I slept quite late (for me) this morning and got around to begin to write my Substack at 7:30. I am usually writing it at 5:30. This is why I am allowing myself the luxury of reposting, with some additions, the comment I posted on Sabrina Haake’s Substack.
Here’s an excerpt from what she wrote:
Trump’s death penalty ads also revealed his relatively young thirst for police brutality. He wrote in 1989 that police should be “unshackled” from the constant threat of being called to account for “police brutality,” a sentiment he has echoed ever since:
In a 2017 speech, Trump said police should not to be “nice” to suspects and encouraged arresting officers not to shield suspects’ heads as they loaded them into squad cars;
In 2020, he celebrated the police killing of Micael Reinoehl, a community activist;
In 2020, in response to protests over police brutality in the George Floyd case, he asked his staff if the protestors couldn’t “just be shot;”
In 2023, he said police should respond to shoplifters by shooting them;
In 2024, he said that one day of “violent policing” would end crime, suggesting that if police were free to brutalize the population, crime would disappear;
In April, 2025, he issued an Executive Order “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement” promoting aggressive police tactics and making it more difficult to punish brutality; and
On August 11, 2025, announcing his “federal takeover” of Washington DC, Trump said police and military forces could “do whatever the hell they want” to people on the streets, expressly encouraging brutality.
This led me to write this comment:
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadistic_personality_disorder ) defines Sadistic Personality Disorder as an obsolete term for a proposed personality disorder defined by a pervasive pattern of sadistic and cruel behavior. People who fit this diagnosis were thought to have a desire to control others and to have accomplished this through use of physical or emotional violence." It is a part of the Dark Tetrad (which is worse than the Dark Triad as I explained in my Substack in March: Sadists ® U.S: Trump and The Dark Tetrad. https://halbrown.substack.com/p/sadists-us-trump-and-the-dark-tetrad It should be obvious that Trump is an example of someone who has all of the traits of The Dark Tetrad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism.
You can identify someone as a sadist not only by how they enjoy inflicting pain on someone, but also by their fantasies about how they like to be responsible for hurting others. The Central Park Five ad combined with other aspects of Trump's psychopathology, his driving need for attention and revenge for example, with his sadism. In recent years as you note his visualizing and describing the police bashing a suspects head as they pushed then into a cruiser, his wanting alligators in the Rio Grande and alluding to prisoners trying to escape into the Everglades being eaten by them. He floated the idea of immgrants being shot. I suspect he finds supposedly comic depictions of people being hurt hilarious.
It is bad enough to say "if only Trump was merely an exemplar of the Dark Triad." He is far, far worse than this. He is THE exemplar to The Dark Tedrad.
Could this be worse?
It can, and in fact is so bad I had to make up a psychopatholgy to describe it adding a fifth element in "Trump is in the Dark Pentagon, and I don't mean the home of the Dept. of Defense" here https://halbrown.substack.com/p/trump-is-in-the-dark-pentagon-and This adds mania. You can see this in his rapid speaking, his jumping from the topic he's talking about to and unrelated topic (both indicative of racing thoughts), how he's up rage tweeting in the middle of the night.
Trump is a boiling, roiling caldron of noxious psychopathology emitting deadly to democracy funes.
Related to this I also wrote "When they spit, we hit." As if we needed more proof that Trump was a sadistic malignant narcissist he shares a viscious ditty, here: https://halbrown.substack.com/p/when-they-spit-we-hit-as-if-we-needed
I recommend not only that everyone read Sabrina’s Substack, but in the comments those by the other retired mental health professional and regular commenter to her Substacks, Greeley Miklashek, MD. He has his own diagnostic take on Trump which he goes into detail about after calling him “our Mad King Donald the 1st (who) is often psychotic and delusional, so extremely dangerous to anyone and all around him.”
Many thanks to my friend Sabrina Haake, not only for her insights, but for giving me something to write about this morning.
Nobody is likely to mistake my AI images of Trump (top of page) for real photos. It is possible to use AI to create quite realistic photos. All it takes is the right software and having no compunctions about deceiving the public.
