Trump's Insane Letter to Pelosi Shows Why He’s Unfit For Office

Any number of mental health experts - including Virginia's governor who is a surgical neurologist by profession - have opined that Donald Trump is mentally ill.  More specifically, he is a malignant narcissist which by definition meas this: 

. . . . a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.

Given this diagnosis, it is little surprise that Trump's actions lead him to be impeached since, in true narcissist fashion, he views himself above the law and the rules that bind the rest of us.  As evidenced by Trump's raving letter he sent  Nancy Pelosi one of the laws that Trump views as inapplicable to him is the U.S. Constitution. A piece in New York Magazine looks at what Trump's letter tells us.  Here are excerpts:

Trump’sletter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is obviously written, or at least dictated, in large part or in whole by the president himself. Its most notable quality is its lack of any coherent structure. It does not build an argument, or even group like points together. It careens wildly from point to point.

Trump’s letter strengthens the case for impeachment in two important ways. First, he portrays impeachment as constitutionally illegitimate. By this, Trump doesn’t mean simply that his actions do not rise to an impeachable offense, or even that the accusations are completely meritless. He repeatedly denies that the House has any constitutional right to undertake impeachment at all.

Of course the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to determine what presidential acts constitute impeachable offenses. Trump seems to believe that he as president has the power to determine whether a president’s actions are impeachable. Trump argues that if Congress can impeach him, which is a clearly delineated power, then he can prosecute Congress for crimes of Trump’s choosing, a power that exists nowhere in the Constitution.

The most telling passage comes at the end, where, having unloaded various grievances, Trump lingers on the psychic pain that the Russia investigation and now impeachment have inflicted: . . . Trump identifies first his family, and then the Republic, as the parties enduring this mental anguish, no doubt in an effort to feign stoicism. But the letter makes it perfectly clear that Trump himself is in agony, to the extent where his mental health is very much in question.

If a juror in Trump’s coming impeachment trial had no other evidence except this letter, it would provide ample grounds for impeachment. Trump openly denies the Congress’s constitutional prerogative, and makes plain his mental unfitness for the job.

Trump sees himself as a monarch and answerable to no one.  Never does Trump look at his own actions as the basis of why he has now been impeached. Should the Senate acquit him, there may be no limits to what he may do.  Be  very, very afraid.

Trump's Increasingly Obvious Mental Health Issues

I've always viewed Donald Trump as mentally impaired and someone suffering from dangerous personality disorders.  This reality was on even more open display over the better part of a week with Trump lying about Hurricane Dorian and Trump's false claim that it threatened Alabama.  Indeed, it now appears that NOAA personnel were warned to lie to cover Trump's lie or else face potential consequences.  These are not the actions of a mentally sound individual.  Trump's malignant narcissism is increasingly out of control and his mental issues put both the country and the world in danger. He needs to be removed from office by whatever means necessary.  Disturbingly, a sizable portion of his base are seemingly as mentally tethered as he is.  Then, of course, there are the boot-licking Republicans who put staving off a primary challenge from wing nuts ahead of their oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution and the nation.  A piece in The Atlantic by a long time former Republican looks at the threat that Trump's mental illness poses.  Here are highlights:

During the 2016 campaign, I received a phone call from an influential political journalist and author, who was soliciting my thoughts on Donald Trump. Trump’s rise in the Republican Party was still something of a shock, and he wanted to know the things I felt he should keep in mind as he went about the task of covering Trump.

At the top of my list: Talk to psychologists and psychiatrists about the state of Trump’s mental health, since I considered that to be the most important thing when it came to understanding him. It was Trump’s Rosetta stone.

I wasn’t shy about making the same case publicly. During a July 14, 2016, appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, for example, I responded to a pro-Trump caller who was upset that I opposed Trump despite my having been a Republican for my entire adult life and having served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and the George W. Bush White House.

My opposition to him is based on something completely different, which is, first, I think he 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.”

That statement has been validated.

Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. The most recent example is the president’s bizarre fixation on falsely insisting that he was correct to warn that Alabama faced a major risk from Hurricane Dorian, to the point that he doctored a hurricane map with a black Sharpie to include the state as being in the path of the storm.

“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who is in frequent contact with the White House told Business Insider on Friday. Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “You should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”

Yes, it is best to leave it to experts to determine whether Trump satisfies the criteria for a clinical diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, some combination of both, or nothing at all.

But if a clinical diagnosis is beyond my own expertise, Trump’s psychological impairments are obvious to all who are not willfully blind. On a daily basis we see the president’s chaotic, unstable mind on display. Are we supposed to ignore that?

Even now, almost a thousand days into his presidency, the latest Trump outrage elicits shock and disbelief in people. The reaction is, “Can you believe he said that and did this?”

To which my response is, “Why are you surprised?” It’s a shock only if the assumption is that we’re dealing with a psychologically normal human being. We’re not. . . . Many Americans haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that we elected as president a man who is deeply damaged, an emotional misfit. But it would be helpful if they did.

[A]bove all, accepting the truth about Trump’s mental state will cause us to take more seriously than we have our democratic duty, which is to prevent a psychologically and morally unfit person from becoming president.

The office is too powerful, and the consequences are too dangerous, to allow a person to become president who views morality only through the prism of whether an action advances his own narrow interests, his own distorted desires, his own twisted impulses.

Whether or not his disorders are diagnosable, [Trump's] the president’s psychological flaws are all too apparent. They were alarming when he took the oath of office; they are worse now. Every day Donald Trump is president is a day of disgrace. And a day of danger.

Be very afraid.

The GOP Lie That Mental Health Issues Are to Blame for Mass Shootings

It is amazing to observe the lengths Republicans will go to rather than admit that America's insane gun laws and GOP rhetoric are to blame for America's growing mass shooting epidemic. Once upon a time - i.e., before the Christofascists hijacked the GOP base - Republicans respected knowledge, science and legitimate research.  Now, the GOP base celebrates ignorance and bigotry and rejects science and knowledge, be it in respect to climate change or the tired and false GOP meme that mental health issues - or even more ridiculously, video games - are fueling mass shootings. Far too easy access to guns, especially assault style weapons, and politics of hate practiced principally by the GOP and Trump in particular are the real causes.  An article in the Washington Post debunks the Trump/GOP effort to lie to the public and blame anyone by themselves and their policies and hate speech for the actions we saw over the weekend in El Paso.  Here are article excerpts: 

Every time a mass shooting occurs, the country talks about mental health. Many politicians are quick to point to the shooters’ disturbed minds. News reporters probe for “loner” tendencies or signs of instability.

“Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun,” said President Trump on Monday, after two mass shootings in less than 24 hours.

So is mental illness to blame for America’s mass shootings? Not according to research.

Some mass shooters have a history of schizophrenia or psychosis, but many do not. Most studies of mass shooters have found that only a small fraction have mental health issues.

And researchers have noted a host of other factors that are stronger predictors of someone becoming a mass shooter: a strong sense of resentment, desire for infamy, copycat study of other shooters, past domestic violence, narcissism and access to firearms.

[S]aid Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. “The fact that somebody would go out and massacre a bunch of strangers, that’s not the act of a healthy mind, but that doesn’t mean they have a mental illness.”

In a 2018 report on 63 active shooter assailants, the FBI found that 25 percent had been diagnosed with a mental illness. Of those, three had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. In a 2015 study that examined 226 men who committed or tried to commit mass killings, 22 percent could be considered mentally ill.

Research has long debunked another common explanation among politicians: that violent video games are driving the mass shooting crisis. The idea was floated again by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Trump, who talked of restricting “gruesome and grisly video games."

There is, however, no statistical link between playing violent video games and shooting people, said Jonathan Metzl, director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University.

A 2004 report conducted by the Secret Service and the Education Department found that 12 percent of perpetrators in more than three dozen school shootings showed an interest in violent video games. Despite a continuing lack of a link, lawmakers and public figures continue to blame the gaming industry.

 “When politicians like President Trump perpetuate this narrative, to me, it is the height of irresponsibility, because it’s perpetuating a falsehood,” Metzl said. 

The eagerness to blame mental health and video games means society is searching for answers in the wrong places, experts say.

“The irony is clearly we do need more robust mental health system,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., a psychologist who heads the American Psychological Association. “But that’s separate and apart from these shootings."

“We like to think that anyone who kills others is somehow mentally ill,” said Phillip Resnick, who served as a forensic psychiatrist in cases including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. In an interview last year, Resnick said, “you have to remember, people kill for all sorts of reasons. They kill for profit or love or greed.”

Mental health advocates say comments such as Trump’s labeling shooters as “mentally ill monsters” can exacerbate false stereotypes about the mentally ill.

“When you blame people with mental illness for things like mass shootings, it’s not just untrue,” said Angela Kimball, head of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “It keeps people from seeking help even when they need it. It spreads unjustified fears about the mentally ill and worsens the stigma around it."

Researchers point out that other countries have similar rates of mental illness but a small fraction of America’s gun deaths. Similarly, video games are widespread in Europe and Asia, yet their rates of gun deaths are much lower than that in the United States.

Epidemiologists say that what sets the United States apart from the rest of the world is guns.  America has nearly 400 million civilian-owned firearms, or 120.5 guns per 100 residents — meaning that the country has more guns than it has people. The second-closest country, Yemen, had 52.8 guns per 100 residents, according to the Small Arms Survey.

"Mental illness is not the real issue, because mental illness is something that happens across the globe. Mass shootings? Not so much,” Kimball said. “The sad truth is that in America, it’s easy to get a gun. It’s very difficult to get mental health care.”

Is Something Neurologically Wrong With Donald Trump?

Trump and Wilson: mentally incapacitated occupants of the White House?

Many mental health professionals believe Donald Trump suffers from mental illness - e.g., malignant narcissism disorder - including Virginia's governor who is a neurologist by profession.  A recent post , in fact, set out the attributes of this mental disorder all of which appear to apply to Trump in every detail.  But a very lengthy piece in The Atlantic suggests that Trump may have other mental health impairments and looks at the USA's shocking lack of any mandatory system to evaluate the mental health of a sitting occupant of the White House, something that is important in any would be application of the 25th Amendment as a means to protect the nation.  The issue is one of long standing and goes back 100 years to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who suffered a serious stroke which left he largely incapacitated and caused many to believe that his wife Edith came to function as almost de facto president.  A century later, we still have no method to determine a president's mental competence and Trump has brought the need for such a system back front and center.  Here are lengthy higligts from the article (read the entire piece): 

Donald Trump’s decision to brag in a tweet about the size of his “nuclear button” compared with North Korea’s was widely condemned as bellicose and reckless. The comments are also part of a larger pattern of odd and often alarming behavior for a person in the nation’s highest office.

Trump’s grandiosity and impulsivity have made him a constant subject of speculation among those concerned with his mental health. But after more than a year of talking to doctors and researchers about whether and how the cognitive sciences could offer a lens to explain Trump’s behavior, I’ve come to believe there should be a role for professional evaluation beyond speculating from afar.

I’m not alone. Viewers of Trump’s recent speeches have begun noticing minor abnormalities in his movements. In November, he used his free hand to steady a small Fiji bottle as he brought it to his mouth. Onlookers described the movement as “awkward” and made jokes about hand size.

Then, in December, speaking about his national-security plan in Washington, D.C., Trump reached under his podium and grabbed a glass with both hands. This time he kept them on the glass the entire time he drank, and as he put down the glass. This drew even more attention. The gesture was like that of an extremely cold person cradling a mug of cocoa. Some viewers likened Trump to a child just learning to handle a cup.

Then there was an incident of slurred speech. Announcing the relocation of the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—a dramatic foreign-policy move—Trump became difficult to understand at a phonetic level, which did little to reassure many observers of the soundness of his decision.

The neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta described it as “clearly some abnormalities of his speech.” This sort of slurring could result from anything from a dry mouth to a displaced denture to an acute stroke.

Though these moments could be inconsequential, they call attention to the alarming absence of a system to evaluate elected officials’ fitness for office—to reassure concerned citizens that the “leader of the free world” is not cognitively impaired, and on a path of continuous decline.

Proposals for such a system have been made in the past, but never implemented. The job of the presidency is not what it used to be. For most of America’s history, it was not possible for the commander in chief to unilaterally destroy a continent, or the entire planet, with one quick decision.

Today even the country’s missileers—whose job is to sit in bunkers and await a signal—are tested three times per month on their ability to execute protocols. They are required to score at least 90 percent. Testing is not required for their commander in chief to be able to execute a protocol, much less testing to execute the sort of high-level decision that would set this process in motion.

The lack of a system to evaluate presidential fitness only stands to become more consequential as the average age of leaders increases. The Constitution sets finite lower limits on age but gives no hint of an upper limit.

After age 40, the brain decreases in volume by about 5 percent every decade. The most noticeable loss is in the frontal lobes. These control motor functioning of the sort that would direct a hand to a cup and a cup to the mouth in one fluid motion—in most cases, without even looking at the cup. These lobes also control much more important processes, from language to judgment to impulsivity.

An annual presidential physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is customary, and Trump’s is set for January 12. But the utility of a standard physical exam—knowing a president’s blood pressure and weight and the like—is meager compared with the value of comprehensive neurological, psychological, and psychiatric evaluations. These are not part of a standard physical.

Even if they were voluntarily undertaken, there would be no requirement to disclose the results. A president could be actively hallucinating, threatening to launch a nuclear attack based on intelligence he had just obtained from David Bowie, and the medical community could be relegated to speculation from afar.

With declining support for fact-based discourse and trust in expert assessments, would there be any way of convincing Americans that these doctors weren’t simply lying, treasonous “liberals”—globalist snowflakes who got triggered?

The downplaying of a president’s compromised neurological status would not be without precedent. Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously disguised his paralysis from polio to avoid appearing “weak or helpless.” He staged public appearances to give the impression that he could walk . . . .

Unfortunately, the public medical record available to assuage global concerns about the current president’s neurological status is the attestation of Harold Bornstein, America’s most famous Upper Manhattan gastroenterologist, whose initial doctor’s note described the 71-year-old Trump as “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”  The phrasing was so peculiar for a medical record that some suggested that Trump had written or dictated the letter himself.

The frontal lobes also control speech, and over the years, Donald Trump’s fluency has regressed, and his vocabulary contracted. In May of last year, the journalist Sharon Begley at Stat analyzed changes in his speech patterns during interviews over the years. . . . He also more frequently finished sentences and thoughts.

Ben Michaelis, a psychologist who analyzes speech as part of cognitive assessments in court cases, told Begley that although some decline in cognitive functioning would be expected, Trump has exhibited a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure.”

[T]hough it is not possible to diagnose a person with dementia based on speech patterns alone, these are the sorts of changes that appear in early stages of Alzheimer’s. Trump has likened himself to Ronald Reagan, and the changes in Trump’s speech evoke those seen in the late president. Reagan announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1994, but there was evidence of linguistic change over the course of his presidency that experts have argued was indicative of early decline.

[A]fter Reagan’s diagnosis, former President Jimmy Carter sounded an alarm over the lack of a system to detect this sort of cognitive impairment earlier on. “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. president becoming disabled, particularly by a neurologic illness,” Carter wrote in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “The great weakness of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is its provision for determining disability in the event that the president is unable or unwilling to certify to impairment or disability.” 

[I]t generally assumed that the president would be willing to undergo diagnostic testing and be forthcoming about any limitations.  This might not happen with a person who has come to be known for denying any hint of weakness or inability. Nor would it happen if a president had a psychiatric disorder that impaired judgment—especially if it was one defined by grandiosity, obsession with status, and intense aversion to being perceived as weak.

It was for these reasons that in 1994, Carter called for a system that could independently evaluate a president’s health and capacity to serve. At many companies, even where no missiles are involved, entry-level jobs require a physical exam. A president, it would follow, should be more rigorously cleared. Carter called on “the medical community” to take leadership in creating an objective, minimally biased process—to “awaken the public and political leaders of our nation to the importance of this problem.”

[Q]uestions and concern around Trump’s psychiatric status have spurred proposals anew. In December, also in the Journal of the American Medical Association, mental-health professionals proposed a seven-member expert panel “to evaluate presidential fitness.” Last April, Representative Jamie Raskin introduced a bill that would create an 11-member “presidential capacity” commission.

The real-world application of one of these systems is complicated by the fact that the frontal lobes also control things like judgment, problem-solving, and impulse control. These metrics, which fall under the purview of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, can be dismissed as opinion. In a hospital or doctor’s office, a neurologist may describe a patient with Parkinson’s disease as having “impaired impulse control.” The National Institute on Aging lists among the symptoms of Alzheimer’s “poor judgment leading to bad decisions.”

[T]housands of mental-health professionals have mobilized and signed petitions attesting to Trump’s unfitness to hold office. Some believe Trump should carry a label of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, or both. The largest such petition has more than 68,000 signatures—though there is no vetting of the signatories’ credentials. Its author, the psychologist John Gartner, told me last year that in his 35 years of practicing and teaching, “this is absolutely the worst case of malignant narcissism I’ve ever seen.”

A presidential-fitness committee—of the sort that Carter and others propose, consisting of nonpartisan medical and psychological experts—could exist in a capacity similar to the Congressional Budget Office. It could regularly assess the president’s neurological status and give a battery of cognitive tests to assess judgment, recall, decision making, attention—the sorts of tests that might help a school system assess whether a child is suited to a particular grade level or classroom—and make the results available.

That math and polling can be ignored or disputed, or the CBO can be attacked as a secretly subversive entity, but at least some attempt at a transparent analysis is made. The same cannot be said of the president’s cognitive processes. We are left only with the shouts of experts from the sidelines, demeaning the profession and the presidency.

Trump Has Moved a Step Closer to Implosion

Amazon emailed me to confirm that I will receive my copy of "Fire & Fury" tomorrow, just in time for take it to Richmond as the husband and I head to Richmond for the inauguration of the Democrat slate that won in November and symbolize the rejection of Donald Trump and Trumpism by a majority of Virginians. As a political junkie and blogger, I may find fewer surprises in the book than some, but nonetheless, it should make for some entertaining reading provided that one can put aside the frightening reality that, in my opinion, a madman inhabits the White House. As a piece in New York Magazine notes, the book may not trigger Trump's downfall, but the expose it comprises has heightened the realization of more Americans that he is unfit for office even as he attacks the free press and libel laws that make public figures open to being the target of editorials and the like unless demonstrably factually false (if Trump doesn't want to be the target of many in the media, he should ceased his self-promotion years ago and never run for public office).  Most importantly, the book may push Trump towards thinking twice before a 2020 run.  Here are highlights:

Is there a chance in hell that this book will at long last be the catalyst for Trump’s demise? After all the other turning points that failed to fell Trump, from his ridicule of John McCain’s war record to the Access Hollywood tape to his pat on the head for neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, it would be foolhardy to say it will. But it may be a not-insignificant step on this president’s path to implosion.

First, it’s important to know what Fire and Fury will not accomplish.

It is not going to shake the loyalty of a single member of the Trump base, which, like it or not, accounts for roughly a third of Americans and the overwhelming majority of one of the nation’s two major political parties. Nor is it going to spur a revolt among Republicans in Congress. . . . It remains a liberal wet dream that a GOP-controlled Congress would impeach Trump, or that members of his Cabinet would invoke the 25th Amendment to yank him out of the White House. (The notion of Ben Carson standing in judgment on anyone’s mental health may be clinically insane in its own right.)

The only way Trump leaves office absent a Democratic sweep in the 2018 midterms is if he does so of his own volition: poisoning himself with his binges of Big Macs and Diet Coke; making a deal to head off pending indictments of himself, his son, or son-in-law; or breaking down mentally to the point where he is so unhappy, angry, and unmoored that he’d rather declare victory and take his marbles home to Mar-a-Lago. Fire and Fury has moved the latter process along. . . . it suggests that Wolff has quite successfully gaslighted him.

Let me add one other point I never thought I’d make: a modest defense of Michael Wolff. I am one of many journalists who have been the target of insults and scurrilous speculation in a Wolff piece at some point or another. It’s entirely consistent with his career that he’s gotten some things wrong in this book. But not that many things wrong, and not the big things; the book confirms what many others have reported about this White House . . .

Wolff’s re-creations of scenes are no more or less plausible than Woodward’s, and Wolff should not be faulted for favoring direct editorialization over Woodward’s technique of encoding his judgments in subtext. People are reading and buying Fire and Fury because the story rings true. It would also be highly entertaining, as pure and utter farce, if only the fate of America and perhaps the world were not at stake.

The sudden fall of Steve Bannon has been entertaining in its own way, but in terms of the political equation in America right now it will have zero effect. Bannon didn’t create the angry Trump base and its signature cause of white nationalism. It grew out of Sarah Palin’s incendiary campaign on the 2008 GOP ticket and the tea-party insurrection, violent reactions to the prospect and then the reality of America’s first African-American president.

No sooner had Bannon stepped down, after all, than Joe Arpaio, as grotesque a representative of Trumpism as Roy Moore, announced his candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring anti-Trump conservative Jeff Flake, in Arizona. Arpaio and his followers could care less about Bannon or who is running Breitbart.

If anything, Bannon’s absence may leave Trump more vulnerable to the rages of his base. As long as the two were seemingly in touch — as they continued to be after Bannon was ousted from the White House — the crazies could assume they were being heard in the Oval Office. No more. . . . . Be assured the base’s abuse of the White House’s so-called “liberal Dems” (an interesting way to categorize a list of names transparently scapegoated for their Jewishness, not their liberalism) has only just begun.

 One can only hope that the circular firing squad in the White House intensifies.

Has Trump Become Unhinged or is the the Truth Even Worse?

Sadly, it is difficult to know which is the bigger liar and/or more detached from objective reality

As the father of three children who collectively have five children themselves, I woory about the future of America.  I cannot think of a time since the Cuban Missile Crisis when I have been as concerned about the future of the nation and the threat of nuclear war.  The main difference between now and those days in the beginnings of the 1960's and now is that with John F. Kennedy in the White House we had a calm, steady and rational individual occupying the White House.  Today, we have the mentally imbalanced, if not insane, Der Trumpenführer who on the international area still thinks he is playing a role on Celebrity Apprentice.  And when he is not engaging in incredible lies, Trump seemingly is trying to destroy the public's belief in reason, logic and objective facts.  Any sane person - which, I'm sorry, excludes evangelical Christians and Christofascists - ought to be terrified at the prospects with a demented and/or pathological lying individual in the White House and threats posed by North Korea not to mention Russia, the latter of which must be rejoicing at Trump's trashing of America's standing in the world.  A column in the Washington Post looks at frightening indications that Trump is unhinged mentally.  Here are highlights:

This morning, after the news broke that NBC News has fired veteran anchor Matt Lauer for inappropriate sexual behavior, President Trump mused that NBC executives should be fired for putting out “Fake News,” and unleashed this broadside: “Check out Andy Lack’s past!”

This call for a lng, given the sexual charook into vague allegations against NBC News’ chairman prompted some to marvel at how “brazen” Trump is beiges leveled at him, too. Similar surprise greeted Trump’s willingness to endorse Roy Moore while shrugging that Moore “totally denies” the believable charges against him, as that reminded everyone just how lacking in credibility were his own dismissals of so many equally believable accounts about himself. 

But such incredulity misses the deeper significance of this stuff. The brazenness of it is the whole point — his utter shamelessness itself is meant to achieve his goal. In any given case, Trump is not trying to persuade anyone of anything as much as he is trying to render reality irrelevant, and reduce the pursuit of agreement on it to just another part of the circus. He’s asserting a species of power — the power to evadeconstraints normally imposed by empirically verifiable facts, by expectations of consistency, and even by what reasoned inquiry deems merely credible. The more brazen or shameless, the more potent is the assertion of power.  

The Post reports today that Trump has taken to privately questioning the authenticity of the “Access Hollywood” tape of him repeatedly boasting about his affection for sexual assault. The Post also reports that when things are going particularly badly, he calls confidantes to “boast about his successes.” 

To date, Trump has made over 1,600 false or misleading claimsas president. Routinely, the lies are demonstrably false, often laughably so. But this actually serves his ends. It is impossible to disentangle this from his constant effort to undermine the news media, seen again in today’s NBC tweet. In many cases the attacks on the media are outlandishly ridiculous, dating back to the tone-setting assertion that the media deliberately diminished his inaugural crowd sizes, even though the evidence was decisive to the contrary. Here again, the absurdity is the whole point: In both the volume and outsize defiance of his lies, Trump is asserting the power to declare the irrelevance of verifiable, contradictory facts, and with them, the legitimate institutional role of the free press, which at its best brings us within striking distance of the truth. 

Trump represents something broader, “an organized campaign to discredit the mainstream press in this country,” which “takes many forms.” . . . .  The goal is to render fact- and evidence-based inquiry itself a cause for suspicion.

Margaret Sullivan, summing up the mindset  . . . . , quotes Hannah Arendt: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”  As Trump biographer Tim O’Brien puts it, Trump constantly “tells fables to himself” and “about himself,” and has long self-consciously regarded this as “one of his great skills.” Trump has been doing it for so long that the separation between instinct and conscious technique has probably disappeared. But one thing is clear: Terms like “lying” or “delusional” don’t do justice to what we’re seeing here, and we have not yet seriously reckoned with its true nature and what it really means.

Be very, very afraid.

The Increasingly Delusional Trump

Trump as mad King George III

In my view, much of Donald Trump's base is delusional, especially the evangelical Christian element which will believe anything, no matter how insane or contrary to objective reality, if it supports the groups Bronze Age inspired beliefs.  Donald Trump has been only too willing to play to such delusions as has Roy Moore who insanely is arguing that that efforts to expose him as a sexual predator somehow equate to an attack on religion.  Now, insiders are saying that Trump is, in fact, equally detached from reality and is delusional himself - not a comforting thought with his access to the nuclear codes. A piece in New York Magazine looks at what some see as Trump's slipping grasp on reality which explains is constant statements that simply are not true.  Here are excerpts:

The prevailing interpretation of Donald Trump, shared by all his enemies and many of his allies, is that he is a con man. It is a theory that explains both his career in business and politics, and has carried through his many reversals of position and acts of fraud against customers and contractors. It remains quite plausible. But new reporting has opened up a second possibility: The president has lost all touch with reality.

The Washington Post and New York Times have accounts from insiders suggesting Trump habitually insists upon the impossible in private. He does not merely tell lies in order to gull the public, or to manipulate allies. He tells lies in private that he has no reason to tell. He still questions the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth, despite the birth certificate. He insists voter fraud may have denied him a popular vote triumph. He tells people Robert Mueller will wrap up his investigation, with a total vindication of the president, by the end of the year.

He questions whether the Access Hollywood tape, on which he was recorded boasting of sexual assault, is even him. (Both the Post and the Times describe Trump repeatedly denying the validity of the tape in private, “stunning his advisers,” as the Times puts it.)

It is of course entirely possible that Trump is lying to everybody, including his own staff. But the lies in these articles do not always fit into any pattern of rational self-aggrandizement. Trump tells senators or his aides the Access Hollywood tape is not him, but they don’t believe him. He has no reason to bring up the birther fabrication in private.

His apparent belief that Mueller will complete his sprawling investigation by the end of the year is not only pointless but self-defeating – rather than prepare allies for a long defense, he is preparing them for a fantastical scenario.

If Trump actually has the ability to convince himself of his own lies, it would suggest a possibility far more dangerous than even his critics have previously assumed. He might be in the grip of a mental health issue, or at least one more serious than mere sociopathy. And the mutterings that he might need to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment could grow more serious than many of us expected.

Is Trump mentally ill? Or is America?

I suspect that future historians will long ponder what level of insanity prompted Americans - thanks to an Electoral College that lacked the courage to fulfill the Founder's design to protect the country - to put Donald Trump in the White House (I refuse to utter his title before his name because dishonors the office). At the same times, those future historians will likely ponder the precise form of Trump's serious mental disorders that put the both America and the world at risk).  The Washington Post reviews some new books by mental health experts that collectively conclude that Trump is dangerous and either mentally ill or at best a very horrible person.   As for Trump's supporters, sadly in my view, they fall into that latter category, if not the first.  Here are highlights from the review:

Gone are the days when euphemisms about President Trump’s mental health insulated the man like so many padded walls. 

Erratic. Unpredictable. Unstable. Unmoored. Temperamentally unfit. This was what politicians and commentators said when they wished to question Trump’s state of mind but feared the consequences of a more colloquial assessment. Yet the deeper we plunge into this presidency, the more willing people become to call it like they see and hear it.

Now, some psychiatrists and other mental-health professionals are shedding long-held norms to argue that Trump’s condition presents risks to the nation and the world. “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” features more than two dozen essays breaking down the president’s perceived traits, which the contributors find consistent with symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder, sociopathy and other maladies. “Collectively with our coauthors, we warn that anyone as mentally unstable as Mr. Trump simply should not be entrusted with the life-and-death powers of the presidency,” Judith Lewis Herman of Harvard Medical School and Bandy X. Lee of the Yale School of Medicine write in the book’s prologue.

If so, what should we make of the nation that entrusted him with precisely such powers? In his new book, “Twilight of American Sanity,” psychiatrist Allen Frances asserts that Trump is not mentally ill — we are. “Calling Trump crazy allows us to avoid confronting the craziness in our society,” he writes. “We can’t expect to change Trump, but we must work to undo the societal delusions that created him.”

[D]epending on which of these books you trust — and their persuasive powers vary considerably — you might conclude that Trump is of unsound mind, or that we’re the deranged ones for electing him, or that America has always been disturbed, with Trump’s presidency just the latest manifestation.  And here’s the really crazy thing: These options are not mutually exclusive.

[C]ontributors argue that Trump’s behavior — his political statements and actions as well as his interviews, books and social-media activity — suggest more ominous possibilities.

Trump displays signs of “extreme present hedonism,” the tendency to live in the moment without considering consequences, seeking to bolster one’s self-esteem no matter the risk. Or he exhibits “narcissistic personality disorder,” which includes believing you’re better than others, exaggerating your achievements and expecting constant praise. Combine hedonism, narcissism and bullying, and you get “an impulsive, immature, incompetent person who, when in the position of ultimate power, easily slides into the role of the tyrant,” Philip Zimbardo (of the famous Stanford prison experiment) and Rosemary Sword write. Others suggest that Trump shows indications of sociopathy, including lack of empathy, absence of guilt and intentional ma­nipu­la­tion. Put it all together and you have “malignant narcissism,” which includes antisocial behavior, paranoid traits, even sadism.

Over time these characteristics will only become worse, either because Mr. Trump will succeed in gaining more power and more grandiosity with less grasp on reality, or because he will engender more criticism producing more paranoia, more lies, and more enraged destruction.” And when the president stands before the U.N. General Assembly and threatens to “totally destroy” an enemy country of 25 million people, enraged destruction seems on point.

The volume’s contributors take solace in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, a 1976 casein which the California Supreme Court held that mental-health experts have a responsibility to speak out when they determine that someone poses a physical danger to others. 

In the final chapter, psychiatrists Nanette Gartrell and Dee Mosbacher call for an independent panel to evaluate Trump’s fitness for office, and they urge Congress to pass legislation ensuring that future presidential and vice-presidential candidates undergo evaluations. I would not want Tansey, for one, serving on that body. Wouldn’t dream of it.

We are living in very frightening times to say the least.  We can only hope that Mueller does his work quickly and can not only take down Trump but Pence as well.

Haven't Republicans Had Enough with Defending Trump?

Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin and one time Republican Party apologist seems to be finally reaching a point I reached years ago when I left the Republican Party.  I long ago concluded that the GOP was morally bankrupt and that hatred of others, racism, greed and hypocrisy had become the pillars of the party and that acceptance of such ugliness had become a prerequisite to party membership and support.  Things have gotten much worse over the intervening years as the GOP has become a reverse Robin Hood operation, taking form the poor to give to the rich and trashing the Constitution to pander to Christofacists.  The party - and those who insanely continue to support it - has now reached a point with Donald Trump where the decision must be made between Trump and decency and constitutional democracy.  Rubin sums this choice up well in a Washington Post column.  Here are highlights:

President Trump tweeted this morning, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” One doesn’t know if this is a threat or another bit of bluster. Congress should immediately issue a subpoena for all tapes of presidential conversations, just to be on the safe side. The sheer bizarreness of his tweet will, for those not immune to Trump’s lunacy, reintroduce questions about his mental stability. One wonders when, if ever, Republicans will declare they’ve had enough.

The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol remarks to me, “I think there is movement among Hill Republicans, for now mostly in private and behind the scenes. And then, I think (and history suggests), the dam will break suddenly.” One hopes that is right, but outwardly, the Republicans by and large continue to support Trump and defend his nonsense.

The 2016 election demonstrated that the party once united by political thought (e.g., smaller government, objective truth, respect for tradition, the rule of law) and respect for civic virtue would accept a thoughtless, entirely unscrupulous leader for the sake of holding power. . . . En masse, most Republicans — including those at some premier publications (which are now unreadable to all but the Trump cultists) — declared willingness to defend ignorance, bigotry, dishonesty and ineptitude on the chance that they’d get a top marginal tax rate of 28 percent. The calculation, to those not driven by partisan zeal, seems shockingly small-minded and tribalistic.

Republican Party identification has begun requiring intellectual vacuity. One has to be free from shame to agree that it’s no big deal when Trump confesses he fired former FBI director James B. Comey because he decided Russian interference in the election was “just a made-up story.” A slew of FBI agents is now investigating the “made-up story,” the entire intelligence community verifies it and members of both parties acknowledge that it occurred. To go along with such utterances means condoning Trump’s inability to accept reality (Russia did, in fact, meddle) and refusing to concede that pressuring and then firing the FBI director must be impeachable, if not criminal, conduct.

We’re not surprised in the least that the president thinks he’s entitled to shut down an investigation if he doesn’t like the way his political opponents are utilizing evidence to attack him. We expected nothing less and warned fellow Republicans that this was what they were buying into.

No, we remain incredulous that so many seemingly mature conservatives are going along with this, even now when his political utility to the party is so slight. . . . . Have they truly lost their intellectual bearings, or are they so cynical as to conclude that sticking with the “tribe” is better than simple truth-telling?

We’re hoping that the dam breaks quickly, before more harm comes to the republic. The GOP, however, may be irreparably broken.

In a second column, Rubin goes on in part as follows:

There are two problems coming together at once. First, the president is blabbing about actions (real or not) that would constitute abuse of power, if not obstruction of justice. It is coming from his mouth. He does not even have the excuse of “fake news.” Second, because the Comey firing sent events spinning out of control, the president now appears to be irrational, if not ill. No one in control of his emotions or taking counsel from sober advisers would behave as he is.

Now would be a good time for the adults — former presidents, secretaries of state and defense, former FBI and CIA directors and past heads of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee — to speak up in unison. The president has either confessed to a pattern of conduct that is unacceptable or he is so out of it that he would make up facts that suggest a pattern of conduct that it is unacceptable. There are options here, including commencement of bipartisan impeachment hearings, legislation passed by a veto-proof majority to enlist an independent prosecutor and/or a decision that, aside from national security matters, the Congress will devote itself full-time to the resolution of this entire matter over the next few weeks. Vice President Pence, who has been repeatedly lied to in service of actions to deceive the public, needs to remember he serves the country, not the president.

Action needs to be taken before too much damage is done to the republic. The GOP is lost, but the country can be protected.

The broken nature and swamp fever of the GOP began when the Christofascists hijacked the party base.  As the prior post examined, these people are not mentally right and will do anything to protect their hold on power.  They have long wanted a theocracy in America.  Now, they seem willing to embrace fascism and a dictatorship.   

Is Donald Trump Mentally Ill?

Click image to enlarge

I suspect that readers know what my opinion is on the answer to the question that comprises the caption of this post.  Unfortunately, too many do not want to discuss the question and/or feel bound by an antiquated 1960's era self-imposed rule, the so-called Goldwater rule.  Others, including much of the legitimate news media (which in my opinion excludes Fox News), fear a lawsuit by the demented lair-in-chief even though the libel laws shield one so long as you preface your comment with "in my opinion."   The failure of experts to speak up and a lazy media lead to the Iraq War disaster which caused the loss of countless lives and a ballooning of America's deficit.  I believe that Trump poses an existential danger to America and the world.  Remaining silent is not only dangerous but also unpatriotic.  A piece in Salon looks at the ridiculous silence that surrounds Trump's mental instability.  Here are highlight:

President Donald Trump has a personality disorder that we’re not supposed to talk about, and that makes me furious. The Goldwater rule, an ethical norm from the 1960s that forbids psychiatrists and psychologists from diagnosing public figures they haven’t been able to evaluate in person, has gagged the most knowledgeable among us from speaking freely. A man with no impulse control and no chance of improvement is shooting his missiles all over, not to mention targeting vulnerable populations at home. The world is in a panic while the doctors worry that he’ll sue.

Beyond compounding the crisis of public ignorance, the moratorium is a reflection of the way professional norms are all too often wielded to protect predators and silence women. The media’s dispiriting willingness to roll over and let old white men dictate the boundaries of legitimate conversation and expertise has to end.

Trump benefits immeasurably from the Goldwater rule, which was put in place because Sen. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, sued a magazine called Fact, which solicited diagnoses of him during the election campaign. Trump normally has to buy his victims’ silence himself, but this gift came for free. Since he will never allow an independent evaluation of his competence, the American Psychiatric Association and its members have kept quiet. 

Our inability to diagnose has led to de facto censorship on the subject. For purposes of saving the republic, all we need to know is that our president is delusional, dangerous and incurable. He’s a 70-year-old con man who relishes violence, abuse of power and deception. He will never, ever change.

The silence was broken last week by several renowned psychiatrists at a Duty to Warn conference organized by Dr. Bandy Lee. She has formed a coalition of more than 800 mental health professionals who believe that Donald Trump is dangerous to the health and safety of their patients.

There are some professionals who genuinely don’t think the president is mentally ill, but as a lawyer, I know that professional associations exist to protect their members, often at public expense. We wouldn’t be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if the American Psychiatric Association weren’t so concerned about its members’ liability. Don’t tell me that the Cheeto Emperor is streaking down Fifth Avenue but that because he put on matching socks this morning, we can’t notice that he’s naked.

I wanted to weep when the New York Times shushed Ruth Bader Ginsburg for warning us about Trump’s existential threat. When the Los Angeles Times’ editorial board wrote recently that it could never have anticipated the train wreck of the Trump administration, I screamed in frustration. Those of us who have had our lives derailed by abusers like Trump know exactly how much damage they can do.

There are those who will say that this discussion further stigmatizes the mentally ill. Not all mental illness is created equal. . . . . The vast majority of mentally ill people, like the homeless veterans who populate our streets, are peaceful people who go about their lives internalizing their pain rather than projecting it onto others. These people deserve compassion and care, not mistreatment.

We cannot say the same for Trump. He makes every disturbed feeling our problem. He’s like the guy in a gangster movie who sits down for a poker game, the tension escalating until a throwaway joke about his tiny fingers causes him to stab someone’s hand to the table.

As a serial predator, Trump looks at people like a lion eyes a herd of antelope. Does the lion care which antelope he eats for dinner? No. He’s an equal opportunity abuser, as Ivanka would say. But he’s lazy. Why challenge himself with the head of the pack when there are a few lagging behind who can’t put up much of a fight? . . . His administration reeks of social Darwinism. Who can forget Donald Trump Jr. dehumanizing refugees as Skittles?

Now that we’ve put Trump at the top of the figurative human food chain, let’s not allow the ignorance surrounding mental illness to flatten an urgently needed discussion. . . . . It’s not that Trump doesn’t want to behave — he simply cannot. Like Lear wandering in the storm, we have blinded ourselves to the obvious, and the results could be catastrophic.