Donald Trump’s Mental Health Is A Global Emergency

There are serious questions about our President’s relationship with reality.

When he lies, does he know he’s lying, or is he simply delusional? When he incessantly talks about the size of his Electoral College victory, the size of his crowds, the size of his buildings (always the sizes, with this one. Clean up on aisle Freud), is it a conscious attempt to mislead and misinform the public, or is it a subconscious attempt at self-validation and aggrandizement? Can he process new information and synthesize it with his base knowledge to form new conclusions?

Basically…is he with it?

We got our first answer to these questions the day after his Inauguration.

Twenty four hours after what should’ve been the greatest moment of validation in his life, the newly inaugurated president felt aggrieved enough by the coverage of his glorious ascendency to send his press secretary into the White House Briefing Room to make a series of easily disprovable statements about the size of the crowd on the National Mall, a calamitous strategic decision that instantly pulverized Stürmer Spice’s credibility with the world.

The word was out: There is nothing this new president will not do to protect his ego, a sense of self-worth so fragile that a few empty spots in a field managed to consume any self-esteem boost that could come from sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

A series of subsequent blunders have colored in this portrait of a man constitutionally unequipped to handle any sort of adversity lest it bruise his self-made image of a big boy who gets anything and everything he wants. Screaming matches with the elected leaders of allies, tantrums over constitutional checks on his absurd Muslim ban, and continued Twitter tirades and verbal invectives against news organizations that dare critique him (even at critical national security sites), make it clear that this is a man who cannot control his temper or self-destructive tendencies when reality fails to submit to his will that will indulge all sorts of fantasy to salve his pride.

After almost 19 months of countless gigabytes devoted to “What’s really going on in Donald Trump’s head” conjecture, the first few weeks of his presidency prove that the answer was always the most obvious: I’m the best, I can do anything, and everybody loves me. I’m the best, I can do anything, and everybody loves me. I’m the best, I can do anything, and everybody loves me.

This pattern of behavior manifests itself most expressly in his continued assertion that 3–5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election as the true barrier that kept him from sweet victory in the popular vote. He has elevated all sorts of preposterous and inane fictions in this pursuit, from the unmoored ramblings of a grifter to the bizarre anecdotes of a German golfer.

The President’s paranoid conspiracy theorizing isn’t happening in a vacuum. While the GOP will almost certainly run wild with this fiction in order to further their insidious campaign of voter suppression, for Donald this is all in the context of his deep insecurities about his legitimacy as a president, an impostor-syndrome-on-steroids rooted in decades of failure to be taken seriously by the Manhattan real estate elite. His popular vote loss makes him feel bad, so he must reject it in any way he can in order to feel okay within himself, even if that rejection is plainly absurd by all objective measures. As his long-time friend Howard Stern said last week, he longs to be loved by the masses, and any sign that that love doesn’t exist causes real damage to his psyche.

While motives won’t much matter when combatting his horrific policy agenda on the grassroots level, the emerging picture of this man’s disordered pathology presents a clear and present danger to long-term American and global stability and security.

It is unclear if he is able to discern between facts and fable when the facts are inconvenient and the fable is comforting. It is unclear if he is able to remain calm when he doesn’t feel dominant or like he isn’t “winning”. It is unclear if he is capable of changing his mind when presented with clear evidence that counters his preconceived notions.

We should be clear that it is both impossible and immoral to diagnose a person with a mental illness from afar. However, never before have a president’s personality, idiosyncrasies, insecurities been such a driving force in the narratives emerging from an administration. The stunning leaks from the West Wing in what should be the honeymoon phase of a new government portray a doddering man-child President who can’t be bothered to read briefing books or executive orders, but finds time for hours of cable news and Twitter.

What happens in the event of a true crisis that requires immediate action? Has this President proven an ability to maintain calm and poise in highly chaotic situations? Has he demonstrated the ability to truly grasp complex situations when they are presented to him?

There is no evidence that he possesses any of these qualities. In fact, there is mounting evidence that the chaos of this administration is not a deliberate tactic, but a reflection of the addled thought processes of its chief executive. Access to the entirety of American governmental institutional knowledge has not changed his warped perception of the world one iota. He’s more interested with the “truth” presented on Fox News and Morning Joe than he is in the truth in his daily presidential briefings.

Which brings us to one Vladimir Putin. Trump’s relationship with Russia is the black cloud that continues to swirl around his administration, as multiple investigations into his campaign’s ties with the Kremlin proceed. Until the investigations are completed, we won’t know what’s really going on there. What we do know is that at every given opportunity, Donald refuses to make even the slightest criticism of the autocratic Russian dictator. This is a deferential attitude he has not taken with any other global leader.

We also know that Trump (wrongly) believes Putin once called him “brilliant”. The impact of this should not be overlooked, for the equal and opposite end on the spectrum of Trump’s obsession with his “haters” is his bottomless need for validation and applause, another quality he displayed constantly through out the campaign by relishing in the support of every flunkey with even the slightest bit of name recognition. He fawns over anybody who will give him praise, because he needs praise so desperately.

So in Trump’s lifelong crusade to be taken seriously, the president of Russia calling him smart is a big deal. And if Putin thinks he’s smart, then Putin must not really be so bad after all. And if Putin really isn’t so bad, then everything Putin does must be good.

This easily manipulated unstable neediness, along with his detachment from reality, combined with his gleeful ignorance and the unfathomable tools of destruction at his fingertips, make him the greatest global emergency since World War II. As long as he is in office, there is danger.

We’ve given him a shot. He isn’t going to get better. The question now is how long can the absurdity go on until it reaches critical mass.

Will anybody in a position empowered put an end to this madness pull that lever before he causes true cataclysmic destruction?

What will it take? What will it come to?