Changing a lie believing brain with psychology, logic, and attempts at rational persuasion may be futile: psychopathology, neuroscience, ingrained cultural metaphors

 

By Hal Brown, MSW, psychotherapist and mental health center director retired after 40 years of clinical practice.

Yesterday I praised Chauncey DeVaga for his Salon column which featured the opinions of two esteemed psychoanalysts, Justin Frank and Lance Dodes, both of whom have warned of the dangers of Trump's psychopathology for years.

If you missed the blog you can read it here: Dr. Justin Frank, author of "Trump on the Couch" gives us understatement of the decade about Trump's behavior.

I am on the email list for NeuroscienceNew.com and by coincidence was sent the article The Language of Lies: How Hate Speech Engages Our Neural Wiring to Foster Division which I found presented another perspective on what I wrote about yesterday.

The article describes the research described In the book "Politics, Lies and Conspiracy Theories, just released, by Marcel Danesi Ph.D., a professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada. He analyzes the speeches of dictators including Mussolini, Stalin, Putin and Hitler, as well as prominent hate groups.

Here's the summary:

Researchers analyze the language of dictators and hate groups, uncovering a common use of dehumanizing metaphors to fuel hatred. Such metaphors ‘switch on’ neural pathways in the brain, bypassing higher cognitive reasoning centers and steering focus towards certain ideas.

These mental patterns can become entrenched over time, making it challenging for individuals to revise their views even in the face of contradicting evidence.

The research underscores the potential dangers posed by such language, including the escalation of violence and political instability.

Danesi's research shows that such dehumanizing metaphors are powerful "because they tap into and ‘switch on’ existing circuits in the brain that link together important and salient images and ideas. In effect, metaphors bypass higher cognitive reasoning centers, directing our thoughts to focus on certain things whilst ignoring others."

He observes that the more these brain circuits are activated the more hardwired they become. Eventually they.becomes almost impossible to turn off. This can be see with those who believe conspiracy theories. The more the therapies are reinforced the more difficult it becomes to lead these people to rethink their basis of their beliefs and realize they are wrong. 

The conclusion is far from optimistic:

What can be done?

Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves from the power of lies? According to Danesi, the best thing we can do is to understand the metaphors of the other party, and to examine one’s own metaphors.

However, history and science tells us that it is unlikely to work – research shows that once a lie is accepted as believable, the brain becomes more susceptible to subsequent lying.

Those mental health professionals who are attempting to understand the entrenched and erroneous  belief systems of Trump and his hard-core supporters tend to lean toward those who employ an understanding of the way the mind functions based of Freudian, or psychoanalytic theory (the reason for my photo of Freud's couch above).

I count myself among these mental health practitioners who have been trained in psychoanalytical personality theory and either psychoanalysis for them and psychodynamic psychotherapy for me. 

A highly regarded expert explaining the behavior and beliefs of Trump and his cult  is Bobby Azarian, PhD.  He comes from the world of cognitive neuroscience. Unlike Justin Frank, Lance Dodes, John Gartner, Bandy Lee, and far less prominent mental health professionals like me, who have written about Trump's psychology from a psychodynamic perspective, Azarian writes from what I might call simplistically a brain perspective. Another way to put colloquially it is that he writes about the hard wiring of the brain.

Chauncey DeVega interviewed Bobby Azarian in 2019 here:

Racism on the brain: a neuroscientist explains how the world moved right

"The effects of fear and anger [on the brain]" may make us even more polarized, says neuroscientist Bobby Azarian

His "Psychology Today" articles related to Trump and his followers have titles and subtitles like these: 

There's a glitch on the link to his articles, here, so it is temporarily unavailable. Hopefully this will be repaired before long. You can get an idea of what he writes about from the titles and subtitles of his most recent articles related to Trump and his cult.

How Trump and Media Allies Target the Mentally Vulnerable

Bogus conspiracy theories will undoubtedly play a major role in the upcoming presidential election. The question is whether anything can be done about it.

Study: Trump Tuned in to America’s Collective Narcissism

Is the nation's collective narcissism the reason for Trump's popularity and political invincibility? A study suggests a causal link between the phenomena.

Why Evangelicals May Be Hardwired to Believe Trump's Falsehoods

This brain quirk makes gaslighting particularly easy.

Why Is Trump So Popular?

Research suggests that the president is more intuitive than analytical.

The Belief That Trump Is a Messiah Is Rampant and Dangerous

Was Donald Trump sent by God to save America? Some believe so, and that should have us worried.

How Political Rhetoric Inspires White Nationalist Terror

President Trump’s divisive rhetoric can warp a person’s mind into believing that domestic terrorism is justifiable.

A Complete Psychological Analysis of Trump's Support

Baffled by Donald Trump's political invincibility? Here are 14 reasons why people continue to support the president despite behavior that would have sunk any other politician.

Trump Is Gaslighting America Again — Here’s How to Fight It Gaslighting refers to a type of psychological manipulation used to get people to question their direct experience of reality. It's also one of the president's favorite techniques.

An Analysis of Trump Supporters Has Identified 5 Key Traits

The president's backers share some consistent and troubling characteristics.

My point is sharing the Neuroscience News article and referencing Bobby Azarian's insights is to emphasize how complex addressing the underlying problem of how, if not insurmountable a task it is, how massive an endeavor it is to alter these deeply held beliefs.

Addendum: There's yet a third aspect to understanding Trump and those in power like him, and the hold they have on their supporters. George Lahoff, retired Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and now Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society has written frequently about this subject and Trump in particular. He was writing about his take on "Understanding Trump" (read essay here) as early as 2016.  His focus in on the often incredible power cultural metaphors have on people. 

It is vitally important to grasp how psychodynamics, the wiring of the brain, and ingrained cultural metaphors among certain groups not only influence but shape belief systems and resulting behaviors. These phenomena are interrelated but also must be understood in their own right to gain a complete grasp of why people think and act the way they do for the betterment of society and their own selfish needs to the detriment of society as a whole.

 

How I thought Trump might cope with losing the election, written before he lost

 

Original title from before Trump lost the election. "How I think the president may cope with losing." By retired therapist Hal Brown, MSW

I wrote this in June 2020.

This is my speculation as to how Trump will deal psychologically with losing the election. It is not particularly about what he will do to meet his narcissistic need to be the center of attention although I make some guesses. I try to apply what I know about the psychology of loss to what I understand about Trump’s personality.

No doubt you’ve been reading articles in the progressive media and listening to MSNBC and been alarmed by the dire predictions about Trump’s losing the election and using the time left before his term formally ends to wreak havoc on the rule of law and the foundations of American democracy. 

As a psychotherapist who is retired after 40 years of clinical practice I have written numerous essays about Trump’s psychopathology here on Daily Kos and previously on the website Capitol Hill Blue. I am not nearly as famous as other mental health professionals who will come up if you do web searches by adding terms like psychology or narcissism to Trump’s name. If you do this you will find a plethora of articles.  On Google search of Trump and psychology you have to go to number 26 on page three to find a link to  my articles. ^{(These are the only links in this diary. They will each take you numerous references.)}

There is something that occurred to me which I haven’t seen addressed. It is that by the time of the election Trump will have been forced to have dealt psychologically, probably unconsciously, with the very real, if not the likelihood, that he is going to lose.

It is true that Donald Trump utilizes the most is also the most primitive psychological defense mechanism, the very most basic one, denial. It is called primitive because according to psychodynamic theory it is the one which is used earliest in life to cope with anxiety and with stress in general. 

There is a time when, to put it bluntly, reality bites when someone is about to or actually suffers a loss. In other words, to extend in imagery, reality gets its teeth into a person and try as that person might to dislodge it, reality just won’t let go.

Trump still believes he can manipulate reality and his minions play into this delusional thinking. Like anyone else he believes that if something worked in the past it will work again. He currently seems to believe he can bend the truth to his will. The polls showing Vice President Biden defeating him are a good example. As you’ve probably read he thought he could deny the CNN poll and even threaten a law suit against them. Then the not well-regarded Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll, considered conservative due to the politics of the man whose company conducts it, came out agreeing with the other polls. I haven’t seen a reaction from Trump to this so I assume until he tweets something we can assume he’s in denial.

I don’t think I need a reference to remind readers of the five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler Ross in her writing about death. It has been applied to other kind of loss having nothing to do with dying and found to have validity in how people handle other kinds of loss.  

• 1 - Denial.
• 2 - Anger.
• 3 - Bargaining.
• 4 - Depression.
• 5 - Acceptance.

Note that the first stage is also the most primitive psychological defense mechanism

While grief researchers modified the Kübler Ross list as they discovered that the stages don’t always occur in order, and that people go back and forth between stages, the basic model trends to hold true for everyone.

There’s a concept called anticipatory grieving which can help someone face inevitable loss before it occurs, for example if a loved one is terminally ill. However, this won’t work for Trump until it is quite clear from the polls that there is virtually no chance he can win, and even then he may remain in denial until the actual election.

This is when he will become the most dangerous because if he holds true to form he will lash out in anger in any way he can. This coincides with the Kübler Ross model. There is no telling for sure what he will do in the interim between his election loss until Biden is sworn in. There are lots of dire predictions.

My sense is that Trump will not go through the bargaining stage because it generally applies to grief associated with death. For example, for those who are religious it may involve promising God they will reform their lifestyle to stave off death just that much longer. 

There are no indications that Trump has ever experienced depression as such. This is a man who has said he has never cried. I would look to him to somaticize his depression. We probably wouldn’t learn about some of the typical physical manifestations of depression such as sleep disturbance or minor aches and pains. However some symptoms like severe digestive problems or chest pain could cause him to take another trip to Walter Reed which he’d claim was the second half of his physical. This is something we should be alert for.

As Biden’s swearing in day approaches I think it is possible if not likely that something will “click” in Trump’s psyche which is akin to a survival mechanism. He would then enter to the acceptance phase albeit with a twist unique to him.

This would be when he realizes in his extreme narcissism that he can turn his loss into a win by parlaying the fact that he still has a huge following and is, in his mind, rightfully one of the most famous people in the world. 

This is when I would look for him to go back to what has worked best for him in the past which is to do what he does best: perform. I anticipate that in losing he won't take time to lick his wounds because he won’t allow himself to admit he brought defeat upon himself. Instead I see him taking his act on the road where he will continue to draw large, if not huge, crowds. Whether or not they'd pay to see him, and what I expect would be an actual show with the D list performers he can entice to perform, remains to be seen. Of course there’s always the sale of made in China merchandise as a revenue source. 

I think Trump will find ways to be in the limelight and will reconstruct his life in a way that satisfies his needs. He’ll never reach the healthy resolution of the grief stages because this would require true acceptance that he suffered a profound loss.

As time goes on we can speculate that his crowds will be smaller and smaller and his events will stop being covered as newsworthy, but he’s smart enough to make sure that he never books a venue he can’t fill and where he won’t make a profit. After all, if the reports are true that Melania reinitiated the prenup before she agreed to move to Washington, he’ll need the money to pay the alimony.

Addendum:

Keep in mind if you want to comment about your own ideas about what you think Trump will do the following:

• His intense psychological need to be the center of attention
• His practical need to make money
• Note that doing things like starting his own cable network requires investors and sponsors.
• Up until now his rallies were free. (How many MAGA hats to his supporters need to buy”?)
• As a loser he will see deep pocket donors and investors disappear.
• Would Fox News, even if they wanted him to host a show, be willing to pay him enough to make it worth his time? Sean Hannity is the highest paid TV host in all TV news at $40 million annually, runner up at Fox is Tucker Carlson at $6 million.

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 conscious mind.

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.

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I am friggen tired of saying that the media should have mental health experts explaining the psychopathology causing aberrant dangerous to democracy behavior

 I am friggen tired of saying that the media should have mental health experts explaining the psychopathology causing aberrant dangerous to democracy behavior

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired clinical social worker psychotherapist

Above: click to enlarge my version of RAWSTORY with image made with BeFunky showing four mentally cracked people in the news.

Once upon a time we had Dr. Joyce Brothers and Dr. Ruth Westheimer giving psychological advice to millions of American. Dr. Brothers explained general psychology as it applied to everyday life and Dr. Ruth, as she was called, focused on sex eduction. No topic was too taboo for Dr. Ruth to address. 

We have no expert in psychology who  regularly  appears on MSNBC shows as a regular to help explain the psychopathology of public figures. The only one to do this is Lawrence O'Donnell.

Every day they have experts on the law, history, and fascism on their panels. 

A notable exception in the mental health field when it comes to Donald Trump is his clinical psychologist niece, Dr. Mary Trump. Why not add a couple of regular experts to weigh in on the psychopathology evident in all figures making news who could undermine democracy?

Currently in our political milieu we have both politicians and non-politicians like Elon Musk and Ye who manifest behavior that strong suggest they suffer from a psychiatric disorder. 

On the bottom of this page I am republishing a blog addressing this. I am looking at the same topic in the hope that those who missed the first blog (and others related to the issue) will not only read it but consider the RAWSTORY opening page I checked this morning. By the time you click here these stories will have moved down the page. Who knows what reports of people demonstrating to any rational person that they have so many loose screws that if they depended on them to remain upright they'd be laying flat on their backs.   

The aberration of George Santos is what prompted me to reprise the subject.

Click above to enlarge image.

Here's an older RAWSTORY article which prompted me to write a blog:

Here's the Walker blog:

Another recent blog which is related. It is not only well known people that the media needs to consider their mental health but ordinary people too :

A word about making a diagnosis without an actual in-person assessment: I am not going to go into depth about The Goldwater Rule in this blog. I wrote about why I don't think it applies to psychotherapists who are qualified to make a diagnosis when they believe they have a responsibility to warn the public that a person in public life represents any kind of danger to our democracy. You can read my thoughts about this on these Daily Kos stories I wrote, three of the five were written in August of 2016:

PSY-VU: While not breaking the letter of the Goldwater “rule ... Aug. 2013

https://www.dailykos.com › story › 

Aug 23, 2016 — The Goldwater rule is the informal name for a precept of medical ethics promulgated by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

The never-ending controversy about diagnosing Trump Aug. 2016

https://www.dailykos.com › story › 

Aug 6, 2016 — 13, 2016 “Is the “Goldwater Rule Necessary? ... Hal Brown argues at the Daily Kos that reviewing the symptoms of narcissistic personality ...

PSY-VU: The media finally recognizes what shrinks knew a ... Aug. 2016

https://www.dailykos.com › stories › 

Aug 3, 2016 — 13, 2016 “Is the “Goldwater Rule Necessary? ... Hal Brown argues at the Daily Kos that reviewing the symptoms of narcissistic personality ...

A shrink musing in the morning: Trump's version of ... - Daily Kos

Aug 17, 2018 — Trump seems to want his own version of the Goldwater rule, not to apply mental health professionals, rather to apply to retired members of the ..

.

Trump’s psychosis has spread to Giuliani, Dershowitz, and rest of GOP: Psychiatrist Bandy Lee, Daily Kos, Jan. 2020

 The normalizing of delusional sociopathic grandiose narcissism

 

There are myriad examples of people in the news who demonstrate by their behavior, their actions and words, that they, to put it bluntly, have one or all of their hinges so loose that if they were the door on the jam it would be hanging and about to fall.

Creative Commons Flickr

I don't have to tax my brain by coming up with a list of clinically deranged people in public life. Just a look at the stories on various websites will provide many examples. A Salon article by one of my favorite columnists, Amanda Marcotte, offered a list of five:

Of course these five are just losers even though Trump could actually become president again. We still have winners like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Loren Boebert who are still in the House and now that the GOP controls it have even more power.

From Elon Musk whose unhingedness knows no bounds as he tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci, a sentiment supported by said Rep. Greene who is saying that if she was in charge of the January 6th attack on the Capitol the crowd would have been armed (something that could end her in front of a grand jury), to Ye and Herschel Walker (who I wrote about here) There are numerous similar tweets from Musk strongly suggesting he is unmoored from reality and behaving in self-destructive ways.

Although I now post on Mastodon (here) I have been making some Twitter tweets to see what happens. Here's the one I made today:

Click above to enlarge, does not go to Twitter. Text reads: Scene which the spaceship hits the Moon's eye from the Méliès 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon" became one of the most iconic images in cinematic history. An infamous rich guy made history by being the man in the moon who sent a metaphorical rocket of his making into his own eye.

There are enough people to be analyzed for in a PhD dissertation titled "Abnormal psychology as manifest in people in public life."

In some ways it is more disturbing to know that there are so many ordinary citizens who embrace the Big Lie and the conspiracy lunacy of QAnon. There are uncountable millions people not just in this country but around the world who, if objectively assessed by mental health professionals, would be diagnosed with one or more psychiatric conditions listed in the DSM-5.

There are several hundred diagnostic categories in the DSM  and new ones are periodically added, for example:

• Binge Eating Disorder.
• Caffeine Withdrawal.
• Cannabis Withdrawal.
• Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder.
• Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder- DMDD.
• Hoarding Disorder.
• Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder – PMDD.

 "According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), about one in five adults lives with a mental disorder (any mental illness in the US, and about one in 18 American adults has a serious mental illness. Some psychiatric conditions may be temporary, occur occasionally, and never return again." Reference includes entire list.

It should be obvious that most people with psychiatric disorders actually suffer, thus the term "suffering from" one or another disorder. There are other people who don't suffer themselves. They make  people in their lives including family, friends, and co-workers, suffer. Just consider the number of books about being married to a narcissist.

Of all of these the two most relevant disorders to consider when looking at the people I am writing about are what is now called antisocial personality disorder but is often referred to by the previous name, sociopathic disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Some people meet enough of the criteria for having both and would be considered to be malignant narcissists. This diagnosis never made it into then DSM but in my opinion and the opinion of many mental health professionals including, notably, Dr. John D. Gartner, the founder of the Duty to Warn society, Donald Trump has this disorder. Gartner wrote about this in 2017:

If any single person could be described as causing an extreme and dangerous mental pathology as becoming normalized it is Donald Trump.

Gartner is, as far as I know, the only mental health professional critical of Trump to appear on Fox News. In 2017 he was on "Watters World" in an interview which, to put it mildly, did not go well. Here's the video:

Full disclosure: Dr. Gartner and I have had a relationship since the formation of his Duty to Warn society. 

Currently the media, with some notable exceptions like MSNBC which regularly has clinical psychologist Mary Trump on and others experts discussing Donald Trump, reports the behavior of Trump and people like those mentioned above as if it is normal. 

I have followed the media closely since 2017 to see whether any mainstream publications addressed the issue of public figures like Trump, Taylor-Greene, Herschel Walker by interviewing mental health experts. 

Salon stands out for having Chauncey DeVega who often publishes interviews with mental health experts like psychiatrist Lance Dodes like "Trump is a dangerous sociopath — but he's sane enough to stand trial" and Psychiatrist Bandy Lee says White House officials told her Trump was "unraveling".

Of course, Salon with its progressive slant, can't be considered mainstream the way USA Today can. As far as I have been able to tell USA Today is the only widely circulated publication to publish a story about Trump's dangerous psychopathology.

It is about time that the mainstream media, including publications that the far right fringe considers to be fake news like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have regular columnists who are mental health experts who can analyze the behavior of public figures based on their knowledge of personality.

It is about time dangerous psychopathology stops being normalized by the media. It must be called out for what it is.