Stable Genius or Narcissistic High-Functioning Sociopath

 

Stable Genius or Narcissistic High-Functioning Sociopath

When the Mentally Repugnant Rewrite the Constitution

In 2020, when Donald Trump was running for a second term against Joe Biden, his cousin, now Mary Trump (PhD Psychology), published the above book, a warning of the dangers of the man, her cousin, she grew up with: President Donald Trump. While not a formal diagnosis, Mary’s credentials were sufficiently grounded to lend gravitas to her observations of young, and then older, Donald Trump. According to Mary, young Donald was essentially abandoned by his mother and lived under the powerful mandates of his father, Frederick: “‘Humiliating his children, sowing divisiveness, and bestowing money were Fred Trump's love languages. Mary Trump describes Fred as a ‘high-functioning sociopath’ who ‘seemed to have no emotional needs at all… I never saw any man in my family cry or express affection for one another in any way other than the handshake that opened and closed any encounter,’ she writes.” July 15th, Psychology Today. Dr Trump maintains that young Donald followed his father’s stark and emotionless path.

Here we are, on the cusp of the summer of 2025, watching Donald Trump feasting on a massive military parade, June 14th, coincidentally the 250th anniversary of founding of the US Army, and the birth of Donald John Trump, which event the President has turned into a magnificent autocrat’s dream showcase of military power. It is touted as a birthday salute to the President, a time when Trump’s suggestion that his military should refuse their scheduled pay raise and the Americans tighten their expenditures (earning him the nickname of “Donald ‘Two Doll’ Trump”). The cost of that parade is estimated at between $25M to $45M. I suspect that June 14th will also be a day of massive anti-Trump protests across the nation.

Trump has passed dozens of executive orders, many which fly in the face of a plain reading of the US Constitution, as numerous federal judges (including the Supreme Court) have determined. So, an updated, unofficial observational diagnosis of Trump’s rising autocratic power comes from Dr. Jocelyn Sze, a clinical psychologist who specializes in evidence-based treatment of PTSD and anxiety, an assistant clinical professor at University of California, Berkeley, writing for the May 23rd Huffington Post, who looks at that parade and parallel presidential edicts and says: “We’re squarely in Criterion 1 of narcissistic personality disorder: ‘a grandiose sense of self-importance.’… When narcissistic control seeps into leadership, it distorts truth, erodes trust and destabilizes institutions. The more we understand these dynamics, the better we can protect both the public and the health of our democracy…

“Authoritarian leaders, like narcissistic family members, rely on well-worn tactics to manufacture a psychological state of volatile uncertainty — where outcomes aren’t just unknown, but constantly shifting and unpredictable. This overwhelms the brain’s ability to anticipate and prepare, keeping people mentally off-balance and easier to control. The good news: Awareness works like a vaccine, gradually building psychological immunity against further harm.

“For another patient, ‘moving the goalposts’ was the favored tactic of her ex-boyfriend to generate such volatility. He would make a demand (under the guise of ‘improving her’) and then change the expectation once it was met. In government, this looks like constantly reversing policies or public positions so that citizens, the media and allies remain unmoored.” Call it gaslighting, crass manipulation and complete insensitivity to the harm caused to others. Sound familiar?

Trump has enlisted cabinet-level advisors who expound even the most patently absurd Trump statements. Homeland Security head, Kristi Noem giving congressional subcommittee her totally erroneous definition of the constitutional right to challenge wrongful incarceration; to her “habeas corpus” was the unilateral right for the President to deport non-US citizens. Even as clear evidence was presented – that the “evidentiary” video of the “genocide” of white Afrikaner farmers slaughtered in South Africa that the President Trump showed that nation’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was in fact footage taken in civil war-torn Congo – White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted it was South Africa.

State Department Secretary Marco Rubio praised agreements with El Salvador and other Latin American countries to accept migrant deportees, saying “secure borders, safe communities and zero tolerance for criminal cartels are once again the guiding principles of our foreign policy.” And then there is this reality, posted by the May 21st New Republic, of Rubio’s testimony before Congress, looking at the cryptocurrency Trump company website: “‘It literally says on the website that Mr. Trump and his family members own a 60 percent stake in this company…. [California Representative Sara] Jacobs said. ‘I’m asking you a very simple question: Do you believe it’s a conflict of interest to have a president personally profiting from a deal with a foreign government while selling weapons to that same government who’s enabling a genocide?”

“‘I don’t accept the premise of your question,’ Rubio replied. ‘I think [the UAE’s investing in that company] has nothing to do with personally benefiting from anything. This has to do with the fact that in order to conduct foreign policy in the Middle East, you have to deal with the UAE.’”

The master architect supporting Trump’s ascension of one-man rule is non-lawyer, 39-year-old deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who has stated dramatically incorrectly that “The right of ‘due process’ is to protect citizens from their government, not to protect foreign trespassers from removal.” The 5th Amendment of that Constitution protects all persons within our borders. Without this list of enablers, and the echo chamber of Republicans in Congress repeating (often verbatim) this roiling litany of White House falsehoods, Trump would not remotely have been as success as he has in redefining the United States. Intimidation works!

Trump knows that transcripts and presidential documents, mandated to be retained forever by the Presidential Records Act of 1978, can also prove his fabrications, inconsistencies and misstatements. But as Will Weissert, writing for the May 24th Associated Press has seen: “[T]he Trump administration has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps such as Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for record-keeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership.”

Guess who’s eating it all up. As conservative CNN commentator, Sara Sidner, noted on May 24th: “Putin can't believe his luck that he got such a gullible counterpart in America… [Trump] has not been able to end that war on day one, he has not been able to push for peace in Gaza. the EU countries are ignoring his tariff threat because they're like, 'Well, we'll just wait, we'll just wait him out.'

"[Trump] desperately wants… respect, and I think that's why he resorts to some of these bullying antics in the Oval Office, because the only way he can get it is through strong-arming… They don't respect him, they think he's a joke. They think he is the embodiment of America's ugliest stereotypes." Putin has played narcissistic Trump like a fiddle. As the Russian dictator promises the potential of a ceasefire with Ukraine, he has presented a list of preconditions that effectively require Ukraine’s surrender… as he has ordered a massive escalation of drone attacks directly on Kiev. And Trump’s enablers have supported Trump’s move to autocracy at every step.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those Americans who believe that they are protected from autocracy, that it can’t happen here, they need to open their eyes… and do something, because it is happening here!