Trump’s state of mind should be subject of debates

It’s way past time to talk seriously about Trump Derangement Syndrome — his, not his critics’.

For years, it’s been clear to mental health experts as well as the armchair variety, to Republicans as well as Democrats, that Donald Trump is not mentally well. Yet, his behavior — the pathological lying, childish name-calling, grandiosity and narcissistic obsession with crowd sizes, open bigotry, erraticism, desire to be liked (loved!) by murderous dictators — long ago became normalized.

Trump’s fire hose of erratic irrationality has inured Americans to his outrages. He unabashedly owns the offenses, then repeats them. And enough of our fellow citizens like that about him, and dislike his opponents, that they elected him president and may do so again.

“God help us,” in the words of retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff.

But now that President Joe Biden, a normal and empathetic man, has been pushed out of the 2024 race over concerns about his age and mental acuity, Trump’s more manifest unfitness for office should be ignored no longer — by the media, former advisers and military leaders who remain silent, and yes, Republicans.

Trouble is, Americans can talk about Trump’s madness, but what’s to be done? Republican “leaders,” who privately concede the truth about their nominee, won’t push him out. They’ve enabled him this long, through repeated down-ballot losses, impeachments, incitements and indictments. And unlike Biden, Trump won’t go voluntarily: He lost an election but was so determined to keep power that he provoked an insurrection.

Forget Republicans’ and Trump’s resistance: A serious discussion and debate about Trump’s state of mind wouldn’t be pointless. It might tip the scales for the few undecided voters in the half-dozen swing states who will decide the election. Do they really want him to control the nuclear codes?

Since 2015, when he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy with the sort of megalomaniacal monologue to which we’ve become desensitized, mental health professionals have shied from publicly addressing Trump’s psyche, cowed by the half-century-old “Goldwater rule” of the American Psychiatric Association. The rule holds that it is unethical to give a professional opinion about a public figure’s mental health without examining the person and receiving their permission.

During Trump’s presidency, however, several dozen professionals invoked a civic “duty to warn”; they wrote and later expanded a bestseller assessing Trump’s psychological maladies. (Among the purchasers of the first edition: Kelly, to better understand his White House boss.) Meanwhile, privately, other professionals aren’t shy on the topic: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in her just-released book that psychiatrists flocked to her at a memorial service for one of their colleagues to vent about Trump’s behavior.

And Trump calls her “Crazy Nancy”? Projection.

He seems plainly triggered since Biden’s withdrawal from the race, by the ascendance of the Harris-Walz ticket and the large crowds, donations and polling gains the Democrats are getting. He tried to steal back the attention with a news conference, a MAGA rally in Montana and assorted public statements — only to raise more questions about his well-being.

“Umm, @GOP, is @realDonaldTrump ok?” former Republican Party chairman turned apostate Michael Steele posted after one Trump rant on social media. Trump had dubbed Vice President Kamala Harris “Kamabla,” said she and other Democrats had staged “a COUP” against Biden and suggested Biden would “CRASH” Democrats’ convention to seize the nomination. That’s playground babble.

At the Mar-a-Lago news conference, Trump claimed his crowds are not only bigger than Harris’ but also that his Jan. 6 audience near the National Mall exceeded the estimated 250,000 who heard the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech in Washington in 1963. It didn’t; Trump’s was estimated at 53,000. But who boasts about a crowd that went on to attack the Capitol?

So much of what he told reporters was a lie or the tall tales of an old man — 162 misstatements in 64 minutes, by NPR’s count. All it took were calls to Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor and California Assembly speaker, and to Nate Holden, former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, for reporters to debunk Trump’s claim he’d once nearly crashed in a helicopter with Brown. His point was that Brown, who once dated Harris, badmouthed her, on a trip the two men never took together.

Trump also denied that he falsely said what millions of Americans have heard or can easily find on YouTube: that Harris identified as Indian American until she decided to “turn Black.” “I didn’t say it,” he lied, adding for mean measure that she’s been “very disrespectful” to both racial groups.

Since the assassination attempt against him, Trump repeatedly has mocked talk that his brush with death might transform him. “I’m not nicer,” he told donors at one event.

Truth, finally.

A rich donor at a recent dinner asked Trump to describe a positive vision for the country. The New York Times reported that the question “appeared to be a request for reassurance” — reassurance that is even more necessary now that video has emerged on social media of Trump, with teenage son Barron beside him in a golf cart using expletives to badmouth Harris.

But Trump stayed negative, further assailing Harris before adding, “I am who I am.”

Whatever that is, Trump is not fit to be president. Put him on the couch, not behind the Resolute Desk.

Jackie Calmes is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.