The Donald Trump who melted down on the debate stage Tuesday night is not a well man.
He sounded like a lunatic. He expressed his belief in things that simply aren’t true. (Think: “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.”) He was easily distracted. He repeated himself. He lied egregiously.
Is he competent to be president?
That’s a question journalists should be asking, prominently and relentlessly, until Election Day.
After the June debate that so clearly exposed Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, news coverage questioning his competence to hold office for another term was seemingly never-ending, and for good reason. The end result, of course, was that Biden took himself out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris.
Now Trump has had a debate that raises serious questions about his competence. And although his party remains solidly behind him, leading Democrats are increasingly willing to raise the issue.
In the wake of the debate, for instance, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called for Trump to take a cognitive test. “It’s not clear to me that he’s actually mentally fit to do the job.”
You Have Permission Now
Concerns about Trump’s mental state are hardly new. They’ve been raised for years on social media, in opinion columns, and on cable TV. But they’ve generally been avoided by traditional news reporters.
The good news is that this is officially no longer a story that’s too hot for reporters to touch. A permission structure has been established — by the New York Times’s star political reporter Peter Baker no less.
He wrote, one day before the debate, that with Biden dispatched, Trump now “confronts his own test to demonstrate that he has not diminished with age. Whether he passes that test may influence who will be the next occupant of the Oval Office.”
Baker continued: “Mr. Trump’s rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent statements and extreme outbursts have raised questions about his own cognitive health and, according to polls, stimulated doubts among a majority of voters.”
Indeed, even before the debate a slew of bizarre public statements had called renewed attention to the competence question.
Trump was asked last week at the Economic Club of New York how he would make childcare affordable, and responded with word salad about tariffs and the deficit and making America great again.
Earlier this month, speaking to the far-right Mothers for Liberty group, he alleged that kids were going to school and coming back with gender-affirming surgery. It was all completely made up. Nothing remotely like that has ever happened.
There are some signs that journalists may rise to the occasion.
The day after the debate, in an NPR article that went viral (thanks to me) Domenico Montenaro wrote boldly – and accurately – that “The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and general lack of any serious grasp on policy.”
He continued: “With a more-than-competent performance from Harris Tuesday, Trump’s lies, meandering, conspiracies and often general incoherence was made even more glaring.”
Earlier this month, veteran political commentator Mike Barnicle challenged his media colleagues to come clean with the public about Trump’s mental state.
“Today, we have a damaged, delusional old man who may again get elected to the presidency of the United States,” he said on MSNBC. “How did this happen?”
Barnicle called Trump “deranged sometimes, delusional sometimes” and “out of his mind.” He concluded: “We don’t cover the man for how dangerous he is.”
Not surprisingly, I’m with Barnicle. Indeed, we need reporters to raise serious questions about not just Trump’s mental capacity, but his mental health.
What About His Mental Health?
Trump’s mental health is a very touchy topic for journalists to address, since most mainstream newsrooms prohibit the use of language associated with mental illness unless a person has been diagnosed as mentally ill.
The widely cited Associated Press Stylebook states: “Do not describe an individual as mentally ill unless it is clearly pertinent to a story and the diagnosis is properly sourced. When used, identify the source for the diagnosis. Seek firsthand knowledge; ask how the source knows. Don’t rely on hearsay or speculate on a diagnosis. Specify the time frame for the diagnosis and ask about treatment.”
At the same time, the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule” enjoins its members from professionally diagnosing someone they have not personally evaluated.
Nevertheless, some psychiatrists who have studied Trump from afar have long been concerned about his mental state.
Psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee edited the 2017 book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, in which 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health experts raised their concerns about Trump’s mental well-being.
“It should now be obvious that Donald Trump is in a psychotic spiral,” Lee wrote recently.
Justin Frank, a Washington psychoanalyst and author of “Trump on the Couch,” told me in an interview that at this point, reporters should talk to neurologists rather than psychologists.
“I think he’s changing,” said Frank, who has previously identified Trump as a sociopath and a sadist. “I think he’s actually moving into some early states of dementia, so it’s more physiological than psychological,” he said. “The way he mixes up words, mispronounces things, his rambling sentences, he can’t focus. It really is a serious thing and people don’t talk about it.”
Psychiatrist Richard Friedman wrote in the Atlantic on Thursday that Trump “displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.”
One rare occasion when Trump’s mental health made the news was in early August, in Michigan, after the state’s former Democratic Gov. Jim Blanchard asserted in a television interview that Trump suffers from three personality disorders.
“I think most psychiatrists and psychologists would say he’s a malignant narcissist, which means his desire to be loved cannot be satisfied, and he has a hard time distinguishing fantasy from reality,” Blanchard said.
“The second thing is he’s a sociopath. And everyone knows that. He knows the difference between right and wrong; it just doesn’t apply to him…
“The third is he’s a pathological liar — launching a campaign based on the Big Lie that he actually won the last election when everyone around him tried to tell him he didn’t. He lies even when it doesn’t matter. He lies even when it doesn’t serve his purposes.”
A Michigan TV station asked the state Republican Party to respond to Blanchard’s comments. Former Republican candidate for governor Tudor Dixon insisted: “If you were a true narcissist, you could never do what Donald Trump does every day. You couldn’t handle the attacks he goes through.”
Stop the Sanewashing
The first thing reporters can do is stop covering up for the crazy.
Critics on social media and elsewhere recently took to using the term “sanewashing”. As newsletter author Parker Molloy explained in The New Republic: “By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.”
So step one is to stop the sanewashing. Step two is to directly address Trump’s cognitive decline. Let’s hope our top political journalists are brave and honest enough to go there.
“Word Salad” sounds like ‘food for thought’ or something nourishing, ‘baby babble’ or ‘geriatric gobbledygook’ are far more descriptive and a correct description.
Word salad is the correct term because he is a narcissist and narcissist use “word salad” to mess with your head. They start with one sentence and finish with something completely different. Never addressing the question that you asked them that IS word salad. I live with one, that’s how I know.
Verbal vomit
Investigate Trump’s podiatrist who treated Trump for syphilis using an old fashion remedy that sent it tertiary and is now eating away at what is left of Trump’s brain
Dan Froomkin, I am concerned about YOUR mental state. LOL
The new factor in being able to diagnose Trump’s mental and physical health is social media.
The Goldwater rule and the AP style guide are decades old, from the days before the internet!
Trump demonstrates his malignant narcissism on a DAILY BASIS via Xitter and Truth.
Sometimes Trump rage-tweets 30, 40, 50, and I believe up to 70 times in ONE DAY.
Sure, I don’t have training to diagnose which personality disorder(s) are correct for his condition(s), but what more do we need to know? I’m using the word cra-cra.
Again, Trump demonstrates is mental unfitness on a daily basis via social media. This is NEW and DIFFERENT evidence from the old days.
GOP really screwed things up this time! They should’ve nominate a young Moderate but no, they stuck with that stupid old fart Trump instead! Nice going losers, Fatso is gonna nuke us because of he has Dementia! Both parties are idiots for nominate old farts with mental health issues.
Dan, Do you know that the aforementioned Dr. Bandy X. Lee, under the auspices of the World Mental Health Coalition, is convening a major day-long conference in Washington D.C. at the end of this month (September 28, I believe) whose theme is THE MUCH MORE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP? The conference aims to address what Dr. Lee has called “the Trump Contagion” and what to do about it. Participants in the conference will include many of the top mental health professionals who contributed to her book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” I wonder if you could make your like-minded colleagues in the media aware of this event and perhaps induce them to cover it. Seems to me that broad awareness of the event could help open up the discussion of this super-important and urgent topic in the last month of this election cycle, and thrust it into the national conversation. It’s a conversation that frankly the nation should have been having for the last couple of years, as I’m sure you agree. But I guess better late than never. Their go fund me page had set a goal of $67,500 and have so far raised a little over $60,000. Please do what you can to spread the word. More information here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-expose-the-dangers-of-a-second-trump-presidency … We all must do whatever is in our power to do to keep this nut from re-taking the White House.
Thank Heavens people are beginning to talk about this more widely. Dr Brandy X. Lee and her colleagues have been dogged in their pursuit of this theme but stymied by the anachronistic Goldwater Rule for far too long. It’s been increasingly concerning to observe mainstream media’s focus upon the humour of Trump’s orations; his verbal missteps and “weaving” narratives (perceived only by him to be a reflection of his superior intelligence). Along with his appalling, outrageous and fantastic, but very easily discernible, outright lies. I despaired that journalists would ever stop making him the butt of their derision; ergo the prevailing themes, “Isn’t he funny?” “Isn’t what he said absurd?” I completely understand on one level that we laugh at him to retain our own sense of sanity. To control our growing sense of frustration. Because at times, he really seems like Teflon man. Even a court finding of 34 convictions, thanks to his Supreme Court appointees, can’t seem to stick. But at some point, framing him as comic – the perpetual source of our mirth – has got to stop. What we obviously have here is someone who epitomises all the negative qualities of the stereotypical Ugly American both domestically and abroad. Yes, we can laugh about it. But this man is so far from able to read the room and modify his behaviour. He is unable to assess the quality of the internet information he sources, or the quality of the people with whom he surrounds himself and the advice they give. He has the attention span of a gnat in debates and interviews. All those late-night tweets reflect zilch impulse control. He has not morally developed past Kohlberg’s 2nd stage of moral development (the predominant self-interest of the 3-7-year-old) when most 15–16-year-olds have reached Stage 4. Moreover, most mature adult leaders recognise their own shortcomings and seek advisors with the required skill set or attributes to meet the shortfall. Donald promotes himself instead as a strong and an all-knowing Messiah. He ignores the qualified advisors he SHOULD be listening to. Most of us are cognisant that his manipulations are that of the cult-leader and false prophet. Life experience means we are aware that his bombastically arrogant projections of superiority intellectually, and in economic management and foreign affairs are the false front for what is essentially the very little man, the failure, within. Most of us know this because we recognise that anyone who repeatedly harps on his supposed superior personal qualities or attributes is usually doing so because their inner self recognises their profound deficit. We do not need to be qualified psychologists or psychiatrists to recognise that this man is morally bankrupt and very unhinged. He observably falls far short of the required mental health and moral character of a POTUS as to potentially pose one of the greatest dangers to the democratic values on which the Union has been built. A 2nd Trump Term will only bring chaos to America and the world in general.
Well, two weeks later I think we can call it: The issue of Trump’s complete inability to function as an independent adult, much less president of the United States, was one of the Times’s patented “one and done,” “you can’t say we never covered it” stories. Just like when they discovered that he’d inherited all his money, lost it almost immediately and has been dancing as fast as he can in order to appear rich ever since.
It’s not something worth emphasizing, or going on a crusade about, like, say, the presidency of Harvard.
I do hope that something is done before to codes are sent. That meaning nuclear.