Trump Is Not Well
During the 2016 campaign, I received a phone call from an influential political journalist and author, who was soliciting my thoughts on Donald Trump. Trumps 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 Trumps mental health, since I considered that to be the most important thing when it came to understanding him. It was Trumps Rosetta stone.
I wasnt shy about making the same case publicly. During a July 14, 2016, appearance on C-SPANs 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.
I dont oppose Mr. Trump because I think hes going to lose to Hillary Clinton, I told Ben from Purcellville, Virginia. I think he will, but as I said, he may well win. My opposition to him is based on something completely different, which is, first, I think he is temperamentally unfit to be president. I think hes erratic, I think hes unprincipled, I think hes unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think hes 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.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/donald-trump-not-well/597640/
Botany
(70,482 posts)... I think hes erratic, I think hes unprincipled, I think hes unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think hes obsessive.
riversedge
(70,181 posts)lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)That's why Murder Turtle loves President Turd.
Pacifist Patriot
(24,653 posts)I really appreciate this part:
....We have repeatedly heard versions of that sentiment over the course of Trumps presidency. Its said that speculating on Trumps mental health is inappropriate and unwise, especially for those who are not formally trained in the field of psychiatry or psychology.
Thats true, up to a point. 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, Trumps psychological impairments are obvious to all who are not willfully blind. On a daily basis we see the presidents chaotic, unstable mind on display. Are we supposed to ignore that?
An analogy may be helpful here. If smoke is coming out from under the hood of your car, if you notice puddles of oil under it, if the engine is overheating and you smell burning oil, you dont have to be a car mechanic to know that something is wrong with your car....
riversedge
(70,181 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,854 posts)Charles Leerhson
Yahoo.com, May 9, 2019
EXCERPT...
I tend to see my time with him the first part of it, anyway, before things started going bad in a hurry as his King Midas period. I never said this to him; if I had, he probably would have thought I was suggesting he enter the muffler business. But there was a stretch of months when everything he touched turned into a deal. The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, The Art of the Deal, which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money. Often they came up with things he could say yes to before he could think of them himself. As a result, a failing real estate developer who had little idea of what he was doing and less interest in doing it once hed held the all-important press conference wound up owning three New Jersey hotel-casinos, the Plaza Hotel, the Eastern Airlines Shuttle and a 281-foot yacht.
A real go-getter, right? But Trumps portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his French military helicopter to Atlantic City where he looked at more fabric swatches or sometimes small samples of wood paneling. It was true that the carpets and drapes at his properties needed to be refreshed frequently, and the seats on the renamed Trump Shuttle required occasional reupholstering. But the main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone whereas, for example, the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasnt. One of his aides once told me that every room at the Plaza could be filled at the rack rate (list price) every night, and the revenue still wouldnt cover the monthly payment of the loan hed taken out to buy the place. In other words, hed made a ridiculous deal. Neither he nor the banks had done the math beforehand. Or perhaps Trump knew it because someone had told him, but didnt want to think about it. The one thing he is above-average at is compartmentalization.
Source:
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-the-billiondollar-loser-his-ghostwriter-recalls-the-king-midas-years-090000640.html
gibraltar72
(7,500 posts)NRaleighLiberal
(60,013 posts)One of our fatal flaws as a species - repetition of lies become truth.
Response to douglas9 (Original post)
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