Fifty-eight thousand mental health professionals say Donald Trump is too unstable to be president. Here’s a deep dive into the diagnosis and what could happen because of it.
Albert Einstein is famously quoted: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to change.” This is not, of course, the actual definition of insanity. It also turns out Einstein never said this. It actually comes from an Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlet from the 1980s.
Which is apropos, because nearly 60,000 mental health professionals have diagnosed President Donald Trump with a type of insanity that is often compared to an alcoholic’s lack of honesty and impulse control. Sparked by Change.org petitions by a top former Johns Hopkins professor and a California congresswoman, the psychiatric community has declared that Trump suffers from “Malignant Narcissism.” What is that exactly? Does Trump actually suffer from it? If so, what does that mean? With the help of some concerned psychologists, we’ve broken down the answers.
Psychologists say that Trump’s condition is a combination of mental disorders that cause one to distort reality and make violent, impulsive decisions. These disorders form, according to the doctor who coined the term Malignant Narcissism in the 1960s, “the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness.”
This is the first time in history that so many mental health professionals have collectively diagnosed a living individual. Their conclusion, based on the hundreds of hours of Trump’s on-camera dialogue and off-the-cuff public speaking, is alarming because it says that our current president is too mentally disturbed to fulfill his office.
To be clear: Being a standard deviation or two away from the norm when it comes to one’s psychology does not automatically make a person dangerous, harmful, or unable to do a job. Millions of people have depression, anxiety, or mild mania and still function well. Abraham Lincoln went through depression, after all.
Unfortunately, unlike many other mental disorders, Malignant Narcissism makes its sufferers actively dangerous to different people. It’s more akin to delusional schizophrenia than it is to anxiousness.
In diagnosing Donald Trump, mental health pros are breaking with a decades-old precedent. After Barry Goldwater won a 1969 defamation lawsuit when psychiatrists called him crazy in Fact magazine, the psychiatric community put in place a “Goldwater Rule” in their ethics handbook that forbids diagnosing public figures. A big problem during the Goldwater scenario was that there weren’t objective criteria for diagnosing mental health conditions at the time. Therapists used all sorts of jargon and their best judgment, but they were all over the place. Since then, however, the community has put in place official, objective standards in their bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short). This makes it possible to agree on diagnoses unanimously.
The real reason for breaking with the code, however, is principle. Someone in power with Malignant Narcissism is likely to get people killed, and psychologists who know this feel morally obligated to speak up. This has legal precedent in a court case called Tarasoff vs Regents, in which the murder of a woman could have been prevented if the killer’s psychotherapist had warned her or the police that the man might kill her. This resulted in the Tarasoff Rule: “When a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession, should determine, that his patient presents a danger of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger.”
In Judaism, there is a principle called “Pikuach Nefesh,” which says that it’s okay to break a rule to save a human life. Many in the mental health community believe that Donald Trump’s psychosis is a life-or-death situation, and that since he sees no mental health doctor, the Tarasoff Rule should supersede the Goldwater Rule. Thousands of psychologists feel morally justified in this. (And some even are saying it is immoral not to speak up.)
In addition to the mental health community, senators and congresspeople from both parties have expressed concern about Trump’s mental health. Whether they are right or not has enormous implications. “I genuinely do not think this is a mentally healthy president.” — Eliot Cohen, US State Department under George W. Bush.
Decoding Donald Trump’s Mental Condition Malignant Narcissism, according to John D. Gartner, one of the country’s top psychologists, is basically a combination of three mental illnesses — Anti-social Personality Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder — plus sadism, or the enjoyment of inflicting pain. “The concept was developed by a famed psychologist named Erich Fromm, who escaped Nazi Germany, as a way to describe evil,” Gartner says. “He used it to describe Hitler.” That’s pretty scary. And unfortunately, the assertion that Trump has it is not something that can be chalked up to politics. “Even though I disagree with everything he stands for, I would be immensely relieved to have a President Pence. He’s conservative; he’s not crazy,” Gartner told me. Paul Ryan? He’d be great, too. “Martin Luther King famously said the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. If we hit a traffic jam on the way to social progress, we’ll still get there,” Gartner said. “But if we’re all dead from a nuclear war, we won’t.”Which is exactly what someone with Malignant Narcissism might start.
Gartner, who taught personality disorders at Johns Hopkins University for 28 years and explained Bill Clinton’s mental issues in the book In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography, says Trump’s illness might be called “Dictator Personality Disorder.” Malignant Narcissism often coincides with mild mania — the ability to consistently stay up all night obsessing on a project — which helps sufferers achieve high career status despite their cruel tendencies. Trump exhibits this, too. “I’ve been a specialist in personality disorders for 35 years,” Gartner says. “Trump is the most severe case I’ve seen in my career.”
The DSM is clear about what constitutes the three personality disorders that add up to Malignant Narcissism. Here they are broken down: Now let’s take a look at Donald Trump’s behaviour — from the public record — against the criteria:
ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER Trump exhibits 6 of the seven traits of Antisocial Personality Disorder. You only need to have 3 to be given the diagnosis: Donald Trump’s diagnostic scorecard for Antisocial Personality Disorder 1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours Trump consistently qualifies for this one. Here’s an abridged list:
• Starting a fraudulent university that scammed thousands of people out of money (which he settled out of court for $25 million) • Sexually assaulting womenand bragging about it on tape. • Raping his ex-wife and, allegedly, also a 13-year-old girl. (Both withdrew their accusations under duress.)
• Intentionally barging in on naked underage girls while they were dressing. • Hiring illegal workers and cheating union pension funds. • Misusing charity funds and various other instances of self-dealing. This list goes on, but the above are plenty enough to check this box. 2. Deceitfulness: Repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure The list of Trump’s public lies is extensive and well-known. Politifact has tracked his public statements and found that Trump says things that are completely and demonstrably false more than he says things that are true or even half-true. His use of aliases is less well-known. Here’s a report, which includes audio, of him pretending to be his own publicist — “John Barron” or “John Miller,” depending on the decade — and bragging about how great he is. Please take a look at the above Trump University for evidence of one of his business instances of conning others for profit. 3. Impulsivity, or failure to plan ahead According to Pew, most Americans think Trump is too impulsive. Here are a few recent examples:
• Not realizing what the President of the US actually does, not planning how he would staff the White House if he won, etc. • Calling world leaders unprepared • Going off script on most speeches • The fact that his cabinet is still woefully understaffed • The rollout of his immigration ban as if it were an emergency, without warning airports or even briefing his own staff or Congress • Sending 3 am tweets attacking private citizens 3. Irritability and aggressiveness Trump’s irritability is welldocumented. He’s proud of his aggressiveness (he even has a book called Time To Get Tough), which we repeatedly see in his debates, interviews, and tweets that he calls “smackdowns.” He encouraged his followers to be aggressive and violent during his campaign. And most recently from the White House: Trump mistreats his staff. Here’s a list of 23 aggressive things he’s said in recent memory. 4. Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others This one, there’s not much (clinical) evidence so far. 5. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behaviour or honour financial obligations Trump’s failure to honour his financial obligations is well documented. Here’s a recent report on the hundreds of contractors and workers he ripped off as a hotel developer. He’s declared bankruptcy six times and walked away from his debts multiple times. The list of his failed business ventures is extensive due to inconsistent management behaviour. His work behaviour as president and a candidate before that has been inconsistent. During the campaign, he switched to “acting presidential” several times and could only maintain this role for a few days at a time. 6. Lack of remorse, or being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another Trump’s eight books are full of insults toward everyone, from models to celebrities to random private citizens. He relishes tearing people down on Twitter and refused to apologize for insulting the parents of a dead U.S. soldier or to the black community for his racist campaign against Barack Obama’s citizenship. In fact, here’s a list that Mashable put together of all the times Trump refused to apologize for things.
PARANOID PERSONALITY DISORDER Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition. Trump exhibits at least 5 out of the seven qualifications for Paranoid Personality Disorder. Only four are needed for a diagnosis: Donald Trump’s diagnostic scorecard for Antisocial Personality Disorder 1. Suspects that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly accused the media of being biased against him. He claimed, with no evidence, that the election was going to be rigged against him. Since then, he’s accused the parks department, Republicans, and the intelligence community of trying to tear him, his daughter, and the validity of his election down. He made up a story that 3–5 million people illegally voted against him. These accusations have proven to be overblown or bogus. 2. Preoccupied with doubts about the loyalty of friends or associates It’s hard to get Trump’s trust, and easy to get him to fire you for perceived disloyalty. He doesn’t trust his staff, except for a few in the inner circle. He doesn’t trust the intelligence agents who work for him. Federal workers don’t trust him not to spy on them. And it didn’t look like he trusted his wife to vote for him. How much this preoccupies him is hard to say. But Trump is reported to be as paranoid in this area as Nixon, who was quite paranoid. 3. Reluctant to confide in others Trump is paranoid primarily of people he sees as outside of his circle of trust. He’s keeping top officials out of his inner circle and elevating a few loyalists to lofty places. But he has a close circle of confidants with whom he shares information (Bannon, Conway, Kushner, etc.). So it would be hard to conclude that he qualifies for this one. 4. Reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events Trump believes in various conspiracy theories based on vague information from tiny corners of the Internet (falsehoods like Barack Obama’s not being born in the US, Hilary Clinton using performance-enhancing drugs for the debates, Ted Cruz’s father assassinating JFK, etc.), which is the definition of finding hidden meanings in benign events. His favourite writer is conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who, among other things, helped get the “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracy theory going. Additionally, his overreactions to the petty — like Sean Spicer being played by a woman on SNL or the size of his inauguration crowd — betray a paranoia of anything he perceives as a threat to his image. The classic case of this is his weird defensiveness about the size of his hands. 5. Persistently bears grudges Trump readily admits to this one. “When people mistreat me, I don’t let them forget it,” he said. Here’s an abridged list of people and organizations Trump has had public grudges with: CNN, Congressman John Lewis, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the family of Captain Khan, Rosie O’Donnell, Rev. Faith Green Timmons of the United Methodist Church, Nordstrom, and Alicia Machado. His staff had to take his Twitter access away from him in the final days of the election because they worried his obsession with Twitter vengeance might jeopardize the election. As Trump’s communication aide Omarosa Manigault says, “Mr. Trump has a long memory and we’re keeping a list.” 6. Perceives attacks on his character or reputation and is quick to react angrily or counterattack Please take a look at the above list of grudges. Trump is infamous for publicly lashing out at people for slights big and small, from Meryl Streep to random blue-collar workers. The New York Times put together this handy list of 307 people, places, and things Trump has insulted. 7. Has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding the fidelity of spouse or sexual partner There’s not enough public information to conclude anything on this one.
NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER This one is the most obvious and heavily documented. Trump surpasses the minimum of 5, exhibiting at least 9 of the signs: Donald Trump’s diagnostic scorecard for Narcissistic Personality Disorder 1. Grandiose sense of self-importance Exaggerates achievements and talents — check. (Size of election win, size of inauguration crowd, number of jobs saved in Carrier negotiation, and so on.) Expects to be recognized as superior — check. Expects recognition without commensurate achievements — check. Politifact has a whole list of Trump’s tall tales here. But we’ll let the following quotations by Donald Trump himself clinch this and the following two checkboxes: 2. Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance; Believes he is “special” and unique “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” “No one has more respect for women than I.” “I have the best temperament, or certainly one of the best temperaments, of anybody that’s ever run for the office of president. Ever.” “Look, I know more about renewables than any human being on earth.” “I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to the Secret Service.” “I wrote a book called The Art of the Deal, the #1 selling business book of all time.” “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” “No one has done more for people with disabilities than I.” “I am the least racist person you’ve ever encountered.” “I’m the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody’s ever been more successful than me.” 3. Requires excessive adoration Trump’s ego-stoking “victory tour,” obsession with ratings before and after entering politics, and fixation on the size of his electoral win, inauguration crowd, and his (false) claim of having received the biggest standing ovation ever, easily check this one off. 4. Has a sense of entitlement He indeed grew up with a silver spoon, but it’s unclear how entitled he thinks he is, in the clinical definition. So no check for this one. 5. Interpersonally exploitative This post on Medium by my colleague Brad Hamilton (editor of The Contently Foundation and former investigations editor at New York Post) recounts how Trump exploited several people, including Brad, to get publicity for his golf course one time. This type of behaviour, to use a regrettable pun, is par for him. Trump’s own books talk a lot about his strategies for exploiting people. 6. Lacks empathy We covered the evidence for this one earlier. Trump is not remorseful about hurting people. He’s dismissive of many people’s pain — even pain he’s caused them — while simultaneously claiming that “no one understands” them better than he does. 7. Often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him Trump’s been jealous of his senior adviser being put on the cover of Time Magazine, his running-mate having an outstanding debate performance, and the fact that Jay-Z and Beyonce performed for Clinton instead of him. And he claims that Republicans are “jealous as hell” that Russian president Vladimir Putin likes him. 8. Arrogant: haughty behaviours or attitudes We’ve now thoroughly established this one. But here are a few more quotes by Mr. Trump that remove any doubt about his arrogance: “My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure; it’s not your fault.” “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.” “All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” “Nobody builds walls better than me, believe me.”
From Donald Trump’s diagnostic scorecard for Antisocial Personality Disorder Sadism Trump has been a bully since he was a child. We’ve already gone over some of his well-documented history of relishing humiliating people and groups weaker than himself. This is classic sadism. The court deposition by Trump’s ex-wife, recounted in Harry Hurt’s biography Lost Tycoon, paints a disturbing picture of a sadistic episode where Trump pulls his wife’s hair out and violates her to make himself feel better after a painful surgery: Manipulation Many politicians could be categorized as manipulative. Trump is not a typical politician, but he literally wrote books on manipulation. His history and tactics of manipulation — from his followers to opponents to the media — are well–documented. Use of projection When Trump defends accusations of racism by calling someone else a racist, that’s psychological projection. He does this sort of thing all the time. One of the most surprising moments of Trump’s presidential debates with Hillary Clinton was the time she accused him of being a Russian puppet, and he automatically projected the accusation — with nothing close to evidence — directly back on her:
Here’s Donald Trump’s scorecard for Malignant Narcissism: There is no question. Donald Trump suffers from Malignant Narcissism. No other president has come close to this disorder. Manipulation is a common trait among politicians. It’s part of the definition of politics. Bill Clinton could be deceitful. George W. Bush showed some reckless tendencies (DUIs, etc.). Barack Obama could be private and a touch arrogant. But none of them remotely qualify as mentally ill. Trump, on the other hand, over-qualifies. Says Dr. Gartner, “If I wanted to take out the DSM and say, ‘I want to create a Frankenstein monster — I want to create the most dangerous leader that could be imagined — and I had a free hand to mix and match any set of diagnoses and symptoms, I couldn’t improve on Donald Trump.”.
SO WHAT NOW? We need President Trump to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. If he refuses to do so, that’s bad news. Refusal itself could be a validation of his personality disorder. People with personality disorders generally won’t consider that they might not be all right, whereas mentally healthy people will typically want to know if they have a problem. And if Trump can be persuaded to sit down for an objective psychiatric evaluation—not from a doctor under his employ—there’s a high probability that he will be diagnosed with the mental illnesses we’ve discussed, which will mean that he is not healthy enough to be president.
The 25th Amendment of the Constitution says that the vice president and a majority of the president’s cabinet can vote to remove the president for being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” This was put into place after Kennedy was shot, in case a president becomes too ill, injured, or mentally unwell to perform.
Removing Trump would be tough because his cabinet is made up of people whom he has chosen himself. There’s no restraining hand to stop him. However, if the cabinet did decide to listen to the psychiatric community and remove Trump, someone with Malignant Narcissism like him would likely not go quietly. With his back to the wall, there’s no way to predict what a sadistic, antisocial, paranoid narcissist in command of special forces, a Twitter army, and nuclear codes will do. But the danger of not removing him is obvious. “We’ve had presidents with psychological disorders,” Gartner points out. Lincoln had depression, after all. “But this is unique. We’re not just talking about mental illness, we’re talking about the worst possible mental illness.”
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On April 30, 2026, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Senator Jack Reed, both Democrats from Rhode Island, entered a remarkable document into the Congressional Record with no objection.
Titled “Medical Concerns About President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness for Office”, it was a document signed by 36 highly qualified and respected experts in mental health, psychiatry, neurology, medicine, and related fields. It is, as they state explicitly, not a formal diagnosis; that is not their role. But they ARE making a considered, professional judgement based on years of careful observation of Trump. They were consulted in 2024, prior to the election, and issued an assessment at that time that he showed “serious signs of cognitive decline” that should disqualify him from office.
In the current statement, they say, “It is our professional opinion, based on previous and ongoing assessments, that Donald Trump’s mental state since our 2024 statement has deteriorated even further.”
They go on: “In keeping with our professional ethics, and for those of us who are physicians, with the Declaration of Geneva–the successor to the Hippocratic Oath that binds us to the humanitarian principles of medicine since the Nuremberg trials–we are compelled to warn of a President of the United States who is increasingly a danger to the public.”
The statement lists “objectively observable signs of serious medical concern” – these are all taken directly from the statement in the Congressional Record:
“Marked deterioration in cognitive functioning, evidenced by disorganized and tangential speech, rambling digressions, factual confusions, unexplained sudden changes of course in strategic matters, both national and international, episodes of apparent somnolence during critical public proceedings.”
“Grandiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility, imagery of himself as Pope suggestive of a divine mission, being a mythical warrior hero, depicting himself as combat pilot–dropping feces on civilians, and claims that his decision-making authority is unlimited—with no need to consider domestic and international laws and constrained only by his “own morality.””
“Severely impaired judgment and impulse control, reflected in reckless threats of violence, advocacy of lethal force against civilians, encouragement of extrajudicial actions by armed supporters, repeated threats and often actions–judicial, prosecutorial, police, military, and by invoking emergency powers–against political opponents and others who disagree with him.:
“Significant loss of self-control (disinhibition) and getting stuck on the same thoughts or actions, unable to let go or move on (perseveration), including seemingly compulsive, manic-like late-night communications–e.g., 150 social media posts in one night–fixation on perceived enemies, persecutory ideas, and prolonged, disproportionate attacks on specific individuals and institutions.”
“Escalating violence that threatens national and global stability. As Commander-in-Chief of our military–more than 5,000 nuclear warheads in inter-continental missile silos, on submarines, and in bombers around the world, are ready for launch solely upon his order, and no one now has the authority to countermand his order.”
They conclude:
“It is our professional opinion that the behaviors of Donald Trump, tragically, are neither momentary lapses nor political theater. It is our professional opinion that they reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline. If we were called upon under the 25th Amendment to judge the President’s present ability to discharge the duties of his office, we would have to conclude that he lacks the capacity to do so.
“For the reasons cited above, emphasizing that he presents a clear and present danger to our country and to the world, it is our expert opinion that Donald J. Trump is mentally unfit to be the President of the United States, and that steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency, with vital responsibilities on the shoulders of those in positions of leadership.” +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Truth About Donald Trump’s Sanity
by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
President Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One after speaking to reporters on May 20, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images
President Donald Trump has labeled numerous Americans—from Republican lawmakers to journalists—as “stupid” and even “treasonous.”
Such behavior has led many to question Trump’s sanity and to offer the President some labels in turn, including “unhinged,” “lunatic,” and “clearly insane.”
It is easy to understand why Trump’s erratic actions and head-spinning reversals have raised questions about his mental health. For instance, on social media, Trump posts manic and divisive conspiracy theories, false allegations, and insults against his adversaries. Some former associates and partisan rivals even suggest Trump has experienced a pronounced cognitive and emotional decline.
But as a long-standing critic of Donald Trump’s leadershipimpact, and as someone who has known him for over 30 years, I assert that he is no “crazier” than he ever was. Trump’s penchant for exaggeration, self-promotion, and misrepresentation is hardly new.
And nearly a decade ago, the book edited by psychiatrist Bandy Lee entitledThe Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, produced 27 mental health experts who questioned Trump’s fitness for high office. These experts suggested Trump showed signs of narcissism, sociopathic tendencies, and a fixation on the haunting legacy of his punishing father.
I have known Donald Trump for decades—longer than many members of the first or second Trump Administrations have known him. Trump seemed almost comically delusional to me in the mid-1990s when I joined Steve Forbes and his publisher, Jeff Cunningham, to visit the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, which Trump had acquired in 1985.
Built a century ago by cereal heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post, the 20-acre property with its 126-room, 62,500-square-foot Gilded Age mansion seemed to be the ideal venue to launch a new high-end resort. At the time, I thought Trump’s grandiose visions for Mar-a-Lago were unrealistically fanciful. Surely this scheme would go the way of his failed casinos, airlines, and other imploded ventures. I was wrong.
Thus, I learned to take Trump’s antics seriously. This is why, in 2004, I warned that Donald Trump had tapped into an underappreciated part of the American national character that would drive him to run for president. Jeff Zucker, then the CEO of NBC Universal, would share each episode of Trump’s TV show The Apprentice a day before it aired, so I could write a review of the show—and of Trump’s leadership style.
Episode after episode, I was alarmed by how Trump treated women. And I also challenged the premise that a leader’s success should be anchored on a contestant’s ability to get their own team members “fired.” However, my warnings fell on deaf ears.
Some even argued that Trump’s leadership style was a harmless welcome relief from prevailing business leaders. “What’s lost on [Sonnenfeld] and so many others is that Mr. Trump’s brand of leadership, narcissistic and autocratic as it seems, strikes audiences as more palatable than the corporate shenanigans that have been in the spotlight on the public stage in recent years,” wrote Frank Rich.
After a tense season, Trump and I buried the hatchet once he changed the premise of The Apprentice to feature fallen celebrities who no one would care to emulate as leaders. This was the origin of his shift towards The Celebrity Apprentice.
In 2005, I brought Trump to a Yale CEO Summit, which I founded and lead. A dozen of the biggest business leaders warned me that if Trump arrived, they’d walk out in disgust. Trump arrived, and they walked out. Several of those people still lead their companies, but they are no longer walking out on Trump. Indeed, while very few business leaders supported Trump’s candidacies in 2015, 2020, and 2024, they dissent very quietly now.
In fact, in the spring of 2015, Trump called me often as he considered his candidacy for the presidency. I advised against it.
“Yes, Melania also said I should run,” Trump replied—the opposite of my recommendation.
I was a longstanding Hillary Clinton supporter, as he knew, and as he had been. I told Trump that I suspected he would earn no more than 20% of votes and that his campaign would implode like Ross Perot’s. Again, I was wrong. I underestimated him.
When Trump launched his campaign, he did so with a whirlwind of racist insults and attacks on heroes like John McCain. His deputy Hope Hicks would call me to help tone him down from his firestorms of manufactured rage–in vain.
Perhaps for comic relief, I was often invited to a salon-style dinner of largely deep-pocketed GOP financiers in the Connecticut home of later Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow. As we went around the room during one of these post-dinner discussions in August 2015, everyone was asked to guess who would win the GOP nomination.
The guests tossed out the names of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and others. I suggested that they were overlooking the elephant in the room: Donald Trump. The crowd laughed. Kellyanne Conway, then helping lead the Cruz campaign, told everyone I was naïve, arguing that Trump would never win as much as 2% of women GOP voters. They all agreed that Republicans would unify around a “Dump Trump” strategy. I warned them that they were wrong.
I believe Trump to be a mercurial, vain, self-promoting purveyor of glitz. He has made his name beyond a checkered New York real estate career marked by multiple bankruptcies by bringing a certain view of class to the masses, with a simple but brutalizing recipe for success that seemed accessible to all. He was fully self-aware and deliberate in his actions then, and I believe he is now too.
For instance, time and time again, he deliberately taps into populist anger. When I interviewed Trump in September of 2015, he told me that he was considering going to the left of Bernie Sanders—until he realized that going to the right was faster.
As I document in my book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, Trump always relies on the same unorthodox disruptive tactics. His greed, grandiosity, divisiveness, and shifting agenda methods are not new.
To be sure, we all suffer whiplash when President Trump pivots from conjuring imminent national security threats regarding the status of Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran—despite the lack of evidence of any immediate danger. This is not insanity. It is Trump’s deliberate ability to change the public dialogue from his losing hand on domestic topics, which he does not want to discuss.
Similarly, his divide-and-conquer tactics have successfully decimated any dissent within the GOP. All other national leaders try to draw the nation together in times of tragedy, but Trump uses them to create foils and to finger-point. This is not because he has gone mad. It is because it keeps working for him.
And when Trump threatens to destroy thousands of years of Persian civilization, so that the other party believes whatever the negotiated solution is a far better resolution than where things were headed, this is not a sign of poor mental health. Rather, this is a clear example of Trump’s go-to negotiation style: begin deliberations with threats.
The only thing Trump seems to worry about losing more than money is the durability of his pride and reputation. His insatiable desire to brand everything—from boats, to ballrooms, to bills—exceeds some of the most egomaniacal leaders in history, but these are not new qualities.
Donald Trump is unpopular in large parts of the nation and mocked around much of the world. But in many ways, he is no different from other unorthodox figures seeking fame and immortality. In my bookThe Hero’s Farewell, I documented how this mythical quest for immortality is common across cultures, continents, sectors, and centuries among those who seek folk hero status. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias, about the severed head of a self-worshipping pharaoh, helplessly buried and forgotten in the desert’s sands of time, with an adjacent plaque warning that warns wanderers to fear him, reminds us of the futility of this goal. This is why I ultimately believe that while Trump’s dangerous lifelong “megalomania” may not endear him to many, it does not indicate insanity either. Instead, it indicates a clear pattern.
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I would like to think of myself as a full time traveler. I have been retired since 2006 and in that time have traveled every winter for four to seven months. The months that I am "home", are often also spent on the road, hiking or kayaking. I hope to present a website that describes my travel along with my hiking and sea kayaking experiences.