Something jumped out at me when I read the article “Trump’s new attack on Biden exposes his own unfitness” in today’s Washington Post (my emphasis added).
At a rally in North Carolina on Monday night, this actually happened: President Trump ripped into a resurgent Joe Biden by claiming he bungles facts and often appears confused.
Yes, Trump suggested the former vice president is mentally unfit for the presidency.
Let it be noted that this came only hours after Trump held an open session on coronavirus, at which he stumbled over the concept of vaccines and seemed to suggest he has no idea that clinical trials are required for medications.
And this came at a time when the administration’s coronavirus response has been marred by Trump’s own all-consuming pathologies. Trump’s initial instinct was to rage at the media for treating him unfairly, to deny the outbreak’s seriousness because it might rattle the markets and to decline to bring in an outside coordinator in part out of fear of that person’s disloyalty.
That Trump is has taken psychological projection to an IMax size screen has been widely commented on by progressives on TV and in OpEds, and by mental health professionals as well dating back at least to 2017, for example:
The link in the above article that jumped out at me was the reference to Trump’s all-consuming pathologies so of course I followed it. Here is where it took me:
Here are the excerpts related to Trump’s actual psychopathology which OpEd author Greg Sargent recommends that the Democrats should “pounce” on (emphasis mine)
The weakness in question: Trump’s chronic inability to admit that anything on his watch is less than stupendously wonderful. This pathology is deeply ingrained in this presidency. It infects everything from his depictions of the economy to his insane demands of border officials, in addition to (as we’re now seeing) the government’s handling of a public health crisis.
Highlighting this provides a way to integrate criticism of Trump’s management failures with an indictment of his hideous character flaws —his towering dishonesty and megalomania.
Under the boldfaced subheading Trump’s megalomania poses a danger that section begins with:
And so, Trump fumed as he watched his own health officials inform the country about the seriousness of the threat, considering this to be alarmist. He raged against the media for treating him unfairly, confirming again that everything gets filtered through how it personally impacts him.
However, it doesn’t mention megalomania until the last sentence in the section of the article (emphasis mine):
But we already know Trump’s megalomaniacal insistence on making everything about him — and his intertwined belief that he can magically mold reality to his benefit — surely threatens to hamper our response in untold ways.
Sargent concludes as follows (emphasis mine):
From all this, it’s only a short leap to making the point that a major impediment to achieving this is Trump’s pathological need to cast everything on his watch as smashingly marvelous…
This criticism will stand even if officials do ultimately manage coronavirus effectively. That’s because such an eventuality will effectively take place behind Trump’s back — officials will be succeeding despite the obstacles created by his pathologies.
That’s a case Democrats should not shy away from making, despite screams that they must not “politicize” the outbreak. This is exactly the debate the country needs right now — even or especially in the very political context of the presidential race.
Put another way, what he is suggesting is that Democrats capitalize of how Trump’s psychopathology has been put under a microscope, to use a medical analogy, by how he has handled the Coronavirus pandemic.
I think it is likely Trump will be unable to continue to respond in way that put his own needs first because, one, he is unable to do otherwise, and two, because he doesn’t see that there is anything wrong with this.