Donald Trump treated us to a new episode of “The Apprentice” with the visit of war-beleaguered President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky as a guest contestant – only to attack and humiliate him, “fire” him as an ally, and expel him from corporate headquarters (formerly known as the White House).
For millions of Americans, what we witnessed was betrayal, a reversal of a century of American foreign policy, a trashing of what has always been our raison d’etre, captured in the words of JFK, to “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
This made-for-TV-event featured an unexpected ambush of a war hero by our Vice President, a request for our ally to grovel before his masters, and a Godfather-like demand to kiss the ring.
It was all out of central casting by Donald Trump and the bit-actors all came in on cue – including the MAGA-loving “reporter” boyfriend of Marjorie Taylor Green whom the president allowed to berate the leader of a sovereign nation about his wardrobe.
This event was staged, but a reminder of each dark episode of the Trump presidency:
- His betrayal of U.S. Intelligence in Helsinki.
- The “perfect phone call” to Zelensky that led to his first impeachment.
- Another “perfect phone call” to the Georgia Secretary of State to find 11,780 votes that didn’t exist.
- The violent Jan. 6th insurrection that led to his second impeachment.
- His pardoning of violent Jan. 6th criminals, some convicted of seditious conspiracy.
- And finally, his own felony conviction.
What is missing from our national dialogue is the most important fact: We have a president who is profoundly unfit for command.
It is nobody’s fault that Personality Disorder is the least known mental illness outside of the military and our prison systems. That is regrettable because antisocial and narcissistic character pathology are the most dangerous precisely because they can pass as normal, or to put it more accurately, they feel normal so they do not seek help for symptoms. Their crimes are their symptoms. In the military we have a separate psychiatric discharge because they are maladaptive to rules and regulations and they are incurable. They lack sympathy and empathy, they are pathological liars, and they do not choose right over wrong. Anything in their favor is right and anything against them is wrong. You can see how this is a game-ender to military service. This can manifest in many ways: not paying taxes, sexual assault, fraud, stealing classified documents, etc. – you get the point. We cannot have a system based on the rule of law and have a leader who is a felon. We have never had a Commander in Chief who would be disqualified from military service at the recruiter’s office.
LISTEN: American Carnage: An Officer’s Duty to Warn, with Steve Nolan
A rapist or pedophile, for example, may pass as normal in a work environment for quite some time before their uncontrollable urges lead them into trouble. Needless to say, you don’t want someone with uncontrollable urges babysitting your children, or dating your sister, let alone putting them in charge of nuclear weapons or the decisions of war.
In 1979 they released a movie, “Being There,” a comedy starring Peter Sellers and Shirley McClaine. The premise was that the mentally impaired son of a billionaire passes as normal to strangers, the press, and eventually politicians — because of his mansion, fine clothes, all the trappings of wealth and seeming success. When he utters things that seem odd, or cryptic, everyone tries to find a way of accepting his nonsensical phrases as normal. That’s okay for fiction, it’s even comical; it is not acceptable in reality. The only good thing about personality disordered people is that logic and reasoning break down and they do inadvertent confessions to the truth (Trump put economic sanctions on Russia for cyber warfare he says is a hoax, Trump said he won an election by a landslide yet vacated and allowed Biden to take his job).
The climax of the Friday charade in the Oval Office was Trump telling the world how much Vladimir Putin has been harmed by the “Russia/Russia/Russia” phony investigation (the investigation of extensive Russian espionage confirmed by the DOJ, the Senate and the House).
It is our national shame that we allow Trump to repeatedly lie about proven enemy cyber warfare, and it is textbook evidence of personality pathology that would eliminate anyone from military service – service which requires you to tell the truth and also requires adherence to the Geneva Conventions (Putin has killed tens of thousands of human beings, including women and children, including bombing hospitals and maternity wards).
A malignant antisocial and narcissistic character is incapable of feeling sympathy or empathy, even for our allies, but Trump took the time to verbalize sympathy for a war criminal while yelling at the victim of Russian aggression. He exploded with an angry tirade, an emotional meltdown, for resistance to the art of the deal which favors our enemy.
The final act of the drama, the exclamation point, a diagnostic level of callousness, to a meeting about ending a war, was Trump’s closing line of the script, “This is going to be great television.”
It’s time for us to wake up, to end this Reality TV Show distorting our reality. The abuse of Americans, and now our friends overseas, must stop. The time is long overdue for Congress and the American people to pull the plug on this sequel before, like 1930s Germany, we devolve into a shadow of our former selves under the shadow of one malignant personality; a personality incapable of anything but self-worship, and certainly incapable of defending inalienable rights. In fact, like his Russian counterpart, hell-bent on destruction.
