Let's fire Trump

You have to start before you continue. I do not see facts in your posts. I see propaganda, name calling, and tired rhetoric supporting the narrative.

Ok sparky. Let get this show on the road.

Is Donald Trump actually crazy? 27 mental-health experts offer up their conclusions (Commentary)
Updated May 17, 2019; Posted Sep 19, 2017
By Douglas Perry | The Oregonian/OregonLive

https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2017/09/is_donald_trump_actually_crazy.html

President Donald Trump (AP)

Diagnosing President Donald Trump’s mental health has become a favorite pastime among his political opponents.

"Does the President suffer from early-stage dementia?" California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren wondered in a press statement earlier this year. Said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during the 2016 GOP presidential primaries: "I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but the guy needs therapy."

Are these armchair headshrinkers just lashing out because they don’t like Trump? Maybe -- but they also could be onto something. A new book offers essays about Trump by more than two dozen prominent mental-health experts. The general conclusion: Jeb Bush was probably underestimating the problem. Therapy won’t be enough.

The book, "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," doesn't offer a definitive diagnosis. It tries (sort of) to respect the so-called "Goldwater rule," which prohibits psychiatrists from diagnosing someone they have not personally examined.

Its authors, however, are very clear about one thing: we should all be very concerned about Trump’s mental health. What follows is a summary of some -- not all -- of the mental illnesses the experts fear the U.S. president may have. The editor, clinical psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, says the contributors used “science, research, observed phenomena and clinical skill” to reach their conclusions.

Bandy X. Lee, the editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” and an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine, had some trouble getting the book off the ground. She writes that shortly after the election last November she circulated a letter that expressed professional concern about the president-elect and that many of her colleagues refused to be signatories. “A number of people,” she wrote, “admitted they were afraid of some undefined form of governmental retaliation, so quickly had a climate of fear taken hold.”

Lee pushed forward anyway, and eventually organized a “Duty to Warn Conference,” which led to the book. “It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman write in the book’s prologue. But compromised in what way?

A core question they wanted contributors to address: “Is this man simply crazy, or is he crazy like a fox?”

Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure,it's not your fault
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2013

Stanford University professor emeritus Philip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword, with whom Zimbardo writes a column for Psychology Today, have an explanation for the president’s tweets in which he brags about his intelligence, issues threats to critics and allies alike, and contradicts himself. He’s a narcissist, or “an unbridled, or extreme, present hedonist.”

Present hedonists, Zimbardo and Sword write, “live in the present moment, without much thought of any consequences of their actions or of the future. An extreme present hedonist will say whatever it takes to pump up his ego and to assuage his inherent low self-esteem.” They also tend to lie, bully, dehumanize others and exhibit paranoia.

Evan Vucci

Zimbardo and Sword admit there is another possible explanation for Trump's behavior: dementia or Alzheimer's disease. They write that "comparing video interviews of Trump from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s to current video, we find that the differences (significant reduction in the use of essential words; an increase in the use of adjectives such as very, huge and tremendous; and incomplete, run-on sentences that don't make sense and that could indicate a loss of train of thought or memory) are conspicuously apparent."

Richard Nixon, the 37th president, was a narcissist, clinical psychologist Craig Malkin states. Donald Trump, the 45th president, is a step beyond that: a pathological narcissist. "Pathological narcissism begins," Malkin writes, "when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they'll do anything to get their 'high,' including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them."

Pathological narcissists feel entitled to whatever they want and have “empathy-impairment.” They often are emotionally volatile and employ “gaslighting” to create their desired reality. Malkin adds: “When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”

Tony Schwartz isn’t a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but he’s included among the contributors in “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” because of his unique perspective: he was the ghost-writer for Trump’s 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal,” which helped turn the young New York real-estate developer into a national figure.

Schwartz, a writer and energy consultant, says that nothing he’s seen of Trump as a presidential candidate and president suggest he’s changed at all since Schwartz shadowed him for months in the 1980s. “His aim is never accuracy; it’s domination,” he writes. He attributes this to Trump’s childhood, which was dominated by his “demanding, difficult and driven” father Fred. Ever since striking out on his own, Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men, Schwartz writes.

The Associated Press

Schwartz adds: “From the very first time I interviewed him in his office in Trump Tower in 1985, the image I had of Trump was that of a black hole. Whatever goes in quickly disappears without a trace.”

Is Donald Trump a sociopath? Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, says you just have to look at the president’s behavior. “The failure of normal empathy,” he writes, “is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.” In the book, he lists examples of Trump’s lack of empathy, “loss of reality” and “rage reactions and impulsivity.”

Trump (AP)

Dodes concludes: “Donald Trump’s speech and behavior show that he has severe sociopathic traits. The significance of this cannot be overstated. While there have surely been American presidents who could be said to be narcissistic, none have shown sociopathic qualities to the degree seen in Mr. Trump. Correspondingly, none have been so definitively and so obviously dangerous.”

Clinical psychologist John D. Gartner believes New York Times columnist David Brooks perfectly captured Trump’s “increasing hypomania” in a 2016 column.

Wrote Brooks: “He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week, he displays the classic symptoms of medium-grade mania in more disturbing forms: inflated self-esteem, sleeplessness, impulsivity, aggression and a compulsion to offer advice on subjects he knows nothing about. His speech patterns are like something straight out of a psychiatric textbook. Manics display something called ‘flight of ideas.’ It’s a formal thought disorder in which ideas tumble forth through a disordered chain of associations.”

After summarizing Trump’s boom-and-bust business career, Gartner writes: “Trump’s first hypomanic crash resulted in a few bankruptcies, but while he is president, the consequences could be on a scale so vast it’s difficult even to contemplate. ... His worsening hypomania is making him increasingly more irrational, grandiose, paranoid, aggressive, irritable and impulsive.”


Psychiatrist Steve Wruble lays much of the blame for President Trump’s mental-health problems on Trump’s domineering father, Fred.

“Donald Trump’s early development,” he writes, “created who we are witnessing. ... [H]is father’s intensity left its mark on the entire family. Donald’s oldest brother essentially killed himself under his father’s rule. This tragedy must have played a prominent role in the formation of Donald’s identity and left minimal room to rebel against his father’s authority, except through competition in the realm of business success. Despite their appreciation for each other, the tension between father and son caused Donald psychological wounds that still fester.”

Therapist Diane Jhueck asks, rhetorically: Why wasn’t Donald Trump’s “dangerousness” identified and tackled early in his life? The answer: he was “insulated by inherited wealth.” She adds that “his father had similar mental health disturbances,” lessening the possibility that the younger Trump’s behavioral problems would be addressed. She writes that Trump “exhibits extreme denial of any feedback that does not affirm his self-image and psychopathic tendencies, which affords him very limited ability to learn and effectively adjust to the requirements of the office of president. Rather, he consistently displays a revenge-oriented response to any such feedback.”

Robert Jay Lifton, a professor emeritus of John Jay College and a psychiatry lecturer at Columbia University, fears this will all result in “malignant normality.” That is, that Trump’s abnormal behavior, because he’s the president of the United States, will become viewed by his fellow Americans -- particularly children -- as normal. Lifton, who early in his career studied how Nazi doctors at death camps came to accept their assignments (it often included heavy drinking), says the “process of adaptation to evil ... is all too possible.” He decided to participate in this book project because he believes the citizenry must “recognize the urgency of the situation in which the most powerful man in the world is also the bearer of profound instability and untruth.”

Bandy Lee and Judith Lewis Herman offer this chilling conclusion: “There are those who still hold out hope that this president can be prevailed upon to listen to reason and curb his erratic behavior. Our professional experience would suggest otherwise.”


Go on. Impeach those therapists.

Now its your turn.

27 quacks, no doctor makes a diagnosis without seeing the patient in a clinical setting. Period.

Why don't you post some threads about conservative issues and discuss them instead of always just posting anti-Trumpism?

It would be refreshing to have an actual discussion about political ideology for a change.

Which one of those cited is a quack? Which one? Name one quack.

So then all your comments about Biden come from up your butt?

You are dense as a rock.

All of them are. I gave you my reason. Ask your doctor to diagnose a friend without seeing him, see how far you get.

And you are desperately trying to be relevant, and failing big time.

Because not all Republicans are conservative.

Take health care. A national heath care mandate is neither Republican or Democratic. Richard Nixon and Teddy Kennedy worked together to develop a national single payer health care program.

How a national healthcare program would be administered is what is Republican or Democratic. Democrats would want a Federal administered program the way Medicare was origionally, Republican would want the states adminitering it with participation. ACA even though promoted by a Democratic President was a Republican response to health care and it was passed by a bipartisan Congress.

Conservatives from both parties do not want national healthcare - conservative Republicans don't want government interference with a privately owned industry, and conservative Blue Dog Democrats don't want it because they feel it will make their health care costs from their pockets increase.

A lot of the arguments you and your ilk make are not Democrat vs Republican, they're "Conservative"(libertarian) vs liberal arguments.

I was raised by my grandparents, both life-long conservative Democrats. That means they supported organized labor (even though my grandfather was a member of management in the railroad which employed him). That meant they supported assistance to the poor and unemployed--"social" assistance. That meant they opposed foreign military adventurism (and my grandfather was a veteran of the Great War). That meant they were fiscally conservative--they opposed deficit spending and they opposed military spending. They were both opposed to FDR's deficit spending in the depression (perhaps a little hypocritically, as my grandfather was steadily employed throughout that period). It is worth noting, though, that none of FDR's alphabet soup of agencies succeeded in pulling the nation out of economic depression--only the Second World War accomplished that.

All in all, contemporary Republican conservatives bear no resemblance to the conservative Republicans and conservative Democrats of the past. That's without even going into the surreal world of contemporary Republican narrative.

Oh, I didn't realize you were co-opting the term, 'conservative' to be radical. No matter, I would still rather have substantive discussion about political ideas/views than read negativizing and character attacks about opponents.


'Mandate' could mean a lot of different things. I'd rather talk about that, however, then about which factions and/or politicians worked on it. Real democracy is about thinking for yourself, not taking sides on issues based on who else has or hasn't done so. That is social-conformism, a big part of socialism.


The issue is how it affects the rest of the economy and how it affects the uninsured. If it drives up prices for the uninsured, it has the effect of punishing people for not having insurance and forcing people into seeking employer-group plans.

Democrats/socialists don't want it to cost less, however, because they want the tax revenues and other economic benefits that come with making care expensive and using the government as a credit card to fund it and send the bill to rich taxpayers.


A true free market would prohibit insurance altogether and allow supply to adapt to natural, as opposed to insurance-subsidized, demand.


I'm not really committed to my arguments as much as I am just trying to make points that put things in perspective. What I'm really trying to do is have discussions, but people tend to just accept or reject things immediately instead of fleshing out ideas and lines of reasoning in discussion.

I don't know how they talk themselves into being Republicans when they wouldn't know a Republican precept if it it them on the ass. I think it started when the Reagan GOP started single issue electioneering over abortion. They realized that registration wise Democrats out number the Republicans and they saw how the "silent majority" that elected Nixon could be turned into a "moral majority" which became the "big tent. They got people so riled up over single issues they voted against their own interests.

Trump doesn't sound like the Republicans I knew growing up. Or any of the blue dog Democrats I knew from the south, either.

Its put me in the position of voting for Democrats in National offices for the last thirty years, and about half the time in state elections especially here in Texas.

I don't have any problem with the definition of mandate: its the political will of voters for a particular policy regardless of party. You "Conservatives" are the one who spill religion into it and change the meaning.



Speaking of babble. Uninsured aren't all that interested in cost of insurance or if it gets more expensive. They already don't have it. ACA lowered the cost of insurance and got over 90% of the nation insured and no one's insurance got mre or too expensive. Then Trump. Other nations have single payer health programs covering everybody. What makes us to stupid to figure it out, too?



We already had over 90% of the nation insured and all you guys did was reduce that. Where's Trump's beautiful plan??? Where's the Republican congress's plan? No. you want to uninsure everybody , reduce wages and this is going to make insurance affordable how??? Most of the rest of the world has found it affordable and wise to insure everybody, even the Cubans can do it. Again, what makes the US so stupid we can't figure it out? You're going to kill ACA. What the **** are you replacing it with? high unemployment, smaller wages and a "free market of insurance".

You aren't supporting any plans because you don't have a plan except to let Trump and McConnell figure it out.

Shame on you.

BTW: my grandfather was chief light and signal engineer for the Norfolk and Western, and the Nickle Plate Road. His dad was a track foreman for a road in Ky, my great uncle was yard master for the Erie Lackawanna in Akron. I have two cousins who are ready to retire from whoever got the Penn Central.

Rail roads were a good way to get into the middle class early last century.

Your aggressive rhetoric makes you less respectable in discussion. There's no reason for you to use the 2nd person plural "you people," except to provoke collective ego response. Stop trying to start factional wars.

I thought you wanted to talk about what 'mandatory health care' could mean, but you just want to argue over who owns the word, 'conservative.'


Speaking of babble. Uninsured aren't all that interested in cost of insurance or if it gets more expensive. They already don't have it. [/quote]
They could afford it if free market competition brought prices down to levels that are affordable out-of-pocket.


It didn't. It lowered out-of-pocket costs by subsidizing care out of other people's pockets. That's what Dems/socialism always does. It lowers some people's costs by taking money from others and pumping it into the economy where it causes inflation and thus makes everyone's money worth less.


I wonder if your mouth is as big and loud in reality as it seems like it would be from the way you write.


By providers, suppliers, etc. lowering prices to gain more sales.

Also, there need to be more affordable routes to licensing so people who want to charge more affordable prices can afford to because they are not swamped in debts, insurance costs, etc.


Cuban medical professional work for peanuts and that's why health care is abundant and affordable there. US Democrats want to subsidize health care costs at current levels, which is a recipe for inflation and overtaxation.

I don't even think European health care pays costs as high as US health care.


Subsidizing and mandating insurance was a recipe to stoke investment, which drove up the prices in every industry connected to it. US health care was overpriced and caused inflation before ACA, but afterward it was only stoked to grow even more monstrous.

If you want to expand access to anything, you have to make it more affordable and that only happens when investors can't bank on subsidies and guaranteed sales due to mandatory buy-in.

What you really need are more public health clinics that pay people teacher-level salaries and allow anyone to come get care for free or for minimal cost. You have to fund such clinics very tightly to prevent them from attracting overpriced vendors who suck up all the money. You need to find ways to facilitate good-hearted people to get access to medical training/knowledge for little or no cost, and allow them to 'practice their love,' (to quote GW Bush), because there are people with loving hearts who will help people for free/cheap if they aren't saddled with the heavy yoke of educational debt, insurance fees, licensing fees, and other regulations that drive up their operational costs.

The name of THIS thread is "Let's fire Trump" but you don't seem to want to discuss that in any way. So, unless you plan to discuss how to to do that, why are you even on this thread?

I rather be truthful and honest than be respected by those who back half witted leaders and quackish frauds. I take your lack of respect for me as high praise indeed. Thank-you.

Please don't take my total lack of respect for you for any more or any less than what it is: a total lack of respect.

Watching you dance around your half formed concept of what an economy is and gloss over your total disregard for anyone less off than you was nothing less than disgusting in its display of mindless obliviousness. And all for "free market reform". What you don't know about economics and the free market merely constitutes the entire book all about economics and the free market. You're blithe mewlings on right and wrong are just the cherry on top of the **** sunday you propose and the "president" wishes to serve up to the rest of us. The one thing you mopes just don't get is he doesn't need you, he doesn't love you, he could care not care less if you live or die anymore than he cares if I live or if I die. He just wants your vote and to sell you MAGA hats at $30.00 a whack. And you guys stomp all over each other to get one.

Shame on you. Your heads are on the same block as the rest of us. He just does not care about you or me.

Bull ****. Thats what we got right now. It already isn't working. Why aren't health plans getting cheaper already????? Are you really that dense????

Many Americans have blinders on when it comes down to Donald Trump. They believe he's doing a "great" job as our president. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/07/americans-healthcare-medical-costs
United StatesUnited States
Confirmed 1.29M +24,572
Recovered 174K
Deaths 76,513 one day: +1,750
Trump, "It'll disappear like magic." "I don't take responsibility."
At this point it's clear: The Trump Administration has failed. The United States has so far incurred 26,000 deaths, 79 per million; South Korea, in contrast, has incurred 225 deaths, just 4 per million. Taiwan's death toll stands at just 6 deaths (0.3 per million) and Singapore's death toll stands at 10 (2 per million).

Population of US 327 million. Do the math.

That leaves 999,921 alive. Stop complaining. It common knowledge the numbers are unreliable. And your numbers drop the mortality rate to almost nothing.

What has the population have to do with anything? It's the increase in the death rate from the pandemic that Trump called a "democratic hoax." https://khn.org/morning-breakout/in-24-hour-span-americas-death-toll-climbs-by-4591-as-coronavirus-edges-closer-to-becoming-leading-cause-of-death/