Salon regularly publishes articles about Trump’s psychopathology by Chauncey DeVega or Igor Derysh. Since this is a liberal website they reach people who have an open mind to learning more about this subject. It is noteworthy when such articles are published in other publications like USA Today or The Atlantic, both of which have addressed the matter of how Trump’s personality disorder(s) make him unfit. Now we have another article in a publication which will reach and inform a different audience.
Foreign Policy is an American news publication, founded in 1970 and focused on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy. It produces content daily on its website,[3] and in six print issues annually.
Foreign Policy magazine and ForeignPolicy.com are published by The FP Group, a division of Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company).
Michael Hirsh, the author, is a senior correspondent and the deputy news editor for Foreign Policy magazine. He is the former national editor for Politico. He was also the former foreign editor, chief diplomatic correspondent and national economic correspondent for Newsweek.
This morning’s online edition featured an article by Michael Hirsh which addressed how Trump’s pathological narcissism was, in essence, featured in the Senate trial.
Hirsh quotes contributors to the best seller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” whose names may be familiar to those who have followed the stories I posted on Daily Kos about various aspects of Trump’s personality.
You can read the article online free here, but you have to register first. Then as you scroll down the page you keep getting a pop-up that forces you to go back and click that you are registered. It is annoying. If you want to read the entire article I suggest you do what I did: copy all of it into an email and send it to yourself.
Here are some of the portions, edited for brevity, of the article which are related to Trump’s pathological narcissism:
- Psychiatrist Craig Malkin said: “The more narcissistic someone is, the more they’re likely to view people and the world as less a separate entity or being, and more like an extension of their own body, like an arm or a leg. In that mindset, ‘What the U.S. needs and what I need are one and the same, because I am the country.’ It’s quite possible that he believes the Ukrainians tried to take him down, because embracing paranoid conspiracy theories help ward off a far more threatening possibility: that his failings are his own, and not due to outside attack. That thought, in and of itself, is intolerable for extreme narcissists to entertain.”
- Bandy Lee, editor of “The Dangerous Case” who recently started “The World Mental Health Coalition” wrote in an email “I do not believe that he will have the same concept of corruption as you or I would. He may be able to tell apart right from wrong, but the meaning these hold is far less. For example, based on his non-objective use of the word ‘fair,’ he is likely to conceptualize a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens and the 2016 election as ‘good for him’ and thus ‘fair.’ Whatever does not give him overwhelming advantage (and others overwhelming disadvantage) would thus be ‘unfair.’ An objective sense of fairness is probably not only non-existent for him but intolerable.”
- John Gartner, founder of The Duty to Warn group (I was an early member) said about leaders like Trump, they “make their crazy ideas mainstream ideas, to shape and change the beliefs of society. Trump has taken control of a party that once stood for fiscal restraint, free trade, and stable alliances but now, terrified of his wrath, subscribes to Trump’s nearly opposite views...
- Gartner continues: “Trump’s narcissistic approach to the national interest has been amply in evidence in other ways... The evidence suggests, in other words, that Trump views not just the nation but the global system through the same narcissistic filter. One of the mysteries of Trump’s character is that, from the beginning of his career, he’s plainly seen himself as a performer who’s aware he’s putting on an act. In scripted speeches and remarks, he makes a good show of advocacy for the same downtrodden Americans he often derides in private. At the same time, Trump appears to genuinely embrace the conspiracy theories he advances—the idea of Ukraine’s involvement in 2016 itself began as a strange, unfounded internet meme—and he only doubles down the more he is questioned or attacked. This too is evidence of a narcissistic and paranoid personality. At various points Trump has been testing us: ‘Can I get away with this?’ He keeps discovering, ‘Hey I can get away with this all right!’ That’s the way a criminal thinks.”
Michael Hirsh concludes:
But for the nation, more dangerous days may lie ahead. Experts warn that exoneration by the Senate may only open the door to more grandiosity by a president who seems to believe that he is his own law, with no one and nothing standing in his way.
Or as Schiff put it, “You know it’s not going to stop.”