MAGA World loves that Trump's a malginant narcissist, will they care that he's become cognitively impaired?

 

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

Few residents of MAGA World read HUFFPOST. I can tell this from from the few trolls who comment of their articles. I doubt many will read this article: 

Befuddled Trump Can't Figure Out Which Bush Did What In Bizarre Rant

I won't even excerpt the article since this wouldn't do it justise. Vox associate editor sums it up in his post on X: 

if Joe Biden confused Jeb and George W. Bush, Hannity would anchor special coverage that would last until the 2024 election

Here's another article:

'Terribly confused' Trump's rant about whales could be sign of cognitive decline: Morning Joe

If you do a search on Google with the words Trump malignant narcissism (here) you find numerious articles. Scroll down to the 32rd and you'll find one of mine.

Here's what I posted on Daily Kos.

Click above to read

For this blog I've changed the illustration.

The HUFFPOST article decribes the most recent example of cognitive confusion that any objective clinician would see as alarming indications that their patient might be suffering from early dementia. The only other explanation that I can see is that Trump's confusion about which Bush was which is due to his being under extreme stress. Of couse one explanation doesn't preclude the other.

I am not a medical clinician but I have been trained to know when a patient has symptoms that require a referral to a neurologist for an assessment. If Trump was my patient this is what I would have done when I was in practice. A neurologist would do more than administer the MOCA.

I am not even sure that if Trump took the MOCA test (above) now he would be given a clean bill of health as far as signs of early dementia.

The question as to whether his hard-core MAGA cult would care about this is something to consider. The typical member of the Trump cult is White and poorly educated. Part of the - love is not too strong a word - for him comes from his being a grandiose narcissist who rants about vegeance against his enemies. They vicarously enjoy how he relishes expressing how he'd destroy his enemies if he become president again. They not only care about him wanting to also destroy democracy but practically drool over the idea he'd become a dictator who whould empower them and push policies that express their bigotted beliefs.

Trump has built a cult of personality. It is difficult to imagine MAGA World with anyone else as its ruler. Unlike Trump's good pal Kim Jung Un he wasn't groomed to be successor to a dynasty.

There's no way Donald Jr. and certainly not Eric, could out-Trump or eve come close to equal-Trumping the original.

The salient question for Trump's reelection is whether his cult wants someone who is the embodiment of the mad king from The Game of Thrones as their leader but who is also becoming senile.

Click to read article

I can't see any of the other GOP presidential candiates coming close to having the kind of charisma Trump exudes for his cult. Trump's madness is his brand.

If you add senility, or fast developing dementia, to his madness it will be fascinating to see if he can keep a grip on the hold he exerts over his cult.

Addendum:

The only GOP candidate who actually has their own kind of charisma is Chris Christi. I think this is why Trump fears him the most. While he can never be a cult leader, and I doubt he aspires to be one, there's no doubt that the man is a commanding pressense.

Christi can equal or better the bloviating of Trump, and he does so with a razor sharp wit using fresh rather than stale retorts and talking points the way Trump does.

If it comes down to Republicans wanting a Trump-lite candidate who promises a renewal of Trump's policies only from someone who has full command of their mental faculties they will go with DeSantis or Ramaswamy. They could want someone more in the middle like Nikki Haley. They won't want Christi who is more of a Republican like John McCain was or Mitt Romney is today. Christi doesn't represent today's  MAGA Republican Party.

If I was a small government Republican rather than a big and effective government liberal Democrat I'd favor Chris Christi. He doesn't believe in America First nationalism and he doesn't want to dismantle democracy and replace it with autocracy. He is also very, very smart.

Since the GOP has done an effective job of demonizing President Biden I actually think Christi would stand a good chance of becoming the next president if he pulled a rabbit out of the hat and won the GOP nomination.

It is possible if Trump's cognitive decline contiunes to the point that it is impossible to deny unless one is a totally brainwashed member of his cult. This will leave the GOP candidates to battle it out among thmselves and Christi will then have an opportunity, to use the Mafia term popularized in The Godfather, to make his bones, and take out the other candidates.

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Christi should educate Republicans about Trump's psychopathology

By Hal Brown, MSW

The following is from the Raw Story, above

"As far as what's going on with Donald Trump in terms of these charges, the fact is that he doesn't believe he won," he explained. "He was concerned before the election that he was losing, and I know that because he said it to me directly. So he knows he didn't win, but his ego, George, won't permit him to believe that he's the only person in America, outside the state of Delaware, to ever have lost to Joe Biden."

Christi makes a reference to Trump's ego here...

So he knows he didn't win, but his ego, George, won't permit him to believe that he's the only person in America, outside the state of Delaware, to ever have lost to Joe Biden."

What needs to be understood in this is what the ego is (in Freudian psychology and common parlance)

The ego is the personality component responsible for dealing with reality.

Everyone has an ego. The term ego is sometimes used to describe your cohesive awareness of your personality, but personality and ego are not the same. The ego represents just one component of one's full personality.

The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id's desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. Reference https://www.verywellmind.co...

What Christi should have said was that "this pathological grandiose and delusional narcissist is unable to accept that he lost...." even though most people know what he means when he simply says ego.

Christi is in a position to remind people ignorant of psychology who never heard the message form so many mental health professionals that Trump is mentally unfit to be president. He can explain how his psychopathogy renders him dangerous to our democracy not only here but in the world.

Here on Morning Joe he says Trump is detached from reality. This is a diagnostic term in psychiatry.

Mental health professionals from those like the contributors to "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" to comparatively obscure psychotherapists like me have been educating those willing to learn about Trump's psychopathology, his malignant narcissism, mostly to Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans, since 2016. We need someone like Christi who will educate Republicans ingorant about his psychopathology and who will hear him as he campaigns for the GOP nomination. 

Addendum:

Back in April I published the following on my blog:

Nobody knows for certain how Trump feels except Trump

Caricatures by DonkeyHotey

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired clinical social worker and psychotherapist

This is the title of a Washington Post (subscription) article today:

Shocked and defiant: How Trump is responding to unprecedented indictment

Since a grand jury issued charges related to hush money to an adult film star, the former president has cycled through a range of emotions and postures.

This is an article by Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey

I added this comment to the article:

Nobody knows how Trump is feeling except Trump himself. All that can be reported on with certainty is what is observable. The words "as if he is" should preface any sentence purporting to describe how he feels. Thus even the title of this article makes assumptions. This to be accurate it should read Acting shocked and expressing defiance.

Psychotherapists like me look at this through a different lens than many others. The public would gain a better understand of him if they looked up the term narcissistic injury. They will find this article by Mary Trump: Donald Trump's niece says her uncle felt "narcissistic injury" from being GOP's "biggest loser".

Even Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, is speculating each time she describes her uncle's inner life. Her describing Uncle Donald feeling narcissistic injury makes sense. Look at the definition here and see what you think.

I am as guilty of speculating as all the other mental health professionals who have gone public with their psychological analyses of Donald Trump. Look my name up with Trump and this is what you'll find:

Click above to enlarge image

Google search of Hal Brown Trump here.

My articles and those by mental health professionals who are prominent in the field all helped inform the public as to the likely psychodynamics of Donald Trump, emphasize likely.

If a research psychologist was to construct an experiment in an attempt to determine whether a subject met various diagnostic assessments such as their being a malignant narcissist they could begin with a list of observable behaviors they would predict would manifest themselves in the future if they had the theorized diagnosis. 

Donald Trump has been diagnosed as both an extreme narcissist, a sociopath, and a malignant narcissist which combines the two disorders. We don't actually know, absolutely know, that any of these diagnostic assessments are 100% accurate.

100% certainty is a standard rarely met with a psychiatric diagnosis. There's no MRI machine to scan Trump's brain. There's no pathologist's microscope to put a slide of his mind under to see just how malignant it is.

As Trump will find out within a year or so, 100% certainty isn't even a standard relied on for conviction in a criminal court where the standard is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ashley Parker and Josh Hawley, not to pick on them, are not mental health experts. Here's an excerpt of what is in today's article:

Yet in the immediate aftermath of the grand jury’s decision related to hush money paid to an adult-film star, Trump was not happy, said one person with direct knowledge of his reaction. Others described Trump as “upset,” “irritated,” “deflated” and “shocked,” though some noted that he also remained “very calm” and “rather stoic, actually.”

Even they are relying on second hand reporting, and they only say that "others" who aren't identified described Trump's behavior. We don't know if these are people who actually were with him.

More people described in the article say they know how Trump feels:

• “He’ll do Trump,” said David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser who is not working on his 2024 campaign. “He’ll show up. He’ll be indignant.”
• “He initially was shocked,” said Joe Tacopina, a Trump lawyer, on NBC’s “Today” show Friday. “After he got over that, he put a notch on his belt and he decided we have to fight now, and he got into a typical Donald Trump posture where he’s ready to be combative on something he believes is an injustice.”
• “He has never been concerned about any story that paints him as a moral reprobate,” one Trump ally said. “His whole life and career have been full of those stories and they’ve never harmed him, in his mind.”

There's one quote at the end of the article which makes sense:

But the defiant posture seems likely to remain. In a statement, Taylor Budowich, the head of MAGA Inc., railed against the indictment and promised it would deliver Trump another stint in the White House.

The use of the word "posture" is accurate. The head of MAGA Inc. isn't saying he knows for sure what Trump is feeling. He is predicting how he will act. He's probably correct. 

Only Trump is capable of knowing whether he's playing a role or whether he's struggling to avoid experiencing fear. I say "capable" because Trump, like anyone, has psychological defense mechanisms to prevent anxiety from percolating into conscious awareness.

Bottom line:

Only this guy knows what is happening in his mind, and then only in the part of his mind he is aware of.

By definition, nobody knows what is occurring in their unconscious mind. Self-aware people can make informed guesses about this but the unconscious is not conscious. It manifests itself though feelings, behaviors, and hints as to what is going on in the recesses of our minds often comes out in our dreams.

An iceberg is often used to provide a visual representation of Freud's theory that most of the human mind operates unconsciously. Public domain

Updates:

1) In RawStory, writing about the jury pool Trump will face in NYC, Tom Boggioni writes:

Donald Trump faces the embarrassment of arraignment, fingerprinting and a police mugshot in Manhattan on Tuesday, but one legal expert suggested his worst nightmare will come from a jury made up of New Yorkers who know him all too well.

 

Here again we see Trump being described as if he is psychologically normal. He faces what we would be embarrassed by, hell, we'd be mortified. There are two meanings of the word "nightmare" of which one is being applicable here, ie. a terrifying experience. Trump may find it exhilarating. What he can't control is an actual nightmare occurring while he is sleeping. I'd say there is more chance he'll have one or more of these than his actually experiencing conscious manifestations of anxiety.

2) Michael Cohen told Joy Reid that Trump can put on fake bravado but is petrified. He has no way of knowing this is true. He ought to have said that Trump, if he was normal, would be petrified.

3) There is one thing we know for sure abut Trump. It is that yesterday he took a motorcade to play golf (article). However this was arranged, it was done is such a way that he would pass by his supporters. I think it is significant that there were no photographs of him actually playing (at least none that I could find). These might have captured expressions that suggested he was feeling the stress of being indicted.