Over four years ago, I published my answers to some frequently asked questions about Donald Trump. Here is some of what I said then:
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Is Donald Trump batshit crazy? Obviously yes. He seethes with personal resentments, all of which loom larger in his mind than, well, anything, and appears genuinely incapable of fathoming the possibility that there are people who don’t particularly care whether someone high or low has been “unfair” to Donald J. Trump. He claims to believe that Hillary Clinton’s policies would be disastrous for the country, yet works to undermine the Republican congressional and Senate candidates who stand as a bulwark against those policies, because preventing a national disaster is less important than petty vengeance against those who have failed to pay Trump his due respects. Moreover, he seems genuinely baffled by the suggestion that anybody anywhere might prioritize things differently. He has, as I’ve said before on this blog (and as countless others have said, sometimes more poetically) the mental, emotional and moral maturity of a four-year-old, with an attention span to match.
Is being batshit crazy a disqualification for the position of Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America? Hell yes.
Summary: I do not know and I do not much care whether Donald Trump is a racist or a serial groper, except insofar as I wish nobody were a racist or a serial groper. When I’m deciding who to support for President, I care about things that will affect his or her performance in office. In Trump’s caase, I believe the xenophobia is a sufficient disqualification, though I think one could reasonably argue that, given the shortcomings of the alternatives, we should not be so quick to disqualify. But I do not think that one could reasonably say the same about the paranoia, narcissism, and all the related mental instability. The next time Trump goes off on an incoherent rant — and he will — try imagining him in command of the United States Army. Take that image into the voting booth.
I’m not always right, but I’m not always wrong either.
Many people among the GOP had this kind of realistic view of Trump 4-5 years ago.
The problem is that the large majority of them abandoned that position very quickly and became enthusiastic water carriers for the madman.
You, to your credit, didn’t. But you did soften your position on Trump somewhat. Here, for example:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/10/05/teaser/
And you did equate Sanders and Trump:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/10/25/the-state-of-the-union-2/
That was an insidious process over the last 4 years. We all got used to being governed by a madman, some of us more, some of us less. It became the new normal.
At the same time, the mental health of the entire GOP universe went steeply downhill; and some parts of the Democratic spectrum also deteriorated.
At mimimum, what we must never forget are the hard core of those GOP politicians who actively supported Trump’s recent coup attempt: by promulgating his lies, by voting to overturn the election, and by participating in the spectacle of constitutional arsonism we witnessed recently on the House and Senate floor.
Men like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley need to be recognized for what they are; enemies of the republic. Evil men with no character or principles, who will burn down the institutions that make up American democracy in their pursuit of personal power.
Wouldn’t it be more accurate, given the evidence, to say that he’s evil?
I certainly agree, but how did he get elected in the first place (and came so close to getting re-elected)? It is because the current crop of Establishment Republicans from George Bush on down led us into two disastrous wats — wars we have all but lost, bu the way — and did nothing to curb taxes or public spending. Fuck them all!!!!
(Typos fixed.) I certainly agree, but how did he get elected in the first place (and came so close to getting re-elected)? It is because the current crop of Establishment Republicans from George Bush on down led us into two disastrous wars — wars we have all but lost, by the way — and did nothing to curb taxes or public spending. To Hell with them all
“Donald Trump batshit crazy” — No. He has a personality type that offends some people, but he is not crazy or mentally impaired by any objective standards.
“things that will affect his or her performance in office” — His term is nearly over, so there is no longer any need to speculate about his performance in office. Complaints about his supposed mental defects are orthogonal to complaints about his performance in office.
“try imagining him in command of the United States Army” — No need to imagine anymore. He has been much better than other recent Presidents. Progress on peace deals, no new foreign wars, and measured responses to foreign threats.
Trump has brought us four years of peace and prosperity. He has made superb appointments. And he did it while being opposed by 95% of the news media, universities, super-rich, big tech companies, deep state, and all the other power centers. Sure, he can be second-guessed about his handling of the coronavirus, race riots, and other matters, but his performance was not crazy and there is no reason to think that Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden would have done any better.
Roger: Here are some off-the-cuff responses to your post.
1) You say he has been much better than other recent presidents. Regardless of whether that’s true, it’s the wrong comparison. The right comparison is: How has he been compared to what others would have done with the opportunities he had? He had, for example, the opportunity to replace Obamacare with something far better, which he blew completely by pushing for the repeal of Obamacare without even bothering to propose anything better. He signed a really really good tax reform bill, drafted entirely by Paul Ryan, which any other Republican president would also have signed. Moreover, the gains available from tax reform were so great that even a Democratic president would have signed a reform bill that was similar in many respects, though dressed up in very different rhetoric. So he gets no credit for that. And I could go on.
2) You say he’s not mentally impaired. I say that the single most consistent feature of his thought processes is that he believes things for no reason — and that is a huge mental impairment. Take the question of whether Obama was born outside this country. For a long time, he believed that for no reason, then suddenly, he stopped believing it — again for no reason. Take the whole “coronavirus will be over by Easter” thing. The idea that you could just pull a date out of mid-air and have any reason to think it constituted a meaningful prediction is, absolutely, batshit crazy.
3) A lot of his policies and appointments were excellent. I do not question that for a moment. The policies, unfortunately, will all be overturned by Joe Biden, who was elected because of Trump’s immense failure to convince people that he was competent. You might say that failure was due to carping from news media, universities, etc. I say it was due to his saying insane things like “coronavirus over by Easter”.
4) Policies matter, but so does the ability to handle a crisis. And he completely blew the coronavirus crisis, in ways completely consistent with what you’d expect from his evident mental impairments. There’s room for a lot of argument about how far the lockdowns should have gone, and I tend to think that Trump was often on the right side of that. But telling people not to wear masks was an act of insanity, with tragic consequences. Lockdowns are costly. Masks are cheap. And the current delays in vaccine distribution are a shocking failure of executive management — caused by Trump’s obsession with a hopeless crusade to overturn election results, which deflects his attention from the ongoing crisis. That obsession is absolutely clearly a symptom of mental dysfunction, and we are paying the price for it.
I could go on a long time. But I don’t think I’m saying anything people haven’t heard before, so whether they agree or disagree, there’s probably little to be gained by my continuing to repeat it.
Steve, now you have shifted to saying Trump could have done better. Obama’s supporters say similar things about him — that Obamacare was a half-measure, that he failed to convince voters to elect Democrats, etc.
Fauci was also telling people not to wear masks.
About birtherism, you are assuming a lot when you say “he believes things for no reason”. Maybe he believed exactly what he said, that there were legitimate questions about Obama’s birth that a birth certificate might help resolve. There are also questions about the origins of other candidates — McCain, Cruz, Harris, etc. Maybe it was all a publicity stunt. Maybe it was a way to take cheap shots at Obama. But it is ridiculous to say that this shows that Trump had some mental impairment that prevented him from understanding Obama’s birth situation. He never would have gotten where he is if that were true.
I look forward to your assessment of the Biden administration, in a year or so. And your comparison to Trump.
> I say that the single most consistent feature of his thought processes is that he believes things for no reason
That, I might argue, is what most endears him to his base. Trump, in his thought, in his rhetoric, has completely slipped the surly bounds of reality – and his supporters love him for it.
It must be TREMENDOUSLY liberating to be able to believe whatever you want to believe, to hate whoever you want to hate, for any reason or for no reason at all.
This, more than anything else, is what I consider the essence of Trumpism.
Roger:
Now you have shifted to saying Trump could have done better
No, I am saying that he did not do better for reasons that are easily traceable to mental impairment — such as not proposing an alternative to Obamacare because he was cognitively incapable of grasping what that meant. This is very different from the usual sorts of reasons why presidents disappoint their supporters.
You might respond that I am just speculating about the state of Trump’s cognition and that it would be easy to (falsely) speculate the same way about any president. You would be right. I do not know how to prove that Trump or anyone else is cognitively impaired. But I am pretty sure I know it when I see it.
True or not perhaps a better question is why did Trump resonate with so many? If either “side” had tried to understand that phenomenon it may have resulted in a government that better serves its people, all of its people.
David R Henderson:
Wouldn’t it be more accurate, given the evidence, to say that he’s evil?
I believe it’s accurate to say he’s evil, and that, like a number of other historical figures, he’s evil largely because he’s stupid.
On Birtherism, he either believed it and he is impaired in something like the way SL describes, or he didn’t, and he is dispicable, using race issues he does not believe in for political gain.
I think the parsimonious answer is that he is impaired roughly as SL describes. Many of his battles did not need to be faught and gained him nothing politically. Sharpiegate and crowd sizes for example.
The consistent answer is that he is has very strong narcissist traits, which fits everything he does. Whether that goes as far as having NPD is not possible to say from afar. On a casual view, he arguably has all 9 of the DSM criteria for NPD, only 5 of which are required for a diagnosis. That is arguable and could not be definitively resolved without examination by a professional.
This dos not mean he is stupid in the unintelligent sense. It means he cannot see the world as it is. If the world comes into conflict with his view of himself, then the world is wrong.
David Henderson: “Is he evil?”
I’d say that a necessary condition for ‘evil’ would be malevolence; that is, malice toward a person/group who had not earned such malice.
Can you provide an example where Trump exhibited an unjustified malevolence?
Richard D. :
Can you provide an example where Trump exhibited an unjustified malevolence?
If you can’t think of any such examples on your own, then you have really not been paying attention.
I must not be paying attention either, as I also cannot think of any examples. Even when I googled for examples, I could only find a couple of articles like this one, but that is really just some anti-Trump grumbling and name-calling.
If you want to see some Trump malevolence, here is some, for example, about the long-exonerated “central park five”:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has-said-central-park-five/1501321001/
>>> he arguably has all 9 of the DSM criteria for NPD, only 5 of which are required for a diagnosis. That is arguable and could not be definitively resolved without examination by a professional.
You don’t need a zoologist to conduct an in-depth examination to resolve the question whether that huge grey animal with the trunk and the big ears is an elephant, either.
Maybe it is Noddy’s friend the hippo going on holidays?
Yes, I think we can all draw appropriate conclusions. I was just being careful. Most of what Trump does makes sense when viewed through the lens of narcissism. He simply cannot view himself as losing, wrong, inferior or mistaken. To do so would risk collapse of his psyche. To avoid that he is able to maintain quite strong delusions. I think this would justify 25th amendment, but without that diagnoses from a professional it can be disputed as opinion.
Advo, your example is Trump wanting to punish some thugs, when there was a great deal of evidence that they committed a horrible crime, as well as other crimes. They confessed, and were tried and convicted. The conviction was upheld on appeal. But Trump was malevolent because of new evidence and a one-sided Netflix TV show? Okay, your example is noted.
“diagnoses from a professional it can be disputed as opinion.” — This is like wanting a professional opinion on whether someone is possessed by the devil, or is practicing witchcraft.
Such professional diagnoses of mental disorders are sometimes given in court, and often disputed, as they are just dubious opinions.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-narcissistic-personality-disorder-mary-trump-john-zinner-bandy-x-lee-a9665856.html
37 psychiatrists have signed on to say he’s mentally unstable – against the American Psychological Associations’ guidelines of not diagnosing people they haven’t personally examined…well all the Twitter messages – hell these 37 psychiatrists have more data on him than their typical patients.
Sure, the shrinks can read his twitter messages. But their opinion is transparently just political gamesmanship. A lot of people think that Joe Biden is senile, but I don’t see those 37 psychiatrists weighing in with their opinion. Just read the criteria for a diagnosis, and you will see what subjective nonsense it all is.
#19, 20. As juan says, the guidelines on diagnosing people you have not examined is not to do it. That is why it is quite a serious thing for them to do and not likely to be just motivated by political gamesmanship.
PS: For the record, I referred to Trump as a “dangerous demagogue” as far back as 2015:https://priorprobability.com/2015/12/09/godels-loophole-venezuela-edition/
I read the comment about the mental age, and… the only time my wife has ever told me to be silent for dinner was when I slipped a up a no to or two ago and told our four-year-old who was being particularly obstinate and unwilling to do anything other than precisely what she felt like doing “Keep this attitude up and if you don’t watch out you just might one day end up being president” to which she innocently asked “What’s a president?” This was followed by my wife’s death-stare and a “Your father is just kidding.”
Worth it though.