“All I Ever Wanted to Know about Donald Trump I Learned From His Tweets: A Psychological Exploration of the President via Twitter,” Compiled by Rachel Montgomery / Introduction and notes by John Gartner was published on September 19, 2017.
We had to figure that by electing a decidedly non-career-politician, that things would be… different. But is this any way to run a country? Many opinions have been shared about Donald Trump, but we can learn so much more about the man via what he himself says – in 140 characters or less. Trump has tweeted nearly 35,000 times since launching @realDonaldTrump in March 2009, commenting on everything from immigration to policy climate change to even pop culture. As President, Trump tweets without ceasing, sometimes a dozen times a day, seemingly during important events and meetings. Apparently he believes that twitter is an effective tool for him to drive his agenda. But it’s one thing to be a brash, bold, and outspoken, maverick businessman, it’s quite another when the leader of the most powerful country in the world is talking politics as stream of consciousness. From Simon and Schuster
Dr. John D. Gartner published his introduction to the book on Salon. It begins:
One of the most notable things about the 34,000 tweets that Rachel Montgomery culled through for this new book is their sheer quantity. It’s like looking at your phone in the morning, the night after a brief dinner date, and finding thirty-seven nasty texts from your date. The quantity alone warns that this person may not be mentally stable, and then the gratuitous nastiness confirms it. Donald Trump’s manic dark energy drives him to vaunt himself and denigrate his fellow human beings relentlessly: all day, all night, every day, and every night.
To make sense of his aberrant behavior, you need to understand, specifically, what is psychologically wrong with Donald Trump. His diagnosis is the Rosetta Stone to cracking the Trump Twitter code, revealing its underlying structure, and unfortunately, how much danger all the rest of us are in as a result. He is a malignant narcissist who is also on the bipolar spectrum. From a psychiatric perspective, the prognosis could not be more dire—for us.
Continued here
That, indeed, was then, just about two years ago.
This is now:
Donald Trump kicked off his Labor Day early Monday morning with an attack on the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, ranting that the Nobel Prize-winning economist is giving American’s bad stock market advise — without providing any evidence or context.
He then followed that up with a series of tweets attacking a union leader and former FBI Director James Comey — calling him a “traitor.”
Moments after quoting a Fox News personality — indicating he is spending the morning watching the conservative cable news network — the president launched his assault on the columnist and others.
“Since my election, many trillions of dollars of worth has been created for our Country, and the Stock Market is up over 50%. If you followed the advice of the Failing New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, you’d be doing VERY poorly – you’d be angry and hurt. He never got it!” Trump tweeted.
He then attacked union leader AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s appearance on Fox News before returning to — once again — snap at Comey by quoting Fox host Lou Dobbs.
Since penning his introduction to “All I Ever Wanted to Know...” John Gartner has been working on his documentary about Donald Trump, #UNFIT. I wrote about it here.
In the introduction to the book Gartner focused exclusively on explaining Trump’s malignant narcissism and never mention cognitive dysfunction or dementia.
That was then.
This is now,
well, not really now, this was way back April:
April!
This is August:
Trump began as the exemplar of malignant narcissism. This was recognized by the vast majority of mental health professionals who went public (I wrote about the two who didn’t think this here — they are like the few scientists who deny climate change). Then he was a novice dictator yet to demonstrate his cruelty and the extent of his bigotry, and an inept leader who was largely being given the benefit of the doubt by the media and our allies who naively thought he would somehow grow into the presidency.
His critics avoided comparing him to Hitler. That has changed. I had no compunctions in writing this on Aug. 9th:
I have said many times that when we compare Trump to Hitler we have to remember that Hitler’s rise to power was slow and systematic. It took him about a decade. Of course Trump ascendancy to the presidency was meteoric in comparison and the result of a perfect storm of factors.
I am a Jew. I do not believe these comparisons diminish the Holocaust. I believe that the statement “never again” doesn’t just apply to allowing a despot to engage in systemic extermination of a group of people he and his willing executioners (to use another catchphrase). It can apply to someone who is operating with the same lack of conscience and sadism and desire to “purify” the nation who only has the limited resources of ICE and the Justice Department. They don’t have unfettered power, at least not yet.
Now not only do we observe Trump’s malignant narcissism, but as far as troubling psychological symptoms we see a growing tendency towards having paranoid ideation (these are delusions characteristic of psychosis). This and other observable behaviors led me to write “Using the word psychotic to describe Trump’s aberrant behavior.”
As if we needed icing on the cake, or dare I say nuclear missiles decorating the icing on the cake rather than candles, now we have the increasing examples of the behavior Gartner describes as being suggestive of a decline into full blown dementia or Alzheimer’s to take into consideration when we think about how imperative it is that Trump exit the Oval Office as soon as possible.