[Vision2020] 9-9-19 The Atlantic: "Trump Is Not Well" by Peter Wehner: Served Reagan, H.W. and W. Bush Administrations

[Ted Moffett]

Trump Is Not Well

Accepting the reality about the president’s disordered personality is
important—even essential.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/donald-trump-not-well/597640/

https://millercenter.org/peter-wehner

During the 2016 campaign, I received a phone call from an influential
political journalist and author, who was soliciting my thoughts on Donald
Trump. Trump’s 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 Trump’s mental health, since I considered that to be the most
important thing when it came to understanding him. It was Trump’s Rosetta
stone.

I wasn’t shy about making the same case publicly. During a July 14, 2016,
appearance
<https://www.c-span.org/video/?412218-3/washington-journal-peter-wehner-republican-party-campaign-2016>
 on C-SPAN’s *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 don’t oppose Mr. Trump because I think he’s 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 he’s erratic, I think he’s unprincipled, I think
he’s unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think he’s
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.

Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking,
functioning, and behaving—has become *the *defining characteristic of his
presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism;
his addiction to lying
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/donald-trumps-sinister-assault-truth/591925/>
about
things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing
those who could expose them
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/06/14/feature/how-donald-trump-silenced-the-people-who-could-expose-his-business-failures/>;
his detachment from reality, including denying things he said
<https://www.vox.com/2019/3/11/18259996/trump-tim-cook-apple-tweet-time-and-words>
even
when there is video evidence
<https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/06/17-things-donald-trump-said-and-then-denied-saying/>
to
the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories
<https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/08/11/trump-conspiracy-theories-cabrera-nr-vpx.cnn>;
his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and
his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating
<https://www.golfdigest.com/story/10-astonishing-claims-from-the-book-detailing-president-trumps-cheating-at-golf>
.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his
craving for adulation; his misogyny
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/trump-women-insults.html>,
predatory
<https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexual-misconduct/story?id=51956410>
 sexual behavior
<https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/14/politics/trump-women-accusers/index.html>,
and sexualization of his daughter
<https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-complete-ish-history-of-donald-trumps-obsession-with-1787304637>s;
his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack
of empathy
<https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/president-trump-smiles-gives-thumbs-up-in-photo-with-baby-orphaned-in-el-paso-massacre>
and
sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for
this country
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/us/politics/donald-trump-khizr-khan-wife-ghazala.html>
, mocking a reporter with a disability
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9reO3QnUA>, and ridiculing a former POW
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA5ybXu78cc>. (When asked about Trump’s
feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer
Roy Cohn, reportedly said
<https://theweek.com/speedreads/863494/house-investigating-why-routine-military-trip-middle-east-stopped-trumps-resort-scotland>,
“He pisses ice water.”)

The most recent example is the president’s bizarre fixation on falsely
insisting that he was correct to warn that Alabama faced a major risk from
Hurricane Dorian, to the point that he doctored a hurricane map with a
black Sharpie
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/what-i-said-was-accurate-trump-stays-fixated-on-his-alabama-error-as-hurricane-pounds-the-carolinas/2019/09/05/32597606-cfe7-11e9-8c1c-7c8ee785b855_story.html>
to
include the state as being in the path of the storm.

“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who is in
frequent contact with the White House told *Business Insider *on Friday
<https://amp.businessinsider.com/trump-aides-worried-about-mental-state-alabama-hurricane-dorian-2019-9?__twitter_impression=true>.
Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states
that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “You
should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to
comment.”

We have repeatedly heard versions of that sentiment over the course of
Trump’s presidency. It’s said that speculating on Trump’s mental health is
inappropriate and unwise, especially for those who are not formally trained
in the field of psychiatry or psychology.

That’s 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, Trump’s
psychological impairments are obvious to all who are not willfully blind.
On a daily basis we see the president’s 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 don’t have to be a car mechanic
to know that something is wrong with your car.


Accepting the reality about Trump’s disordered personality is important and
even essential. For one thing, it will help us to better react to Trump’s
freak show.

Even now, almost a thousand days into his presidency, the latest Trump
outrage elicits shock and disbelief in people. The reaction is, “Can you
believe he said *that *and did *this*?”

To which my response is, “Why are you surprised?” It’s a shock only if the
assumption is that we’re dealing with a psychologically normal human being.
We’re not. Trump is profoundly compromised, acting just as you would
imagine a person with a disordered personality would. Many Americans
haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that we elected as president a man
who is deeply damaged, an emotional misfit. But it would be helpful if they
did.

Among other things, it would keep us feeling less startled and disoriented,
less in a state of constant agitation, less susceptible to provocations.
Donald Trump thrives on creating chaos, on gaslighting us, on creating
antipathy among Americans, on keeping people on edge and off balance. He
wants to dominate our every waking hour. We ought not grant him that power
over us.

It might also take some of the edge off the hatred many people feel for
Trump. Seeing him for what he is—a terribly damaged soul, a broken man, a
person with a disordered mind—should not lessen our revulsion at how Trump
mistreats others, at his cruelty and dehumanizing actions. Nor should it
weaken our resolve to stand up to it. It does complicate the picture just a
bit, though, eliciting some pity and sorrow for Trump.

But above all, accepting the truth about Trump’s mental state will cause us
to take more seriously than we have our democratic duty, which is to
prevent a psychologically and morally unfit person from becoming president.

The office is too powerful, and the consequences are too dangerous, to
allow a person to become president who views morality only through the
prism of whether an action advances his own narrow interests, his own
distorted desires, his own twisted impulses. When an individual comes to
believe his interests and those of the nation he leads are one and the
same, it opens the door to all sorts of moral and constitutional devilry.

Whether or not his disorders are diagnosable, the president’s psychological
flaws are all too apparent. They were alarming when he took the oath of
office; they are worse now. Every day Donald Trump is president is a day of
disgrace. And a day of danger.

-----------------------------Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett


MORE BY PETER WEHNER

   - [image: Cesar Sayoc and President Donald Trump]
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-trump-has-done/595585/>
   Trump’s Words Are Poison
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-trump-has-done/595585/>PETER
   WEHNER <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/peter-wehner/>
   - [image: George Will stands in his office.]
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/what-makes-a-true-conservative/594889/>
   George Will Changes His Mind—But Stays True to His Convictions
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/what-makes-a-true-conservative/594889/>PETER
   WEHNER <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/peter-wehner/>
   -
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/evangelical-christians-face-deepening-crisis/593353/>
   The Deepening Crisis in Evangelical Christianity
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/evangelical-christians-face-deepening-crisis/593353/>PETER
   WEHNER <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/peter-wehner/>
   - [image: Donald Trump]
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/donald-trumps-sinister-assault-truth/591925/>
   Trump’s Sinister Assault on Truth
   <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/donald-trumps-sinister-assault-truth/591925/>PETER
   WEHNER <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/peter-wehner/>
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