It's time to talk seriously about Trump's derangement syndrome: his own, not his critics'.
For years it has been clear that mental health experts as well as the variety of armchair, Republicans Like the Democrats, Donald Trump is not right in the head. Yet his behavior—the pathological lying, the childish name-calling, the grandiosity and narcissistic obsession with crowd size, the open intolerance, the erraticism, the desire to please (beloved!) by murderous dictators—has long since become normal.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Trump's madness hose has accustomed Americans to his atrocities. Trump openly acknowledges his offenses and then repeats them. And many of our fellow citizens like that about him and dislike his opponents, which is why they elected him president and may well elect him again.
“God help us”, in the words by retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, former Trump White House chief of staff.
But now that President Biden, a normal, empathetic man, has been forced out of the 2024 race over concerns about his age and mental acuity, Trump’s more glaring unfitness for office should no longer be ignored — by the media, by former advisers and military leaders who remain silent, and, yes, by Republicans.
The problem is that Americans can talk about Trump’s madness, but what can be done? Republican “leaders,” who privately admit the truth about their candidate, are not going to remove him. They have allowed it for so long, through repeated defeats in minor elections, impeachments, incitements, and accusations. And unlike Biden, Trump will not go away willingly: he lost an election, but was so determined to retain power that he provoked an insurrection.
Forget the resistance of Republicans and Trump: a serious discussion and debate about Trump's mental state would not be useless. It could tip the balance in favor of the few undecided voters in the half-dozen key states that will decide the election. Do they really want him to control the nuclear codes?
Since 2015, when descended The golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy with the kind of megalomaniacal attitude. monologue To what we have become desensitized, mental health professionals have avoided publicly addressing Trump's psyche, cowed by the case of a half-century ago. “Goldwater Rule” of the American Psychiatric Association. The policy states that it is unethical to give a professional opinion about the mental health of a public figure without examining the person and receiving his or her permission.
However, during the Trump presidency, several dozen professionals invoked a “civic duty to warn”; they wrote and then expanded A best seller assessing Trump's psychological illnesses. (Among the buyers (From the first edition: Kelly, to better understand her White House boss.) Meanwhile, in private, other professionals are not shy about the subject: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote In her newly published book, psychiatrists came to her at a memorial service for one of their colleagues to vent about Trump's behavior.
And Trump calls her “Crazy Nancy”? Projection.
It seems clearly triggered since Biden's withdrawal from the race, a race that Trump seemed to be winning, by the rise of the Harris-Walz ticket and the huge crowds, donations and poll gains Democrats are winning. He tried to regain attention with a press conference On Thursday, a MAGA rally in Montana on Friday and various public statements, only to raise more questions about his well-being.
“Umm, @GOP, is @realDonaldTrump okay?” asks former GOP chairman turned apostate Michael Steele aware after a Trump speech on social media. Trump had dubbed Vice President Kamala Harris “Kamabla,” said she and other Democrats had staged “a COUP” against Biden and suggested Biden would “BROKEN” the Democratic convention next week to clinch the nomination. That’s playground jargon.
At the Mar-a-Lago news conference, Trump claimed that not only are his crowds bigger than Harris’s, but that his Jan. 6 audience near the National Mall surpassed the estimated 250,000 people who heard the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington in 1963. It didn’t; Trump’s was estimated at 53,000. But who brags about a crowd that later attacked the Capitol?
Sa lot of that What he told reporters was either lies or old man's tales: 162 misstatements in 64 minutes, according to NPR's count. All it took were calls to Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, already Nate Holden, former Los Angeles City Councilman and State Senator, for reporters To discredit Trump claimed he once nearly crashed a helicopter with Brown. His argument was that Brown, who once dated Harris, badmouthed her on a trip the two men never took together.
Trump also denied falsely saying what millions of Americans have heard or can easily find on YouTube: that Harris identified as Indian American until she decided to “become black.” “I didn't say that,” he said. liedAnd she added, as if that were not enough, that she has been “very disrespectful” to both racial groups.
Since the assassination attempt, Trump has repeatedly joked that his brush with death could transform him. “I’m not nicer,” he told donors at an event.
The truth, at last.
At Mar-a-Lago, he told reporters that Harris “destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed the state of California, along with Governor Gavin Newsom.” In Montana, he falsely claimed that Harris will not debate him, “because she is dumb.“The weekend, video An image emerged on social media of Trump, with his teenage son Barron beside him in a golf cart, calling Harris a “fucking bitch.”
At a recent dinner, a wealthy donor asked Trump to outline a positive vision for the country. The New York Times reported that the question “appeared to be a request for reassurance.” But Trump remained negative and further attacked Harris before adding: “I am who I am.”
Whatever the case, Trump is not fit to be president. Put him on the couch, not behind the Resolute Desk.
@jackiekcalmes
