If Trump believes some of his pronouncements he may be clinically delusional

 If Trump believes some of his pronouncements he may be clinically delusional

By Hal Brown, MSW

 

I am tired of writing about Trump's psychopathology. Today's HUFFPOST story "Trump Says Biden 'Convinced' Putin To Bomb Ukraine In Mar-a-Lago Campaign Speech" prompts me to write yet another blog story about the question as to just how mentally ill the beleaguered former president might have become. 

We know he's a malignant narcissist, but how can we tell whether he is veering into becoming a delusional psychotic? 

In half of my 40 year career as a psychotherapist I worked in a community mental health center. Most of the severely mentally ill patients I worked with had been stabilized on medication so I only had a few chances to see someone exhibiting the delusions that were manifest prior to being stabilized on medications. Those times I did see patients who weren't medicated their delusions were the more typical. Several patients off medication had religious delusions and another believed a movie star was in love with him to the extent he ended up at the airport trying to board a plane without a ticket to be with his lover in Hollywood.

When a clinician does a diagnostic assessment they evaluate the patient's rational thinking and reality testing. A simple mental status exam includes the following (reference):

• Thought process
  The flow and coherence of thoughts, inferred from a client’s observable behaviors, especially speech. For example, if the client’s speech is rambling and disorganized, the examiner may infer that their thinking is also disorganized.
• Thought content
  Thought content can be inferred from spontaneous speech and direct questioning by the examiner. For example, the examiner might ask, “Have you ever heard things other people don’t hear or seen things other people don’t see?” An answer of “yes” to such questions raises the possibility of hallucinatory thought content.
• Insight
  How aware is the client of their own strengths and limitations?
• Strengths and limitations
  Traditional forms of the MSE have been designed to record any cognitive, emotional, or behavioral deficits. Consider how a clinician would fill out portions of a standard mental status form like this, in particular the parts below, for Trump:

Here's more 

Delusional disorder, previously called paranoid disorder, is a type of serious mental illness called a psychotic disorder. People who have it can’t tell what’s real from what is imagined.

Delusions are the main symptom of delusional disorder. They’re unshakable beliefs in something that isn’t true or based on reality. But that doesn’t mean they’re completely unrealistic. Delusional disorder involves delusions that aren’t bizarre, having to do with situations that could happen in real life, like being followed, poisoned, deceived, conspired against, or loved from a distance. These delusions usually involve mistaken perceptions or experiences. But in reality, the situations are either not true at all or highly exaggerated. From WebMd

Perhaps Trump is already so detached from reality that any mental health professional would diagnosis him as having a psychosis. There's no way to tell how much of his pronouncements are performances and what he really believes.

Anybody who truly cares about his well-being ought to be very concerned about his lapsing into a psychotic state. Consider what you would do if you had a loved one who was expressing some of the beliefs Trump has been expressing.

Those who consider him the leader of the GOP, those cult members who blindly follow him, should also ask themselves whether they are being led by someone who is so unmoored from reality that they may be clinically delusional.

Another question which researchers could well look into is whether someone who deliberately uses gaslighting (defined as manipulating someone so as to make them question their own reality) for their own purposes can eventually gaslight themselves.

Marjorie Taylor Greene as an example of a low information and gullible person as opposed to being delusional

Just yesterday Rep. Greene addressed her pervious belief in QAnon conspiracy theories:

Wanting to believe something is different than actually believing it. Consider the poster on the wall of the X Files' Fox Mulder's office:

If someone doesn't have the ability to apply logical thinking to beliefs like those promulgated by QAnon ( including that the Clintons were responsible for murders, that the Democratic Party was responsible for a satanic child sex trafficking ring and that the California wildfires were caused by space lasers owned by a Jewish family) and gets all their information from one-sided sources they are vulnerable to being manipulated. Nobody wants to admit they were gullible and, as MTG said, that they were "sucked into" believing something that any logical person wouldn't believe.

This doesn't mean they are clinically delusional. It may suggest that they have a low IQ but above average intelligence isn't a requirement for holding public office. 

If anyone running for a major political office had to have above a 120 IQ and pass a battery of psychological tests I venture to suggest that the GOP side of the House would look very different. To the delight of Democrats, the GOP itself wouldn't be having to deal with this guy:

Update:

 

Ben Kalom replied on this site...

Thanks for blending in criteria. This helps secure our assertions that he is not mentally fit to hold any public office.

Mentally fit - I do not believe it matters whether genetics, experiences, trauma, parenting or personal choices have led us to this place of a fellow who simply blathers about in social media. He has no ability to filter. Delusional disorders is the correct section of DSM 5-TR to be reading and giving consideration. That section, in addition to considering his personality disorder cluster, should be the hub of any diagnostic conversation wheel we use to chat about how best to manage our feelings about him, vis-a-vis his repeated insistence on being vocal on social media.

There is a misperception of who might be considered "mentally ill." What I am referring to is the first defense he threw out to his crowd, "I'm rich!" Is there something about being wealthy that magically inoculates a person against mental disorder? I would offer the converse argument. Mo' money, mo' crazy. You need sage and sound counsel to help you manage your false-bottomed sense of total safety and security while living on this planet.

Donald simply does not know when to shut the f#$k up.

I am reminded of a training video in which Dr. Sal Minuchin was interviewing a patient with disorganized thinking. To characterize just how disturbing it is to the treatment professional to work with these folks day after day, Sal could not restrain himself and uttered, "What are you talking about??" in a most directive manner, hoping to encourage the client to get back on track.

In delusional disorder, there's no thesis, no theme, no specific argument, no path that gets to anywhere. It is walking with a person who is lost in the forest and then finds yet another distraction. Being lost is the entire point of their delusion. It is how they guard against the reality of life. Life breaks through their ordinary protections with ordinariness.

THat's much, much more than they can handle.

The warning we who study the disordered persons and the qualitative/quantitative means by which they've gotten into the swamp they are in, need to heed is in the sheer number of people who are also in that swamp with him, and who came to that swamp, expecting to find a country club swimming pool. His ability to hold them in a promise of prosperity has increased whatever disordered thinking and feeling these folks experienced prior to believing his siren song.

Crazy draws more crazy to itself. There's kinship in delusional status.

Is Donald delusional? I think I agree with that assertion, and I encourage other helpers and human services workers and professionals to see the dead poseys in the hands of their clients, and although you want to be kind and offer unconditional positive regard, keep the truth in your head that no matter what else you hear, those flowers are dead.

Donald is holding out dead flowers to his followers. That's what he's selling them. Dead flowers, purporting to re-animate them and make them alive again...

If you are a realist like I am, then you see how difficult it will be to convince folks who drank his dead flower tea to walk away from believing the delusional reality they've walked through the looking glass and entered.

Below from Tibel:

Click above to enlarge

Rep Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter

  Rep. Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter  

Today's blog is a twofer. I address both the malignant narcissism on the far-right and why Twitter is, like it or not, a necessary town square.

by Hal Brown, MSW

Read HUFFPOST article here.

I wish it wasn't so. I wish it was possible to dismiss the benefits of Twitter out of hand. I hate the fact that because so many newsworthy tweets are on Twitter Elon Musk is able to make money off the platform.

President Biden has 36.8 million followers there:

It isn't like it or not, I don't like it at all, but Twitter has become the national (and international) town square. We can try to live in fantasy land about Twitter just going away. Case in point, read the HUFFPOST article and see how tweets are used. Consider what this dirtbag would have gotten away with without Rep Swalwell posting on Twitter .

There's nothing to say about this despicable new member of the GOP contingent of the House that isn't in the HuffPost article except for me to add my perspective as a retired psychotherapist who has written a lot about a particular psychological personality type.

Brought into the public awareness by the founder of the Duty to Warn group Dr. John D. Gartner malignant narcissism was a conceptualization several psychopathologies described by noted social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964.

Malignant narcissism is an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Fromm described it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity. Wikipedia

From Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson to a witches' brew of actors on the public stage like Putin and the two Steves, Bannon and Miller, those who love democracy, not only in America but in Ukraine and elsewhere, are suffering because malignant narcissists wield power. 

Back to Twitter and the story on HUFFPOST. You can see just from this one example how Twitter functioned as a worthwhile town square. 

Cory Mills, in his malignant narcissism, was unable to resist making a tweet which sent a message to hard-core extremists and showed his true colors.  When it proved to be against his own best interests he deleted it but it was too late since like with many similar tweets it had already been noticed and copied. In this case we can thank Rep. Eric Swalwell:

His tweet generated the dozen replies which augment the HUFFPOST article. None of them are notables. They are from ordinary people with Twitter names like Jack-O'Lantern and booklady2002.

Just as the open mic*, sharp-eyed photographer, or accidental video can catch someone whose impulses outweighed their good judgement, the ease of making a tweet without considering the negative consequences can reveal one's true character and beliefs.

Consider the recent example of a CSPAN camera catching liar Rep. George Santos making what appears to be a white power symbol.

C-SPAN video of the incident shows that Santos had pre-positioned his hand along his body in an unusual way to create the gesture.

Far-right extremists, mainly white supremacists, have coopted the gesture to symbolize a “W” and “P” for white power, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center also categorizes the gesture as a white power gesture but explains that on the right, the gesture is often used to troll liberals. YahooNews 

Click "Read more" below to continue.  

Let the governing UNGOVERNING begin

 ....

Let the Governing Ungoverning Begin

By Hal Brown, MSW

 (about)

 

I'll leave it to the gaggle of political prognosticators and pundits to predict what the next two years will be like in the House of Representatives. I have nothing of substance to say today. This blog is about how observing the debacle which took place on the floor of The People's House on the second anniversary of the January 6th invasion of right-wing cultists attempting a coup to overthrow our Democracy made me feel. 

I felt a mix of outrage and sadness that the ceremony President Biden held honoring the police, election workers and public officials who in various ways worked to defeat the attempted insurrection was attended by only one Republican member of Congress.

I also wanted a chance to use the image of Magnum Chaos, a wood-inlay by Giovan Francesco Capoferri at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, based on a design by Lorenzo Lotto in an illustration. Last night was magnum chaos. It looks like the next two years will devolve in chaos maximus in the House.

I was briefly tempted take a deep dive into satire ands sarcasm and write something and post it in my Burning Bunion sub-site.  

I'd like to skewer them with biting satire, but I won't do this, at least for now, because there's nothing remotely amusing about what the House Republicans are poised to do to the country. 

Besides dozens of political cartoonists like these nine from a story in The Week have done their work to eviscerate the hapless House GOP. The Washington Post (subscription) has seven more. I can't draw so between Jan. 3-5th I made a few illustrations with easy to use software and posted them here.

These pathetic excuses for legislators can be likened to doctors and nurses tripping on LSD or drunk who are about to operate on the body of American democracy.

Chaos can be crazy and funny when it's on the screen but these Republicans aren't the inept but benign Keystone Kops in a silent movie classic. Benign they're not. Silent they're not. 

Update - okay, one attempt to be sarcastic:

I wasn't able to resist manipulating this photo of McCarthy holding up the Speaker's gavel in celebrating what history may call one of the most briefly celebrated Pyrrhic victories of all time. He will get what he deserves.

Does something worse than Jan. 6 have to happen to wake all of America up

 Does something worse than Jan. 6 have to happen to wake all of America up?

By Hal Brown

Reading this story in Salon got me to pondering the question in my title.

Excerpt:

But while some of these demands are alarming because they invite legislative chaos for the next two years, there's one aspect of this very public fight that may be even more dangerous: The way that both the demands of the anti-McCarthy group and his concessions to them could signal to would-be domestic terrorists that they have the support of the Republican party. While the conflict between McCarthy and his Republican opponents seems at a stalemate as of Friday morning, both sides do agree on these security-related issues. Two years after Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the Capitol in a desperate bid to remain in power, the Republican-controlled House is making moves that read strongly as winking encouragement not just to the people who rioted that day, but to anyone who would follow in their footsteps. 

"At this point, the Republican party's entire strategy is incitement," Melissa Ryan, an expert in right wing extremism who writes the "Ctrl Alt-Right Delete" newsletter, told Salon. "They're keeping the MAGA base constantly worked up with increasingly violent rhetoric."

Even before the drama of seeing McCarthy repeatedly lose the vote to become Speaker began, the first, dramatic gesture was made by House Republicans: The metal detectors in the halls of Congress were taken down, even though it's not at all clear that, without an elected Speaker, Republicans have the authority to do this. 

Then I read this:

Excerpts:

“A lot of my Republican colleagues glorify violence and proudly display the firearms they have in their offices, so it just makes me nervous that we could have a workplace violent event. They’re not the most stable people,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told Raw Story after voting for Speaker this week...

“They already have a history of letting insurrectionists in the building and showing them around,” Swalwell—who made public some of the vile death threats his family has endured—said. “So it just seems like a recipe for disaster.” 

Metal detectors or not, the nation’s politicians—right, left, and indie—are now bigger targets than ever before. 

My photo illustration depicts two violent wake-up calls that jarred the county from the slumber of denying that there were violent forces that were hellbent on destroying our democracy.

These were external rather than internal actors. January 6th insurrectionists and their instigators and co-conspirators were, and continue to be, homegrown terrorists. Only some of the foot soldiers have been brought to justice. Those who set the coup attempt in motion from Donald Trump on down to the upper echelons of the conspiracy so far have escaped the hand of justice for their deeds.

It took Pearl Harbor and 9/11 for America to unite against the forces that threatened us. Not so with January 6th. This was a group incited to attempt to stop the certification of a free election lost by a president they worshipped as a Demi-god who gaslighted them into believing what has come to be called The Big Lie. 

The House members trying to dragoon their will on the country by coercing concessions to enable Mitch McConnell to become the new speaker with a few exceptions are MAGA election deniers.

Today we learned that metal detectors which anyone entering the House chamber had to pass through were removed. Nobody can determine who ordered this.

We know that there are GOP members of Congress like Lauren Boebert who are gun-crazy.

I am not suggesting that she or any other member of Congress would commit an act of violence. As Amanda Marcotte suggests it is the message that these far-right heroes sends to their violence prone followers. Pistol packing Boebert, for example, has over 2 million followers on Twitter alone.

She begs to be singled out so I make no apologies for presenting a possible scenario involving her.

Click above to read NY Post article

I assume that for someone who isn't a Member or a staffer to get into the United States Capitol building they have to be screened for weapons by the Capitol Police. I don't know whether people who have credentials can bypass the vigorous screening the general public has to go through. 

What I worry about is that someone who has ingratiated themselves to the likes of a Boebert to the extent that they are able to finagle a way to have a member of the House or staffer actually accompany them when they enter the building and try to bypass the magnetometers. 

It might be worth the risk of getting caught and thinking they could avoid serious consequences by pleading ignorance. If an armed person with violent intentions made it into the House, whether on the floor or in the hallways, it doesn't take any imagination to know how horrific the outcome could be.

Would it take an incident like this for the vast majority of Americas to wake up to how violent rhetoric can provoke actual acts of violence? 

I am not stupidly sanguine. I doubt very much that if something like this happened, even if there was a loss of life, that very many of these far-right extremists mouthing words that subtly or not-so-subtly promote violence, most or all of whom purport to be Christian, would have a come to Jesus moment.

 

The Bunion reports: Compromise candidate for Speaker is Ginni Thomas

The Burning Bunion reports: Compromise candidate for Speaker is Ginni Thomas

Hal Brown

This is a shameless ripoff of oft quoted satirical website The Onion. It turns out that The Bunion, my original  name, was an idea too good to be original. In 2014 there was a Boston University student satire website with the name The Bunion so I named this The Burning Bunion. I can only aspire to be somewhat as clever in my attempts at satire as the good folks at The Onion are.

Breaking news: A backroom deal was finally struck among House Republicans with a compromise candidate to be the Speaker of the House. It is Ginni Thomas. While she is politically the polar opposite of Nancy Pelosi one thing the two have in common is they like to wear colorful scarves. 

Democrat political fashion guru Lisa Bungalow told The Bunion in an exclusive interview "while I loathe her politics and when I see her on TV it already makes me nauseous, at least she will keep bringing a splash of color to the podium."

Bungalow noted that when she was with her husband Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas she often wears red to complement what, like Donald Trump, is a signature red tie.

Saturday night Live took notice of this:

Kenan Thompson and Aidy Bryant

Sparticum Voluminous of The Okey-dokey Online Law Review in an email to The Bunion wrote "this would be like getting a Speaker of the House and a Supreme Court Justice rolling into one as second in line to the presidency." He noted that "everyone knows that Ginni and Clarence Thomas share everything. She advices him and he advises her."

Update: I wrote this above yesterday. Was I prescient or what? This story was on HUFFPOST this morning:

I put a comment on HuffPost. Perhaps some readers will see it and click to read this story.

Previous blog about the chaos in the House.

Idaho, where pot is illegal , is next to pot friendly Oregon

 Idaho, where pot is illegal, is next to pot friendly Oregon 

By Hal Brown

The author is not a lawyer and any legal references here are based on Internet research. The advice about travel with marijuana is meant to be common sense and not an endorsement of doing this.

Cannabis is totally illegal in Idaho. Here's the most recent summary of the law in the state.

I thought of this when I read this article in the website of a local TV station:

You might intuit that the county with the most pot sales in Oregon would be one near Portland. It wasn't. Rather it was in Masher County which borders on Idaho.

Excerpts:

Idaho is one of a dozen states where neither recreational nor medical cannabis is legal. Ten weed sellers in the Malheur County city of Ontario, right on the state line with Idaho, make hay selling mainly to folks from the nearby Boise-area population center. 

Ten weed sellers in the Malheur County city of Ontario, right on the state line with Idaho, make hay selling mainly to folks from the nearby Boise-area population center.  

Below you can see that most of them are clustered around the exits from thetwo highways that cross the Snake River border between the two states.

What prompted me to write this blog is the fact that I have a friend who lives in Idaho who has a medical condition and would find relief in cannabis. It would take him about five hours to drive to a town in Oregon with a pot store since he lives in the central part of the state. His medical condition makes driving himself problematic so he'd need a friend to help him out.

The biggest risk for him and anybody else driving into Oregon to purchase pot for medicinal or recreational use in of course getting arrested. Possession of any amount of marijuana for any reason is a misdemeanor if the amount is 3 ounces or less. The maximum penalty is 1 year in jail and $1,000 in fines. If the amount is between 3 ounces and 1 pound, the offense is a felony and the top penalty is 5 years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

When I visited him years ago he warned me that I had to slow down when I got off highway and approach his town line because there was a radar trap. Indeed, as I drove past the 25mph sign there was a town constable with a radar gun.

I can imagine how Idaho police may be incentivized to make marijuana arrests for the revenue. All they would have to watch border crossing roads and look for cars with Idaho plates and find a reason to stop them. 

Police can only search a car without permission with probable cause.

The Fourth Amendment to the American Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents. For a stop and search to be reasonable, the stopping officer must have reasonable suspicion that the driver has broken or is about to break the law.

Therefore common sense dictates that even if someone isn't doing anything illegal it is prudent to assure you don't get stopped by the police in a state with so many far-right residents. A mere Biden sticker on your car, or just having Oregon license plates on your car, may prompt some police officers to look for a reason to stop you. 

Before you leave for any trip that might end up in a police stop it is prudent to check you car with someone inside to make sure all of your lights are operating properly including your license plate light if the car has one. This includes turn signals and brake lights. If you want to be super-cautious you could take pictures of your taillights to show that none of the lenses are broken.

From what I can tell, while sobriety checkpoints are illegal in Idaho, police may still be using them. If you have to go though one you must take a sobriety test, although you can contest it later if you are arrest.

If they ask you if they can search your car you can legally decline. This is where K9's trained to sniff out marijuana would come in. While in some states with legal pot K9's have to be trained to ignore marijuana so they can sniff out hard drugs. 

If a K9 indicates marijuana the police office can ask you where it is and you have to make the decision whether it is in your best interest to comply. If all you face is a fine you can write this off as nothing ventured nothing gained. On the other hand you could take the chance that the dog or officer won't be able to find where you hid the marijuana. 

I rather doubt the state wants to incarcerate a large number of people as it would most likely cost them more to put them behind bars than it was worth it, plus I doubt they have the jail cells to put them in. Not only that if too many of them decided to plead their cases in court it would likely overwhelm their court system.

I do not advise breaking the law of any state. This goes for any law, even if you believe it is wrong. Thus if you want to use marijuana, or get an abortion, I recommend going to a state where these things are legal.

As a reporter here I recognize that there are people who will want to bring marijuana into Idaho and avoid being arrested. The common sense way for someone who decides to break the law and bring marijuana into Idaho from Oregon by car is not to get pulled over by the police.

There are numerous websites readily located with a simple web search which have links to websites which assist them in finding ways to make it less likely a sniffer K9 will indicate to the officer there is pot in the car:

Click above to enlarge image

Having failed to get a marijuana legalization on the ballot in 2022, currently Idaho activists have launched medical marijuana ballot push for 2024.

Since the Speaker of the House election is still going on I am continuing to update this blog as I think of new illustrations to make.