'Sadistic and amoral': Mental health expert performs postmortem on the 'pathological' Trump presidency

All of these terms have been used to describe the publicly observed and documented behavior of the 45th President of the United States, most notably over the 5 weeks since he lost the election to Joe Biden. Casually, Trump has been given the usual labels that are associated with his oftentimes bizarre behavior – pundits routinely referred to the sitting U.S. President as “crazy,” “nuts,” or “out of his mind.” There has been much debate and discussion about Trump’s possible psychiatric diagnoses as they relate to the Goldwater Rule and the Duty to Warn placed upon mental health providers whose clients reveal harmful, malicious, or violent intentions. His most commonly used phrases show this grandiosity: “the likes of which you’ve never seen,” “ in history,” “more than anyone thought possible.” Trump uses this type of language so often that it becomes meaningless and it lacks any specificity or substance. Mendacity/Lying – Donald Trump has told over 20,000 lies since taking office in January of 2017 with PolitiFact recently naming the President’s lies about the deadly coronavirus as the “lie of the year.” The sheer volume of lies, from little white lies to those with deadly consequences, shared by this President is enough to disorient and confuse the public. He said call me either one.” In recent rallies, Trump has referred to new missiles that are both “hydrosonic and hypersonic.” Appearing as without flaw also underlies Trump’s curtailing of any legal or public process that would expose him as a fraud.