Over five years ago my book on Trump’s mental pathology, “American Carnage, An Officer’s Duty to Warn,” was published. Having discharged soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, for this particular malady, having served as Chief of Mental Health for both an Army and Navy prison, I was well-acquainted with character abnormality. I was tempted to title my book, The Molestation of America. This was prompted by an image that I could not get out of my mind because of its accuracy, a simple gesture that was symbolic of a greater reality. At the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Donald Trump walked across the stage, took the American Flag in his arms, planted a kiss on the Stars and Stripes, and mouthed the words, “I love you baby.”
Such a Freudian slip, I thought, as he used the symbol of our country for self-gratification – and he knew he could get away with it because he was the star.
Donald Trump, had he ever joined the military, would have been diagnosed as Personality Disorder NOS with Antisocial and Narcissistic traits, and given a psychiatric discharge – or he would have gone to prison for fraud, stealing Top Secret documents, or sexual assault. But it is the lack of sympathy, the lack of empathy, the pathological lying, and the inability to choose right over wring, that makes this particular character disorder so dangerous, along with the fact that they are ego syntonic (they feel normal) – every deviant or sadistic impulse is felt, not merely as okay, but justified. Unfortunately, it is also the least known mental illness, or not seen as mental illness at all by non-clinicians.
My congressional representative once said to me, “I think all politicians are Narcissistic Personality Disorders.” He meant egomaniac, which is not mental illness. We do not have a psychiatric discharge for egomaniacs. This is our present dilemma and the price we are paying because the word narcissism has a common lay meaning. Too many people look at Donald Trump and think that he is an exaggerated version of some rock star, movie star, rapper or professional athlete who are full-of-themselves. They are wrong! To borrow from Mark Twain, the difference between a Narcissistic Personality Disorder and an egomaniac is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. My local congressman recognized that most politicians have big egos, but he remained ignorant to the fact that Donald Trump is an unprecedented phenomenon in American history: the first Commander in Chief who is mentally unfit for command, in fact, unfit to hold the lowest rank within the United States military due to unconstitutional beliefs and multiple violations of law. The insurrection, and the pardoning of those convicted of seditious conspiracy, was final proof of this mental abnormality, as he ended the day with praise for those who violently assaulted police officers to break and enter a building – an act worthy of court martial – but an act that prompted the Commander in Chief to say, “We love you.”
Congress continues to abdicate responsibility to impeach and convict him for his betrayal of the constitution; and our national media continue to ignore the realities of the first provably mentally ill president (he meets all the criteria for narcissistic and almost all the criteria for antisocial PD). They continue to be gaslighted like members of a family cowed by domestic violence, and they continue to make excuses for the perpetrator as if he is their abusive father.
So the molestation of the psyche of America continues, and the people of Greenland and Panama and Canada, despite saying no, cannot stop his unwanted advances. The malignant narcissist, like the rapist and pedophile, is incapable of feeling their healthy repugnance toward his declared right to dominate them.
The catastrophic danger is that the same lack of empathy bonds Trump with a Saudi Prince who murdered a journalist, allowed him to fall “in love” with the mass murderer in North Korea, and is threatening all of the free people of Ukraine as he sympathizes and defends the actions of the “genius” who invaded them and is hell-bent on their domination.
Neville Chamberlain was accused of having no imagination for evil because he capitulated to Hitler, but Chamberlain was not mentally ill; he did not make excuses for Hitler invading another country, he could never be capable of verbalizing how much Hitler had suffered, or that Hitler should be allowed to keep parts of Europe or North Africa because he lost so many men in the conquest. All of Trump’s declarations are not rookie mistakes, but a profound level of moral deviancy that characterizes a specific mental disorder.
The fact that it is the least known mental illness does not alter the seriousness of the present assault on our constitution and its separation of powers, nor change the sworn duty to defend it against the unwanted advances of a molester.
