For four years, Donald Trump has intentionally and repeatedly violated the presidential oath of office and his promise to “faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It now appears that Trump was aware, perhaps for a year, that Russian agents had awarded rewards to American soldiers serving in Afghanistan. That’s just the latest example of the President’s betrayal of his oath.
Former national security adviser John Bolton’s new book “The Room Where It Happened”, along with new CNN investigative reports show Trump to be reckless, out of control, negligent, delusional, corrupt, incompetent, and completely unable to lead to the United States. At national and international level.
Carl Bernstein’s report for CNN paints a particularly damning portrait:
In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was unprepared to debate serious issues, so often outdone in his conversations with powerful leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s top allies, that the calls helped convince some top American officials, including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers, and his former chief of staff, that the president himself It represented a danger to the national security of the United States, according to the White House and intelligence officials, they are intimately familiar with the content of the talks. …
The calls caused former Trump MPs, including national security advisers HR McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as Intelligence officials concluded that the president was often “delusional,” as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders.
As many of the nation’s and world’s leading mental health professionals have warned, Trump appears mentally ill in the extreme. His blatant mental pathologies, which likely include malignant narcissism, an addiction to violence, a God complex, and almost psychotic levels of delusional thinking, have only served to exacerbate his many character and value flaws.
Altogether, Donald Trump is not fit to be President of the United States. If he is not removed from office in the 2020 elections, he will continue to pose an extreme threat to the health and safety of the American people and the world.
I recently discussed this with Dr. Lance Dodes, whom I have interviewed on several previous occasions. Dodes is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and emeritus training and supervisory analyst at the Boston Society and Psychoanalytic Institute.
In our most recent conversation, he explained how the information revealed in Bolton’s new book helps confirm that Donald Trump is mentally ill and is a public threat. Dr. Dodes also warned that Trump will only become more dangerous in the remaining months before Election Day and may try to start a war, impose martial law, or create some other crisis to remain in power indefinitely.
Dodes issued another ominous warning: From his callous response to the coronavirus pandemic to his threats of violence against journalists and leading Democrats, Donald Trump is incapable of human concern and empathy, and will find a way to carry out his death threats and destruction if given the chance.
As usual, this interview has been edited for its length and clarity.
What happens to a person like Donald Trump when he suffers from a narcissistic injury, like what happened in Tulsa with his failed rally?
Donald Trump is unable to tolerate losing without retreating to delusional paranoid explanations of what happened. His fundamental need to always be right and to be an absolute ruler, a god above all criticism, is what has led to his inability to tolerate democracy, and his repeated efforts to destroy it with his attacks on Congress, the judicial system and the free press.
A few days after the Tulsa rally, Trump traveled to Arizona, where he spoke to thousands of supporters of a right-wing evangelical church. So one day he is in the pits of despair and anger, but the next day he is euphoric and flying high. How does such an emotional roller coaster impact your mind?
Trump may appear more in touch with reality when worshiped. In fact, when his primitive needs are not being questioned, he may seem like a normal person, which is what has made him a successful scammer. However, when challenged, his cruelty, sadism, paranoia, lack of awareness, incitement to violence, and the active pursuit of policies that kill people become apparent. These traits are adequately described as “evil”. In professional terms, they mean that he is a psychopath.
At his demonstration in Tulsa, Donald Trump admitted that he has ordered tests to detect the coronavirus to be limited and slowed down to make it appear that fewer Americans are getting sick in this pandemic. In Trump’s mind, this helps his chances for reelection. Trump is killing people. Does he know he’s doing that? Or is it so delusional that you cannot connect your actions to the thousands of Americans who are now dead?
Trump knows what he is doing and does not care. Many people cannot accept that Trump does not care about all this human suffering because they cannot understand the idea that the President of the United States is as deeply disturbed as he is. That denial is a fairly normal reaction; No one wants to believe that we have a president who lacks human empathy and is willing to let others die for his personal gain.
Donald Trump continues to accuse former President Barack Obama of being a “traitor” and of committing “treason”. This is another example of Trump threatening violence and death (treason has often been punished with execution) against his political enemies. How much of this behavior is a function of Trump projecting his own guilt on other people?
Donald Trump is incapable of guilt. In the most obvious and primitive way, often seen in very young children, he accuses others of exactly what he has done. He knows that he has committed treason, not only because of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, but because he is actively and aggressively undermining the Constitution, democracy and the rule of law. His accusation of treason to others was, therefore, completely predictable. Reversing the truth is a tactic used by psychopathic dictators forever, such as the destruction of democratic governments to “restore democracy.” Unfortunately, these simple tactics often work, and only a few years later citizens wake up to the fact that they have been conquered from within.
How do we understand the standard deviation in which some people say that everything is “hyperbole” and that Trump would never kill anyone?
Donald Trump has already killed people. He is killing people all the time through his deliberate negligent handling of the coronavirus pandemic to improve his chances of choice. More than 120,000 Americans have died due to Trump’s behavior. His incitements to racist violence have also caused deaths from racist crimes. There is now overwhelming evidence that Donald Trump cares nothing about anyone else’s life.
John Bolton’s new book confirms that Trump’s staff members, including cabinet officials, mock and mock the President behind his back. How will Trump react when he learns that the people around him disrespect him, the people who are supposed to be loyal to him?
If Donald Trump believes that people in his inner circle even criticize him, let alone mock him, he will do his best to harm them, starting by firing them, but then slandering and blaming them for their actions.
Bolton details how Trump wants journalists to be killed and jailed. Bolton also writes about Trump’s support for concentration camps in China, where Uighur Muslims have been tortured and have even reportedly “removed” their organs without anesthesia.
How is that different from what Hitler did? How is it different from what Stalin did? Dictators always want to punish journalists. The last thing Donald Trump wants is a free press. It is another way in which he is an existential threat to democracy.
Bolton’s book also reveals that hostile foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and others have learned that all they have to do is flatter and complement Trump to get what they want from him. Trump is very malleable and easy to manipulate. If you were to advise someone on how to manipulate Donald Trump, what would you tell them to do?
Donald Trump is extremely easy to manipulate as he only cares about being adored and is indifferent to the truth or the facts. From the first days of his presidency, people marveled that Trump changed his mind every five minutes in the direction of the last person he spoke to. If you love him, then you control Trump until the next person loves him. There are many reasons to think that it has been successfully manipulated by emotionally stronger leaders from other nations.
Donald Trump has all this power, but he seems to be very lonely, sad and empty. Trump imagines himself as a type of god, but he behaves like a small, mean and pitiful person. There is something very sad about the whole show.
Normal people tend to project their own humanity onto Trump: his normal sense of empathy, caring, concern for others, his sadness and loneliness. This is wrong because Donald Trump has never demonstrated the ability of those feelings. There is nothing in his story or behavior that suggests he has feelings beyond those of the predator: sadistic triumph if he can beat or destroy others, and rage and violence if he feels attacked or at risk of losing.
Currently, Donald Trump tracks the alleged Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden by double digits. If the polls are correct and Donald Trump loses on Election Day, how will he react? What advice would you give the American people about these coming months?
As Hitler did to consolidate his power, Trump is likely to create some sort of Reichstag incident, such as starting a war with China or Iran, trying to trick the American people into thinking that there is a crisis that requires total obedience to him. There is a high probability that he will try to cancel the 2020 elections, given that he has already stated that the elections will not be valid and is fighting to not allow or avoid the votes of the people who oppose him. Trump is telegraphing his plans for all to see. What we need to see is that Donald Trump is fundamentally psychologically flawed, that he is a psychopath who will destroy decency and democracy if his efforts to do this are not recognized in time.
