I know from polls that most of you don’t subscribe to The Washington Post. With this in mind since Trump often refers to himself as “45” I extracted 45 words and phrases, give or take for artistic license, from the Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker OpEd “ ‘I sort of thrive on it’: The impeachment crisis shines a spotlight on Trump’s state of mind” in this morning’s paper.
These are the words and phrases that jumped out at me because taken together as a composite anyone with a historical perspective undistorted by worship of Trump will see that they have never been used to describe any other American president. I think of the big two ruthless despots in modern history of course, but even with them I’d opine that altogether these 45 they would more fit a dictator like Idi Amin or Caligula than Hitler and Stalin.
In just about every story about what Trump does there are references to his mental condition. The notion that Trump should be evaluated by mental health experts to see if he met the criteria of the 25th Amendment never was taken seriously although apparently Rod Rosenstein thought Jeff Sessions and John Kelly could have been convinced to support this drastic action (Business Insider story). Now even though the Democrats are moving to impeach him it appears that he has been a candidate (so to speak) for the 25th for a long time.
- raw aggression
- visceral defenses of himself
- state of mind.
- an aging rock star,
- bullied and projected
- himself as a victim.
- ominous depictions of America,
- authoritarian tone.
- Trump’s moods flared
- appeared so erratic
- hashtag — #TrumpMeltdown
- president’s mental fitness
- nation’s Shakespearean monarch
- Trump boasted about his own fortitude
- Raising his hand and twirling his fingers to point to his right temple, the president mused, “Maybe I’m a little different up here. I don’t know.”
- the characters he has inhabited
- delivering a jeremiad of persecution and self-pity.
- the ultimate victim of harassment
- Trump decried. “
- “It’s like ‘Give him the electric chair! That was terrible!’ ”
- Victimization has long been central
- the grievance politics
- feelings of oppression and persecution
- (enemies) orchestrated a broad conspiracy
- persecution mentality
- “I was investigated, okay? Me! Me!”
- president was especially agitated. He strode back and forth and sliced the air with his hands.
- Then, as Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News asked him to clarify what exactly he was trying to say, Trump gave her The Hand — five fingers splayed across the lens of her iPhone.
- Trump’s bullying persona
- he heckles, belittles and bellows with abandon.
- applied derogatory nicknames
- in my great and unmatched wisdom
- accused Schiff of having “some kind of a mental breakdown.”
- “#IMPEACHMITTROMNEY,”
- coup, coup, coup…..
- spying on him
- committing “treason
- Kangaroo court”
- dystopian alternate reality
- ominous language
- dark proclamations.
- “Arrest for Treason?”
- conspiracy theories,
- ominously warned of a civil war
- And last and not least: “What they did to this country is unthinkable. And it’s lucky that I’m the president, because I guess — I don’t know why — a lot of people said very few people could handle it. I sort of thrive on it.”
UPDATED Excerpts from a Kos story I published in June of 2018:
Early in Trump’s presidency Dr. John D. Gartner, founder of Duty to Warn, recognizing the dangerous psychological instability of President Trump, started the Change.org petition below:
We, the undersigned mental health professionals (please state your degree), believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Originally mental health professionals like me signed it and closely watched as the number of signers first slowly climbed and then hit the usual noteworthy milestones: 1,000, 2,000, 2,500, etc. Then the word got out and before long we watched the numbers increase from 10,000 to 20,000 and so on. Eventually over 70,000 people signed it.
This article by John Gartner Temperament Tantrum - Some say President Donald Trump's personality isn't just flawed, it's dangerous was published in USA Today on Jan. 27, 2017 and it opened the floodgates about Trump’s mental state with psychiatrists Bandy X. Lee and Lance Dodes and others publishing numerous articles and interviews.
Just a few days ago Bandy Lee and two other psychiatrists had this letter published in The NY Times:
Re “Trump Flies Into the Cuckoo’s Nest” (column, Oct. 10):
Gail Collins makes a point that we have been articulating seriously since the publication of our book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” two years ago: President Trump is mentally unfit for office. Our publications have been derided as violations of the Goldwater Rule, “armchair psychiatry” and political bias dressed up as professional opinions.
But, as mental health professionals, we have felt a duty to address a public health crisis: a mentally unfit person in charge of the world’s most powerful military and its nuclear weapons. We have found ample evidence of his instability and grandiosity in the president’s own words and public statements, most recently confirmed in his referring to “my great and unmatched wisdom,” coupled with yet another threat to “totally destroy and obliterate” a foreign country.
Mr. Trump’s now familiar affinity for violence is manifest in his verbal threats and his incitement to violence at his rallies. He reacts viscerally and without reflection or consultation, now claiming “treason” and an attempted “coup.” As he confronts the humiliating prospect of impeachment, his psychological deterioration represents a clear and imminent risk.
Our observations are not “diagnosing” and do not refer to mental illness; rather, they speak to a lack of fitness that can be determined based on sufficient sources outside of a personal examination.
Leonard L. Glass
Bandy X. Lee
Edwin B. Fisher
The writers are professors, respectively, at Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine and Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Last year the once-obscure Article 4 of the 25th Amendment became a frequent topic of discussion in the media. It was over one year ago on May 16, 2017 that Ross Douthat wrote “ The 25th Amendment Solution for Removing Trump” in the New York Times.
There will be time to return again to world-weariness and cynicism as this agony drags on. Right now, though, I will be boring in my sincerity: I respectfully ask Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to reconsider their support for a man who never should have had his party’s nomination, never should have been elevated to this office, never should have been endorsed and propped up and defended by people who understood his unfitness all along.
Now is a day for redemption. Now is an acceptable time.
Anyone following the subject of Trump being psychologically unfit for office learned what the Goldwater rule was and why it became controversial when many therapists went public with their concerns about Trump being dangerous. A book warning the public and members of Congress about this turned out to be a best seller (right).
Time published this ”Go Ahead, Psychiatrists: Diagnose Donald Trump” in July of 2017. Articles similar to this were published in numerous mainstream media throughout 2017.
People who were deeply troubled by the erratic behavior of Donald Trump learned what the mental health community meant by “duty to warn” when applied to someone as potentially dangerous as the president. Those following closely even learned why so many therapists justified breaking the Goldwater rule as they applied the Tarasoff duty to warn standard to Trump.
People who never heard of the initials DSM discovered it was short for the fifth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Armchair psychologists reading the DSM-5 struggled to figure out what made Trump behave the way he did were puzzled.
Those who did more reading about the psychology of the president were sure to find articles about Trump and the psychological syndrome malignant narcissism, and if they Google searched Trump malignant narcissist they’d have learned much more from John Gartner and others including the renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton who was interviewed by Bill Moyers.
Point of pride: an article I wrote on Daily Kos was number 10 on the first page of that Google search.
Fast forward to today.
John Gartner is working with the documentary filmmaker DocShops*, and the Duty to Warn group of mental health professionals and is completing a documentary called #UNFIT: The Dangerous Behavior of Donald Trump.