He needs to believe it, so it must be true
30 June 2025
It’s clear to me, and to many others across the country and around the world, that our self-proclaimed king, Donald J. Trump, is mentally unstable and unfit to serve in office. We must do everything in our power to limit his influence and remove him from office as swiftly as the law allows.
Unfortunately, many people, including much of the mainstream media, refuse to acknowledge that he’s unhinged and unqualified. To help illustrate the point, here are some examples:
Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated. How does he know this? He couldn’t have learned it through personal examination, and none of the experts or agencies with actual knowledge of the situation agree with him (see here). The truth is, Trump makes these outlandish statements because he wants or needs them to be true. This is a clear sign of his mental instability. He needs his crowds to be the largest, so they are. He needed to win the 2020 election, so he did. He needed a military operation to succeed, so it did, according to his version of reality. For Trump, truth isn’t based on facts; it’s based on what he needs to believe to cope with his damaged psyche.
This is what delusion looks like: holding onto false beliefs despite undeniable evidence to the contrary.
Trump’s delusions are widespread, and they make him completely unfit for office.
While Trump may lack intellectual depth and business acumen, he excels at being a bully and a con artist. He manipulates others into supporting his delusional worldview, using intimidation and deceit to get what he wants.
But success built on lies cannot last. Our economy shrank last quarter for the first time in three years, and without a change in leadership, we can expect even greater problems ahead, not just for the economy, but for the future of our democracy.
If you agree, it’s time to ask yourself: What more can YOU do?
The index to my prior essays (mostly post 5 November 2024) is here.
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Nat—
You are so right about Trump & the media that neglects to address his severe mental illness. Trump is a prisoner of his pathology. His narcissistic rage is a coverup for his deep insecurities. Criticism & opposition make him anxious. His rage attacks serve to ease his anxiety. The pathetic facts about malignant narcissists is that they have no capability of personal insight, act recklessly & care nothing about the harm they do or the chaos they create, & have no capacity for empathy or genuine love. Narcissists are empty vessels that continuously demand to be filled with admiration, respect & adoration. But the vessel is never full. Keep up the good work on highlighting the flaws in Trump’s character.
James Raphael
All of that is true. What is most incredible is that a democracy proud of its checks and balances should have decayed in its social and political fabric to the point of having a lunatic as its president, a tool for bigots and billionaires to pursue their own ends. And the point of those ends is - back to the future, an even more ruthless Gilded Age for billionaires to prance and dance on the world's stage, and trample on the people most at need. No matter how soon and how effectively America can get rid of this evil and unfit man in the presidency and his malevolent enablers, this country cannot allow itself to fall once more at any time into this abyss.
What's surreal is that the great purpose for which this insane tribune of the people has been put in power is to destroy the country's revenue base, and hence its prospects for existence. States which can't raise revenues collapse. That's evident from history whether it was the Bourbon regime in its financial crisis or Rome in the fifth century when Germanic invaders seized portions of the empire and kept the revenues, providing local security in exchange for service and loyalty from those who paid protection money.