The risk of a “Mad King” isn’t uncommon in culture, from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1926 novel of that name to George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” character. But with the U.S. Supreme Court essentially making Donald Trump a monarch, and a mountain of evidence that he’s unwell, Americans have to confront a new, troubling reality: Trump is mentally unsound, according to thousands of experts who recognize the indications.
As the late AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in the spring of 2016, “When you look at Donald Trump, you have to say three things: one, he’s unfit to be president; two, he’d make it harder for working people to make ends meet; and three, he would tear our country apart.”
Some eight years later, that seems prophetic, but Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee for President and is about tied with incumbent Joe Biden in most polls.
Last month, of course, Biden looked bad for some of CNN’s presidential debate, “but lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering,” editorialized the Philadelphia Inquirer. “His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office. In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.”
A bully who’s attacked the military, belittled the FBI, CIA. Justice Department and judges, picked fights with allies and schmoozed with dictators, Trump blasts the United States as a “Third World country.” He’s a convicted felon, took classified documents and lied about them, tried to overturn the 2020 election, was found liable for sexual abuse, and still faces other criminal indictments. Maybe most importantly – and apart from candidates’ ages (Biden is 81 and Trump is 78) – voters must consider the candidates’ minds and behaviors.
Still, most attention in recent weeks has been on Biden’s condition, not Trump – nor both of them.
“As of 8 a.m. July 5, the New York Times had published 192 pieces on Biden’s debate performance: 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces,” reported historian and author Heather Cox Richardson. “Trump was covered in 92 stories, about half of which were about the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Although Trump has frequently slurred his words or trailed off while speaking and repeatedly fell asleep at his own criminal trial, none of the pieces mentioned Trump’s mental fitness.”
As media piled on Biden, Trump over that time displayed rratic comments and “his own disqualifying temperament and mental state,” reported Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone. “Among other alarming behavior, Trump has amplified the QAnon violent conspiracy theory; called for political foes to be tried for treason; lobbed an obscenity at the sitting vice president; and suggested that he is God’s ‘chosen’ candidate.”
Many Americans seem to suspect something. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, 57% of voters said he lacked the proper temperament to be president, while the same number agreed that he is a “risky choice” for a second term.
Democrats may replace Biden as a candidate, but there’s ample evidence of his character and competence to lead. He’s done it, working to pass bipartisan legislation in a polarized Capitol to benefit the nation, and he’s gathered capable people in his administration who haven’t needed to be fired, much less indicted or imprisoned.
Further, in his hour-long State of the Union address a few months ago, the President was articulate and quick (even responding quickly to a few hecklers).
In the most recent edition of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” 37 psychiatrists and mental health experts say Trump has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and psychologists and commentators from all ideological camps have agreed (despite a longstanding suggestion to not diagnose public figures without having personally examined them.
“Among those making this assertion are more than 70,000 mental health professionals who signed a petition warning of Trump's potential danger,” Psychology Today reported.
Apart from NPD, Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University, has said Trump shows signs of dementia, “faltering in a very dangerous way.
“I think of this cognitive decline as being another layer of danger on top of an already erratic, mentally challenged person who shouldn't be anywhere near the White House,” he said.
As to offering informed opinions about people without direct examination, it’s not unusual. At least “since Sigmund Freud analyzed the life and art of Leonardo da Vinci, in 1910, scholars have applied psychological lenses to the lives of famous people,” wrote Northwestern University psychology professor Dan McAdams.
Some in the media have been reluctant. In fact, GOP President Ronald Reagan in 1994 said he had Alzheimer’s Disease, and its onset probably started in his second term, 1985-88, but few journalists covered concerns within the White House.
Further – whether it’s mental health professionals or journalists willing to write about the situation away from “pack journalism,” there’s an obligation to share informed observations.
As Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic said on June 27, “We should tell the unadorned truth about Trump, and treat him like any other candidate for high office who is emotionally and mentally unstable.”
Some Republicans have been willing ti state the obvious, including Trump’s own aides and employees, such as Bill Barr, John Bolton and Cassidy Hutchison. They’ve described Trump as a brat at best and a threat at worst. His one-time Chief of Staff, John Kelly, called Trump “an idiot” and said he thought the president was “unhinged,” His Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, commented: “I think he’s unfit for office.”
Lifelong Republican Peter Welmer, who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and the George W. Bush White House, wrote that Trump “is temperamentally unfit to be president. I think he’s erratic, I think he’s unprincipled, I think he’s unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think he’s obsessive. And at the end of the day, having served in the White House for seven years in three administrations and worked for three presidents, one closely, and read a lot of history, I think the main requirement for president of the United States … is temperament, and disposition … whether you have wisdom and judgment and prudence.”
Psychologist John Gartner, in his essay “Donald Trump is: A) Bad B) Mad C) All of the Above” said, “This is absolutely the worst case of malignant narcissism I’ve ever seen. Donald Trump is so visibly psychologically impaired that it is obvious even to a layman that 'something is wrong with him'. "
Notable quotes –
After Trump posted his idea of a military tribunal trying ex-Congresswoman Liz Cheney for treason, the Wyoming Republican said, “Donald -- This is the type of thing that demonstrates yet again that you are not a stable adult, and are not fit for office.”
“Across his lifetime, Donald Trump has exhibited a trait profile that you would not expect of a U.S. president: sky-high extroversion combined with off-the-chart low agreeableness.” – Northwestern University psychology professor Dan McAdams.
“Across a range of behavioral and cognitive traits – temper tantrums, a short attention span, impulse control, oppositional behavior and knowledge deficits – Trump has much more in common with small children than with the 43 men who preceded him.” – political scientist Daniel Drezner, author of the book “The Toddler in Chief.”
“You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don’t need to be a mental-health professional to see that something’s very seriously off with Trump – particularly after years of watching his erratic and abnormal behavior in the White House. The president isn’t simply volatile and erratic, however—he’s also incapable of consistently telling the truth.” – George Conway, a conservative lawyer who’s part of The Lincoln Project, a coalition of former Republicans who’ve opposed Trump for years.
“Nikki Haley called on Trump (and Biden) to take a mental-acuity test. On social media and in the press, countless detractors have speculated that Trump is losing touch with reality, or sliding into dementia, or growing intoxicated by his own conspiracy theories. The sense of progression is what unites all these claims –the idea that Trump is not just bad, but getting worse.” – McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic
Here are links to some of the stories about this topic published in The Atlantic magazine:
“A psychologist analyzes Trump’s personality” (2016):
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/
“Is something neurologically wrong with Donald Trump?” (2018):
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/trump-cog-decline/548759/
“Trump is not well” (2019): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/donald-trump-not-well/597640/
“Unfit for Office” (2019): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/george-conway-trump-unfit-office/599128/
“The Unadorned Truth About Donald Trump” (2024): https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/06/the-unadorned-truth-about-donald-trump/678816/
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