Trump’s aberrant behavior is getting worse. Why are Americans ignoring his decline?

In evaluating his public and private behavior, America’s leading mental health professionals have concluded that Donald Trump is mentally unwell, and likely a sociopath — if not a psychopath. In even more direct terms, Trump has shown himself to apparently have a diseased mind, which in turn amplifies his already corrupt morality and ethics, attraction to violence, and overall capacity for evil. Ultimately, if he were to become president again, such an outcome would be a disaster for both the United States and the world.

In a new essay in the New York Times, Thomas Edsall consulted with mental health professionals from some of America’s most prestigious institutions about this emergency. Their conclusion: Donald Trump’s aberrant behavior is getting worse.

Once again, the American people and their leaders have been warned about the growing danger(s) and too few of them are responding with the appropriate energy and seriousness.

Leonard Class, who is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told Edsall that:

If Trump — in adopting language that he cannot help knowing replicates that of Hitler (especially the references to opponents as "vermin" and "poisoning the blood of our country"), we have to wonder if he has crossed into "new terrain." That terrain, driven by grandiosity and dread of exposure (e.g., at the trials) could signal the emergence of an even less constrained, more overtly vicious and remorseless Trump who, should he regain the presidency, would, indeed act like the authoritarians he praises. Absent conscientious aides who could contain him (as they barely did last time), this could lead to the literal shedding of American blood on American soil by a man who believes he is "the only one" and the one, some believe, is a purifying agent of God and in whom they see no evil nor do they doubt.

Several mental health experts whom Edsall consulted highlighted the role that Trump’s aging brain and apparent cognitive decline are playing in his pathological behavior:

"Trump is an aging malignant narcissist," Aaron L. Pincus, a professor of psychology at Penn State, wrote in an email. "As he ages, he appears to be losing impulse control and is slipping cognitively. So we are seeing a more unfiltered version of his pathology. Quite dangerous."

In addition, Pincus continued, "Trump seems increasingly paranoid, which can also be a reflection of his aging brain and mental decline."

The result? "Greater hostility and less ability to reflect on the implications and consequences of his behavior."

Edwin B. Fisher, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, made the case in an email that Trump’s insistence on the validity of his own distorted claims has created a vicious circle, pressuring him to limit his close relations to those willing to confirm his beliefs:

His isolation is much of his own making. The enormous pressures he puts on others for confirmation and unquestioning loyalty and his harsh, often vicious responses to perceived disloyalty lead to a strong, accelerating dynamic of more and more pressure for loyalty, harsher and harsher judgment of the disloyal and greater and greater shrinking of pool of supporters.

At the same time, Fisher continued, Trump is showing signs of cognitive deterioration:

the confusion of Sioux Falls and Sioux City, several times referring to having beaten and/or now running against Obama or the odd garbling of words on a number of occasions for it seems like about a year now. Add to these the tremendous pressure and threat he is under, and you have, if you will, a trifecta of danger — lifelong habit, threat and possible cognitive decline. They each exacerbate the other two.

Craig Malkin, who is a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, emphasized what he believes is Trump’s increasingly psychopathic behavior.

If the evidence emerging proves true — that Trump knew he lost and continued to push the big lie anyway — his character problems go well beyond simple narcissism and reach troubling levels of psychopathy. And psychopaths are far more concerned with their own power than preserving truth, democracy or even lives. [My emphasis added]

The conclusions reached by the mental health professionals quoted in Edsall’s essay echo those of their colleagues who I have been in dialogue with here at Salon and elsewhere for (at least) the last seven years.

For example, Dr. Justin Frank, author of "Trump on the Couch," recently warned that Trump has a "a classic God complex driven by a persecutory delusion. His sense of omniscience is compensatory and more disturbing than ever" and "In my opinion, Trump's incessant, word-salad repetition reflects chronic substance abuse or impending dementia, which is consistent with the blank eyes. His blotchy red and puffy face (and constant sniffling) are not new but underscore a clinician's natural suspicion that he is not cognitively healthy. His cartoon character menacing and bellicose posture is second nature to him."

Several weeks ago, psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes told me the following about how Trump is behaving in response to his legal peril and trials:

His lengthy history, however, shows the opposite, that he is simply a sociopath, interested only in his personal gains in power and wealth despite the harm to others.

Those who have concluded that he is decompensating are correct, though it would be more precise to say that the decompensation consists of exposing an inability to see reality and violent self-interest that has always been who he is. As many have predicted, as pressure on him continues to rise, his claims of greatness, his inability to accept legal constraints or punishments, and his destructive impulses toward all who have limited him, will increase. Ultimately, he may decompensate to the point of gross paranoid psychosis with even more obvious incitement to riots and civil war rather than accept the reality that he has been finally held accountable.  

I have been very vocal in my criticism of the New York Times and other agenda-setting media about their failures to consistently engage in pro-democracy journalism — a type of journalistic practice that requires that the abnormal is not normalized and that the American people are repeatedly warned about Trumpism, neofascism, and the dangers embodied by other types of anti-democratic politics.

Edsall’s new essay, and his writing more generally, is an example of the type of bold public teaching and truth-telling that the New York Times and other elite media should be doing much more of. In fact, the future of American democracy depends on it.

And given how the right-wing disinformation propaganda machine is escalating its war on reality and truth as it shapes and prepares the information space to facilitate Trump’s return to power as America’s first dictator, the New York Times and other such elite media should be even more earnest in such a commitment.

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As William Bunch writes in his new essay at The Philadelphia Inquirer:

In the ever-shrinking world of a free and fair media, the recent weeks have brought an explosion of untruth and a stepped-up war on reality. With democracy increasingly staring into the abyss both at home and abroad, propaganda and censorship are the double-edged sword of rising dictatorship. And now with violent hacking coming from both sides of the blade, it is indeed an increasing struggle to cling to the dream of truth-flavored sanity. This kind of malarkey is what I find so alarming about our increasingly Orwellian present, and even dimmer future. It’s not just that the newest generation of chest-thumping strongmen are harnessing the electrons of the 21st century to hypercharge their modern Ministries of Untruth, but that the guardians of the actual truth — the newsroom grand poobahs, an American president who claims he ran to save democracy — are passively watching it slip from our hands.

Collectively, the small group of mental health professionals who followed through on their "duty to warn" the American people about Trump and his dangerousness were marginalized, harassed (including death threats) and in at least one example suffered sanctions and loss of employment. Their warnings about Trumpism and the ascendant neofascist movement and the type of widespread harm, including violence and mass death (as seen with the Trump regime’s negligent if not outright criminal response to the Covid pandemic) have proven to be prescient. Trump’s plans to become America’s first dictator are creating a cataclysmic synergy between his diseased mind, with its megalomania and God complex, and a fascist political party and movement that is eager to rubbleize democracy with the goal of creating an American apartheid Christofascist plutocracy.

To that point, Trump and his agents have publicly announced their plans to use the United States military to occupy Democratic-led cities and other "blue" parts of the country as part of a plan to impose martial law. Dictator Trump and his enforcers will attempt to legitimate this attack on the American people’s fundamental civil and human rights by claiming that they are actually cracking down on "crime" in the name of "public safety."

None of this is new. As seen in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, history shows that sick leaders attract sick followers who in turn combine to create sick mass movements that oppress (and do worse to) their fellow citizens as they destroy society. Ignoring these lessons and precedents is a choice – one that is usually fatal.