Yesterday I wrote about how the phrase “Trump’s all consuming pathologies” in a Washington Post OpEd piqued my interest enough to follow a link and write a story. Today another phrase jumped right off the screen but this time it was in the Rubin Bolling (aka Ken Fisher) cartoon strip published on Daily Kos today from “Tom the Dancing Bug”:
If you are already familiar with malignant narcissism and the history of how it became part of political discourse the remainder of this diary won’t have anything new in particular to add. Still, I’d appreciate it if you would scroll down and take the poll.
My associate in the Duty to Warn group Dr. John D. Gartner can take well deserved credit being the first mental health professional to the concept of malignant narcissism as applied to Trump used in the last panel in this cartoon into the public discourse with his May 4, 2017 USA Today OpEd below:
Credit where credit is due, on Jul 28, 2016 the Boston Herald reported that “Libertarian vice presidential candidate William Weld yesterday called Republican nominee Donald Trump a “malignant narcissist” unfit to be president. “You want someone who is calm,” the former Bay State governor said, referencing Trump’s habit of barraging foes with vicious ...” He brought it up again in his debate with his 2020 debate with Joe Walsh. Weld is a Harvard Law educated lawyer.
Many lawyers are well-versed in the finer points of psychopathology. Another example of this is George Conway whose use of the term made it into the title of this Newsweek article:
Here’s his tweet:
The reply above is from Jonathan Simon, the author of “CODE RED Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy: Transparent elections, hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots.”
It took a long time for George Conway and mental health professionals with credentials like Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, and also chapters in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump and books of their own like John Gartner, Bandy Lee, Lance Dodes, Steve Buser, to a far, far lesser extent yours truly, to educate openminded people about how obvious it was that Trump has this disorder.
Lawrence O’Donnell always deserves kudos for understanding this and consistently referencing Trump’s psychopathology and having Bandy Lee, John Gartner, and Lance Dodes on his show. In fact Lance Dodes was featured on his show six days ago:
It was frustrating as hell trying to sound this alarm to deaf ears, but worth the effort.
Now if you Google Trump malignant narcissism you will find numerous articles, including Gartner’s Donald Trump's malignant narcissism is toxic from USA Today on May 4, 2017.
My articles have to be far down a Google search which has over 83,000 results. You’ll have to add my name to your search to find them.
Search Google News for Trump malignant narcissism, which has 4,300 results, instead and you can see how the mainstream media has adopted the term:
I think it may be a turning point and hopefully quite significant when Trump’s psychopathology and how it actually has a name makes it into the popular culture through a cartoon by the winner of the prestigious 2017 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning who was also a 2019 finalist in the Editorial Cartooning category for the Pulitzer Prize.
My stories: