Let's rephrase this comparison:. who is more unfit; Trump or Biden? If not Biden, who else? There is nothing wrong with Biden's brain (aging body is his problem). His years of experience and wisdom are in working order. His ability to express without stumbling in the disaster of the debate recently makes me wonder if, as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "was an episode or a condition. " Only Biden can answer that with his performance in unscripted situations in the next week or so. On the other hand, we have this evaluation of Donald Trump by those who served closely with him. He is so flawed a personality that he is unfit for office. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/politics/donald-trump-criticism-from-former-administration-officials/index.html (copy, paste URLif it does not link) He needs a current psychiatric evaluation. What name would lay people apply to his unfit condition if no such evaluation existed? So far, he has been tagged by professional psychologists as a narcissistic psychopath. For those who understand choices, understand the alternative and the consequences:. a narcissistic sociopath with his finger on the nuclear bomb who can't tell a dangerous and aggressive adversary from his role models
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/11/trump-new-york-times-00167529
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/202008/the-psychology-donald-trum
So, after the Stephanopolis "interview", more of an inquisition, after Biden rattled off a whole bunch of statistics without notes and a list of where and what he had been doing to keep America in leadership of the "free" world. Fact checkers could find no fault with the statistics he rolled off his tongue. It took pages of enumerating Trump's lies in the debate. Geroge asked him at least 5 times if he was Biden sure he was up to four more years and got the same answer five times, yes. It is important to ask two more questions, if not Biden, who (and frankly, there is no one) and who is more likely to win. The choice is between Trump and Biden, whose judgment, wisdom, brains, character, and knowledge are intact but frail in body. On the other hand, there is his opponent or a robust chest-thumping demagogue who is seriously lacking in character, a liar, a narcissistic sociopath, bordering on a megalomaniac, and those who served closely with him call him unfit. So who is the most unfit? Is this the choice? It is clearly the most unfit: Trump.
Whether Trump has passed a mental health fitness test and profile has yet to be determined, at least from what we know. Until then, he can expect to be called, in very lay terms, "crazy" and a danger or, more kindly, more damning, "unfit", because this addresses how bad is his mental health that would DQ him from office. This year, my son, a traveling international business consultant, was crossing a border in Europe. As the official was down looking at his American passport, he asked, "Which is it. The old guy or the crazy one". That is a simplistic but valid question.
This reminds me of a conversation I recall when I was young, not long after the horrors of World War II. I had asked my mother what was wrong with Hitler that resulted in starving kids in Europe (I married one of those later) and dead people. She added a word to my vocabulary: megalomaniac. In my 8 year old Oklahoma colloquialism, that meant "too big for his britches". Is Trump one of those? Many clinical psychologists have weighed in publicly, including his own clinical psychologist niece, calling him a narcissistic psychopath. He has a me, me, mine focus. He is not for you or me but for what benefits him and he channels all grievances through how they impact him.. However, is he as deranged as Hitler was to describe Trump as a megalomaniac too? I searched for an answer and found one that drew the difference between a megalomaniac and a narcissistic psychopath, the most commonly used description by clinical psychologists (including his niece Mary) to describe his personality disorder. This from the Cambridge English Language dictionary made reference to unjustified delusions of superiority and power. "Narcissism is an exaggerated sense of self-love while megalomania is an exaggerated sense of self-worth based on fantasies of power, attractiveness, and other physical or psychological attributes and, therefore, all megalomaniacs are narcissists, but not all narcissists are megalomaniacs. "
Here is where I have a problem with calling Trump a megalomaniac, but he is a potential one. Trump, using fear and intimidation, has had enormous success in controlling the Supreme Court and fellow partisans in the legislature and in lower jurisdictions even when out of office and now may even get out of criminal prosecution due to "his" Supreme Court's supermajority. He has reason to think his powerfulness is justified, not a delusion. Hitler thought so at first, too. He had reasons to think his power and control were successful until they were not, and he ended up dead in his Berlin bunker. In any case, too bad Trump has not had a psychiatric evaluation.
By the way, Trump boasts about his cognitive test outcome. As part of my regular yearly checkup, at least at an initial one when I was over 70, I was asked to draw a clock face and then put the current time on it in the form of the minute and hour hands. I was asked to remember 3 words and then, sometime later, to repeat them, and I was given a story about a person's life and then later asked a question related to the story. That was it. I passed. That is only an initial screening for Alzheimer's. These cognitive tests are given periodically in annual checkups. I have not heard the result of any recent tests from candidate. Trump could not remember the name of this personal physician, so close to him, who is now a Trump loyal political candidate, and called him Johnson when his name was Jackson. Tump's lack of more than short-term focus and inability to comprehend the written word sounds much like some of my offspring's challenges with ADHD, yet the overcame them to succeed. Trump never overcame that, if that is one of his problems. However, his desire to use threats and fear of violence to get his way, to tell lies and manipulate followers at every opportunity, and to focus on me, me, and mine are about more serious mental health problems. Either way, these attributes contribute to his being unfit to be a president.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/sociopath-clown-7-unflattering-anecdotes-mary-trump-s-book-n1233107
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/nancy-pelosi-says-biden-trump-take-mental-fitness-tests-rcna159993
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