Donald Trump’s behavior is so far outside the norm that many people (including mental health professionals) have suggested that he is mentally ill. The most common suggestions I’ve seen are that he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD, also known as sociopathy), or a combination of the two (known as malignant narcissism). There is also widespread concern about cognitive decline.
I looked up the diagnostic criteria for NPD and ASPD, and it’s shocking how many of the boxes Trump ticks. Here are the criteria for NPD according to the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, the DSM-5-TR:
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (301.81 [F60.81])
Diagnostic Criteria
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
- Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).
- Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
- Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
- Requires excessive admiration.
- Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).
- Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).
- Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
- Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
- Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
I would argue that Trump meets all 9 of those criteria. Only 5 are required for an NPD diagnosis.
Here are the criteria for ASPD:
Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7 [F60.2])
Diagnostic Criteria
A. A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
- Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
- Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.
- Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults.
- Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
- Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations.
- Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
C. There is evidence of Conduct Disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia or a manic episode.
I’d say that Trump meets all of the numbered criteria except #4. Only 3 are needed for an ASPD diagnosis. He’s certainly irritable and aggressive, but I haven’t heard reports of any physical altercations. He meets criteria B and D, but I don’t know enough about his early life to comment on criterion C, which is Conduct Disorder.
Anyway, the point is not whether Trump would qualify for a formal diagnosis. Diagnosis or no, any person who meets that many criteria for both NPD and ASPD is manifestly unfit for office.
Trump at a news conference yesterday, commenting on the murder of Renee Good:
She didn’t “have a tragedy”. She was murdered by an ICE officer that you sent to Minneapolis to menace the population.
What a narcissistic ass. Two parents are grieving the death of their daughter due to Trump’s invasion of Minneapolis, and all he can say about the father is “He loved Trump! They told me he loved Trump. I hope he still loves Trump! Her parents were both Trump fans!” Everything is about him and whether he’s getting the admiration he craves. Zero capacity for empathy.
A true malignant narcissist.
I wonder if Trump will apologize for insulting the NATO soldiers who fought and died alongside Americans in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I’m sure he doesn’t want to — getting a genuine apology from a malignant narcissist is like pulling teeth — but the pressure is going to be pretty high. I’m aware of only one apology that he’s ever made, which was after the “grab ’em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape.
What a detestable human being. A coward and draft dodger who faked bone spurs in order to avoid being sent to Vietnam, yet has the gall to impugn the bravery of the people who didn’t shirk their duty and fought on the front lines.
He won’t. When pressured, he will blame wherever the pressure is coming from.
No amount of pressure will be high enough for Trump. it’s not like pulling teeth. He will not apologize and that’s how everybody can tell that he is a malignant narcissist. Even MAGA cultists know he is a malignant narcissist, and they love him for it.
Trump’s Board of Peace (for expropriating Gaza) includes notable pauper countries such as Armenia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan. How will those countries pay the billion dollars to remain on the board? And why are they invited to the Board of Peace when USA/Trump just stopped processing tourist visas for some of these countries?
None of it makes sense. And that’s the point. Let lunacy rule.
This is some seriously educational content.
Different from political illiterates in the bygone USSR and current Russia, political illiterates in USA are proud of their ignorance and brainwashedness. Freedom of speech means to them the right to be proud of their stupidity.
In Russia such people are precious few. Most are silently ashamed of what Putin is doing, or ashamed of the fact that they cannot/won’t stand up to him. They are often probably not even politically illiterate, just scared of the consequences, so they resort to vague platitudes and generalities when speaking about politics. But in USA the brainwashed morons are very eager to persecute everyone else and proud of it.
Trump assuages dementia suspicions… by forgetting the word
“Alzheimer’s”:
Trump on Alex Pretti and Renee Good:
Everything is about Trump, as far as Trump is concerned.
On top of the malignant narcissism, which is bad enough, he seems to have no awareness of how bad that sounds to normal people. He just blurts it out, when a more intelligent person would self-censor.
Trump posted that on Truth Social. Self-soothing by a narcissist whose approval rating keeps falling.
The artist, Jon McNaughton, bills himself on his website as “America’s foremost conservative artist.”
Trump promises Schumer funding for NY tunnel project — if Penn Station and Dulles Airport are renamed after him
Malignant narcissism. Trump’s a failure, Americans hate what he’s doing (and failing to do). He’s going to be remembered as a terrible president, and he knows that. Hence his desperation to slap his name on everything he can, and his willingness to abuse his presidential power in the service of his own fragile ego. A weak and insecure man.
Of course Trump doesn’t understand the limits on what Schumer can legally do, since he doesn’t understand limits at all. Still, this would be a pretty good deal, since once Trump is out of office the tunnel can be renamed, IF you have a tunnel to rename.
Flint:
Except it isn’t the tunnel that Trump wants to have named after him, it’s Penn Station and Dulles. Even if Schumer had the power, there’s no way that would fly politically. Not even if it only lasted for the remainder of Trump’s term.
I know. The problem is, how to get Trump to spend what Congress allocated, and NOT spend for what Congress has not allocated. I wonder if the “Arc de Trump” money is coming out of the funds not being spent for the tunnel.
It’s possible that someday SCOTUS will get around to ruling on these practices, but I worry they might enshrine them for generations. They seem entirely willing to “find” that the law means the opposite of what it says, whenever Trump wants it to.
A reporter asked him about it on Air Force One:
Trump:
Sure, Donald. Chuck Schumer, unions, Democrats, Republicans — they all think Penn Station should be renamed to honor you, the worst president in American history. Perfectly plausible, undoubtedly true.
So the Clintons want to spill what they know in public, and Republicans want closed doors? Why on earth would they (the Rs) do that? 4D chess time. Popcorn at the ready.
This Truth Social post would have fit into any of the three Trump threads: the dishonesty thread, the stupidity thread, or the mental illness thread, but I decided to post it here:
This is what tipped the balance for me:
WTF? That is batshit crazy, even by Trump standards. Hence my choice to post it here in the mental illness thread. We are solidly in 25th amendment territory.
ETA: Trump actually endorsed the bridge during his first term. He and Trudeau issued a joint statement in 2017, containing the following:
Trump and the Windsor-Detroit bridge
A Trump voter apologizes to the country
keiths,
“The Tariffs Canada charges us for our Dairy products…”.
Excuse me, Sir… has anyone explained to you the way in which tariffs work?
I haven’t been following this. How’s it going? Has Trump been implicated yet?
Has anyone?
It’s a mess. Failure to redact some victims, while redacting other people (including Trump) for no obvious (or no legitimate) reason. One word redacted was “don’t”, possibly rendered as “don t” and redacted in a search/replace for “Don T”. Congress have been shown some ‘unredacted’ version that still has redactions. They have just 4 terminals to use between them, and limited time. DoJ appears incompetent and suspicious at the same time. 3 million files will (it is said) never be released. Without being any kind of a conspiracist, one wonders why.
Meantime the scandal is rocking the upper tier in both royal and political circles here in the UK. People not even mentioned in the files seem to be in danger of taking a fall, while elbows-deep Americans seem Teflon coated.
At least the claim that he ratted on Epstein has been debunked.
Nothing I’m reading contradicts what I’ve thought for years:
Epstein was involved in some seriously evil stuff
He courted celebrities, wealthy people and politicians to make his operation investigation-proof.
Anyone who hobnobbed with him after 2008 should be ashamed, and should be publicly humiliated.
These things are probably not the definitive list.
That’s right: You haven’t been following this. And you never will. Trump was implicated long before “Epstein files” was a thing and you still have not noticed.
By now, Trump is implicated of exploitation of minors with far more solid evidence than Lee Harvey Oswald is of killing JFK. Also, Trump and Melania met through Epstein – Melania was Epstein’s girl first and Epstein prostituted her to Trump. Trump and Melania keep lying about this. In the files there are specific claims regarding rape of minors by Trump. Interestingly, there are no such claims against Bill Clinton – apparently he was observant enough to not touch minors and somehow, insofar as the files are concerned, it did not occur to anyone to accuse him even out of malice.
Elsewhere in the world, in normal countries, things go beyond implications. Princes are de-princed, ministers are falling, possible leaks to Russian and Israeli intelligence are investigated and so on.
You learned nothing from this. Heard nothing, saw nothing. Trump remains your infallible Fuehrer.
petrushka,
Are you still under the illusion that there’s nothing harmful to Trump in the Epstein files?
Trump is making that claim:
But the files don’t absolve him. If they did, he would have released them immediately upon taking office. Instead, he’s been desperate not to release them. So desperate that he’d rather be seen as orchestrating a massive coverup.
The question isn’t whether there’s anything damaging to Trump in the files. The only question is how successful the coverup will be.
False. He ratted. It’s in Palm Beach police report to FBI, according to which Trump claimed that he had seen Epstein once around teenagers, thought it creepy and thank God that police is taking Epstein down. In other words, Trump lied à la Lutnick, who on TV claimed to have seen Epstein once but in correspondence with Epstein was a great fan of Lolita Express and the pedo island.
The coverup made it through eight years of Obama, three years of Mueller, four years of Biden, so I suspect it’s pretty solid.
I don’t think in certainties, but I entertain high probabilities.
Enough is in public domain to inform yourself. You just hate information.
Trump has not been convicted of the coup attempt of January 6 2021. Does this mean it did not happen and that Trump is not guilty of it? No. It means that in USA the Supreme Court is corrupt and pisses on the constitution to cover Trump’s ass. If you think details on this are murky or debatable, then you’re engaged in self-brainwash, no coverup needed.
The coverup that Trump administration is busy with in connection with Epstein files is so ridiculously transparent that it does not qualify as a coverup. The worst coverup occurred when Epstein got his original sweetheart deal – and Trump has rewarded those people with highest posts in his administration, some of them in both of his administrations. Informing oneself of all this is very easy, but you’re making the utmost effort not to. You’re having great success when it comes to wilful ignorance.
petrushka:
The probability that there’s something damaging to Trump in the Epstein files is near 100%. What other explanation do you have of his behavior and his administration’s actions?
Regarding the Democrats, I recall you arguing at one point that they were only pretending to want the files released because that was politically advantageous, and that they were only confident enough to do so because they thought that the files would never actually be released. That hypothesis didn’t age well. The Dems have fought hard, and continue to fight hard, for full disclosure. That ain’t a coverup.
It’s Trump and most of the Republicans who are engaged in a coverup, not Dems.
With Trump, we deal with what’s been called the “star in the sky syndrome.” The idea is, the particular item or topic is in plain sight, but so are thousands of other causes of concern. To hide a matter of public domain, all you have to do is never mention it and hope nobody else does either. The Epstein matter slid by Obama, Mueller and Biden because nobody was looking at it, or that anyone who was looking at it got no air time to make their interest public.
What’s ironic is that attention was focused on Epstein by Trump himself (and repeated endlessly by his echo chamber). The best explanation for this is that the Trumpies believed that the real culprits were all famous Democrats. Nobody knew what all was in Epstein’s possession except possibly Acosta, and he was promptly bought off. So it looked to the echo chamber like good campaign fodder.
Then, after Trump was elected and asked his pet FBI to take a look, it turns out he was prominently featured. Word today is the Trump is mentioned over 10,000 times, maybe more, and a lot of those mentions are incriminating. And even the “unredacted” stuff being fed to Congress one drip at a time, is ALSO redacted. We see the usual shell game – the DoJ now claims these redactions were done before they got the files. But the FBI did those redactions, and the FBI is part of the DoJ. So the DoJ won’t explain the redactions, won’t point to whoever did it, and feeds the “unredacted” material to the congressmen through FOUR terminals, which will take an estimated 7 years to complete – while still withholding another 3 million files they continue to claim are not of interest.
Let’s face it, the good stuff is NOT in the public domain, and won’t be so long as Trump is in office. What we’re seeing is the time-honed Trump technique – deny, lie, postpone, delay, and change the subject. Yeah, this makes them look guilty as hell, but apparently what’s in those files is worse. Even the most obvious lies can be better than the truth.
(And what’s also in the public domain is that Trump has been a womanizer, a serial adulterer, a convicted sex offender, a proud pussy-grabber all his life. What do people THINK he was doing with Epstein anyway?)
Which good stuff? How good does it need to get? Trump has been openly self-incriminating enough to go straight to jail. For example he has said that Epstein stole girls from Mar-a-Lago. This should raise questions like:
– What are girls doing in Mar-a-Lago such that they can be stolen from there?
– Why did Trump not report the theft anywhere? To police? At least to the girl’s parents?
Further, knowing that Trump lies and knowing the actual circumstances, namely that Trump and Epstein were best buddies essentially in the same business and that it was really Ghislaine Maxwell (best buddy of Trump’s to this day, given privileged treatment in prison that is illegal for sex offenders) who lured girls to Epstein, it merits investigation what really happened. Instead of a theft, was it really Trump trafficking a girl to Epstein the same way as Epstein trafficked Melania to Trump?
See, it’s good enough what’s in the open. It’s just a matter of prosecuting it, letting victims and witnesses and documented evidence have their day in court. But there is no justice system worth the name in USA. Prosecution is not happening.
What’s really astonishing is that while most of the people name or implicated are enemies of Trump, none of them seem to remember seeing him.
The FBI office that held the documents was the New York office, and they resisted releasing them, even gave a standing ovation to the director who resisted.
You mean, the same way as witnesses have not come forward? (they have…) You’re a very sick puppy yourself, a brainwashed hyperpartisan hypocrite Trump cultist and a hopeless liar.
In protective services I dealt with at least a dozen sexual abuse cases, and if you count the cases of my co-workers, I would have been acquainted with at least a hundred.
No one was ever prosecuted.
I do not know what’s coming in the Epstein case, but I can say that nothing I’ve read about could be used as evidence to prosecute anyone. No actionable evidence has been made public. I doubt if any will be.
The scandal is not the absence of prosecutions. The scandal is that so many celebrities maintained their association with Epstein after 2008.
petrushka:
Erik:
BREAKING: Trump exposed in NEW Epstein phone call scandal
Something about this doesn’t make sense.
In what kind of scenario does Trump call the police on Epstein?
petrushka:
Did you watch the video I linked to above?
This means that you cannot hear and see, you cannot read and you are unable to think. You cannot know any better. This is very sad. I would like to be lenient with you, multi-impaired as you are, but then you said this,
So, you’re saying that you managed to cover it all up? Good for you that the justice system in USA is happy with your results.
Before USA convicted Epstein, there were abuse and trafficking cases successfully prosecuted elsewhere in the world, in normal countries. On the current material in the Epstein files, there are formal consequences elsewhere in the world. The Epstein files reveal that USA is the foremost in the world in protecting pedos.
I think I’ve said a number of times that I don’t watch videos. You could summarize it or provide a link to a text source.
I was a social worker, not a policeman.
As for other countries, feel free to provide links to support your claim.
https://epstein-file-explorer.replit.app/