As the pressure of having the most stressful job in the world gets to President Donald Trump, he continues to display signs of buckling under the strain. Apart from edging closer to the 10,000 lie tally, the president continues to ramble incoherently and conjure “alternative facts” out of thin air. This week he said the noise from wind turbines causes cancer. (White House spokesperson Mercedes Schlapp later said she had no evidence of this.) He also said he planned to close the border unless Mexico stopped sending drugs and migrants to the U.S. The next day he backed off this and claimed he was giving Mexico a year’s notice to clean up its act.
Trump’s erratic behavior is not a surprise to me. I’ve known the president was showing signs of early-stage dementia back in 2016. I recognized the same symptoms in my mother. I’ve lived with my parents for about four years, and I’ve seen her mental health deteriorate. Eventually, she was diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s and had to be placed in a nursing home because she needs round-the-clock care.
However, I saw the same signs displayed in my mother in Trump — incoherent speech, lying, gaslighting, wandering off and repeating the same words over and over again.
There’s a YouTube compilation of Trump’s frequent mental lapses such as walking into the wrong room, forgetting where he is and what’s he supposed to be doing and even walking off the steps of Air Force One and wandering away from the presidential limo. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, some other symptoms are having trouble understanding others and impulsive behavior. Sound familiar?
It’s really not surprising Trump’s mental health is deteriorating. Apart from the stress of being commander-in-chief, and being hit with multiple investigations, he also has a history of mental illness in his family. Trump’s father, Fred, began to shows signs of dementia in his later years. According to The New York Times’ obituary, Fred Trump suffered from Alzheimer’s during the last six years of his life. Trump’s condition has only been compounded by living in the White House, his awful diet and lack of exercise.
Many other mental health professionals have warned about Trump’s fragile mental state and the danger it puts the country in. Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale psychology professor, has written about Trump in “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” Several other leading mental health professionals also contributed to the book.
According to Lee, if Trump wasn’t in the White House, he would have been placed in a mental institution by now.
“If Donald Trump were anyone other than the president of the United States, he would already be contained and evaluated,” said Lee in a Salon interview. “We actually have all the information to make that determination, because when a mental health professional is assessing dangerousness they do not depend upon a personal interview because such tests are unreliable.”
We’ve seen this kind of behavior before. Trump is like Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones, a mentally unstable, charismatic figure with a band of loyal followers. And like Jones and Hitler, Trump’s advisors are enabling him instead of reigning in his impulses or removing him. They mistake insanity for genius. Hitler’s generals finally tired of his irrational behavior, which was leading his country to ruin, and tried to assassinate him.
Hillary Clinton recognized it in 2016, I recognized it back then too. Why didn’t enough Americans see it?
When your parent gets too old to drive, you take the car keys away from them. (I had to unplug the phone because my mother was calling the police and saying she was being held hostage. )
By electing Trump, Americans gave a man in mental decline the keys to the world’s biggest arsenal. This will not end well.
This story was first published on Medium.