafted the 25th Amendment.
Example from VOX interview:
At this moment, I don’t think he meets the test of a president who’s incapable of fulfilling his responsibilities. I think he was elected to do these dumb things. He hasn’t become dumber or meaner since he was elected — this is who he’s always been. This was who he was when he ran, and may well have been the reason people elected him.
The problem is that we have a ridiculous electoral system and a bizarre set of circumstances that conspired to make this situation possible. But I can’t honestly say that the 25th Amendment is the answer right now. The answer right now is impeachment.
Note, of course, that he does say “right now.”
What he seems not to understand is that the incapacity which may lead, indeed, force, the people who can invoke (Pence and the Cabinet) the 25th to do so has yet to be demonstrated.
There are hundreds of mental health professionals, from the eminent and frequently quoted like Bandy Lee, John Gartner, Robert Jay Lifton, Leonard L. Glass, Philip Zimbardo, Lance Dodes, and Justin Frank among others, and much less well-known mental health professionals like me, who have publicly urged that the 25th should be utilized now before it's too late. (Google search any one of these names, including mine, plus Trump and you will find numerous articles.)
In an ideal world, our advice would have been heeded by now and, at the least, Trump would have had a psychiatric and neurological evaluation.
Trump "shouldn't" have the nuclear football at his beck and call. Unfortunately, this "shouldn't” is along the lines of everyone from Ralphie's mother to Santa Claus saying "you shouldn't get a Red Ryder BB Gun because you'll shoot your eye out."
The political reality at present is that Trump hasn't decompensated drastically enough to convince politicians and the public who influence them that the time has come.
Trump utilizes at least two primitive (pathological) psychological defense mechanisms to protect his sense of self (inflated and unrealistic as it is) and keep himself from becoming overwhelmed by anxiety and stress. One is denial which may not be psychotic yet, and the other is projection, which also may not be delusional yet.
The psychiatrist George Eman Vaillant introduced a four-level classification of defence mechanisms:
- Level I – pathological defences (psychotic denial, delusional projection)
- Level II – immature defences (fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)
- Level III – neurotic defences (intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)
- Level IV – mature defenses (humor, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)
If you’re interested in defense mechanisms, which ones Trump uses, and which ones you use, start with Wikipedia. In addition, John Grohol has a good article about this on Psych Central, where he describes seven primitive defense mechanisms: denial, regression, acting out, dissociation, compartmentalization, projection, and reaction formation.
The stress is increasing, and objective observers can see these defenses in action everytime he goes off script.
Stress will increase as Mueller gets closer to exposing him for the criminal liar he is, as more and more people believe the excerpts they hear from "Fire and Fury," or come to understand that the facts in the dossier are true. It is within the realm of possibility that Trump's defenses with "crack like an egg" and he will suffer an acute psychotic break. If this happened he'd become so delusional and paranoid it would be difficult, or impossible to hide. Pence and the Cabinet would have to act.
When I started writing my articles under the heading "Trumpology: The Psychological Study and Analysis of Donald Trump" it didn't take long for me to conclude that he was a malignant narcissist and could, under certain circumstances, have a psychotic break.
This was over a year ago and the possibility that Trump would show more and more indications of cognitive impairment suggesting early dementia wasn't getting much attention. Now there are dozens of articles about it every day.
What this adds up to is a trifecta:
1) Drastically increasing stress
2) Malignant narcissism
3) Dementia
The enactment of the 25th Amendment could happen, but nobody will act on it unless and until Trump manifests impossible to deny or rationalize dangerous behavior.