He has said things such as “I’m the chosen one.” It is malignant narcissism and grandiosity, which has become more extreme. … All these things are becoming dramatically worse.
By Chauncey Devaga
Salon (11/18/19)
…Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Gartner is also the founder of the Duty to Warn PAC, an organization working to raise awareness about the danger to the United States and the world posed by Donald Trump. Gartner was a contributor to the 2017 bestseller “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” Along with two other mental health professionals, he wrote the recent USA Today op-ed proclaiming that “Trump’s rash Syria move looked like a ‘hypomanic episode.'”
It is very alarming that Trump’s dysfunctional behavior is getting worse — even by earlier standards, which were very alarming.
I recently spoke with Gartner about Donald Trump’s mental state and the likelihood that impeachment will force the president to act out in even more dangerous and unpredictable ways. Gartner also explains the ways that Trump’s malignant narcissism manifests itself through sadistic pleasure, which may even be sexual in nature. Gartner also considers what will happen to Trump’s followers and their “fascist fever” when Trump is eventually no longer president of the United States.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. You can also listen to my full conversation with Dr. John Gartner through the player embedded below.
Link To Story and 18-Minute Audio
- Mental Health Professionals: Trump’s Rash Syria Move Looked Like A ‘hypomanic episode’ — In February 2018, at a conference highlighting concerns about President Donald Trump’s psychological fitness to serve as commander in chief, a panel of mental health professionals (including the three of us) warned that under the stress of investigations into his misconduct, Trump could easily make an impulsive catastrophic error on the world stage. That moment has arrived. After a call with the president of Turkey, Trump gave early morning orders to the U.S. military to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. Without consulting or informing anyone in his administration, Trump redrew the map of the Middle East literally overnight, betraying our allies on the battlefield, ceding the Middle East to Russia and enraging the Republican senators he needs to survive. … Read The Rest
- Trump’s Growing Body Count: He’s Not Just Narcissist & Liar. He’s A Killer — There was a moment early in the testimony last Wednesday by longtime diplomat and Army veteran Bill Taylor that was lost in the drama of everything else he had to say about Donald Trump’s attempt to extort the Ukrainian government. That was when Taylor dropped the fact that he had been on the “front line” of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia only the previous week and that on the day he was there, “a Ukrainian soldier was killed and four were wounded.” The death of one soldier somewhere near the border with Ukraine and Russia may not seem like a very important event in the greater scheme of things as the House of Representatives considers the impeachment of Donald Trump. But it was important enough tor Taylor that he mentioned it in the fifth paragraph of his opening statement. He wanted to get it on the record early in his testimony that “even as we sit here today, the Russians are attacking Ukrainian soldiers in their own country and have been for the last four years.” What happens in the background of practically everything that Donald Trump does or fails to do is that people are dying. This is why the impeachment hearings are about more than Rudy Giuliani running around trying to get Ukrainian prosecutors to investigate Joe Biden and his son or some spurious right-wing conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, rather than Russia, that meddled in the 2016 election. Ukraine is quite literally fighting for its life against Russian aggression on its eastern border. As Taylor’s testimony made clear, the fact that Trump ordered that American military aid to Ukraine be withheld had deadly consequences. … Read The Rest
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2019. Open source and free for non-derivative use and link to www.thecommonercall.org )