Posted by Hal Brown
HUFFPOST article. The links in this excerpt are intstructive.
There has long been debate over the ethics of analyzing Trump’s mental state. Opponents say it creates stigma and, among other issues, violates the Goldwater Rule, an ethical rule from the American Psychiatric Association that prevents psychiatrists from offering professional opinions about a public figure they have not examined. Others have argued that it’s in the public interest to highlight the roots of Trump’s actions in office.
The first link goes to a NY Times article, Who Decides Whether Trump Is Unfit to Govern? by Peter D. Kramer, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Brown University and Sally L. Satel a psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Here’s a particularly relevant quote (emphasis added):
The 25th Amendment is imprecise, but clearly the intent is to cover impairment arising from illness. Once an impairment is diagnosed, doctors on the panel would need to determine whether the president is incapacitated and whether the incapacity results from the disorder. For grave conditions like psychotic episodes, severe dementia or massive strokes, the connection is easy. But what of less automatically disqualifying ailments?
The traits that might earn Mr. Trump a diagnosis of personality disorder were on display during the election campaign. His supporters judged that egotism was compatible with leadership. He is governing as he campaigned. He is impulsive, erratic, belligerent and vengeful.
But is Mr. Trump unfit to govern in the meaning of the 25th Amendment? If so, its provisions might have been invoked the day he took office. If not, when did the incapacity arise? Would the commission monitor a president’s behaviors, judging which is the last straw?
In practical if perhaps not in moral terms, these decisions might be less troubling if Mr. Trump were found, say, to have Alzheimer’s disease, with a resultant coarsening of longstanding personality traits. To the extent that the president’s supporters accepted expert opinion, they might be less resistant to the removal of a demented commander in chief than a narcissistic one.
In only his most recent rally in Michigan there are many examples of what John Gartner refers to when he stops reading the teleprompter. If you’ve been watching TV you’ve already seen segments of the speech. Joe Scarborough just played a short piece and mocked him for talking about the Mustang car and mispronouncing it.
I reviewed the documentary #UNFIT onAug. 29th and suggested you all pay the $5.99 to watch it. The focus of the film is on how Trump’s malignant narcissism makes him dangerously unfit. This two and a half minute clip which isn’t in the film about his cognitive decline makes an excellent supplement to the documentary especially now that there are so many more examples of what Gartner describes to illustrate his points.