MENTAL STATES: Is Donald J. Trump a sociopath?

MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2019

Inquiring minds don't want to know: Last Friday might, on the PBS NewsHour, David Brooks broke an embargo.

Brooks was participating in the program's regular Friday night "Brooks and Shields" pundit segment, with Capehart posing as Shields. At one point, moderator Anna Nawaz asked about Donald J. Trump's visit to El Paso, which had occurred two days before.

Nawaz fashioned a somewhat open-ended, somewhat fuzzy question. In his reply, Brooks sinned against a long-standing press corps rule:

NAWAZ (8/9/19): David, how do you look at this, really? He's such a divisive figure anyway. There is the standard of the "consoler-in-chief." He hasn't done it yet. It's not who he is, right?

BROOKS: Yes. Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit, where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, you know, "The Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?"

And I look at that photo, I think, "Well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy...

For transcript and tape, click here.

Brooks continued on from there; we'll post his full answer below. But he'd broken a basic press corps rule. He'd seemed to say that Donald J. Trump is in the grip of a serious psychiatric disorder.

Is Donald J. Trump a sociopath? As far as we know, "sociopathy" isn't sanctioned as a diagnostic term within modern psychiatry. That said, we've seen few discussions of such matters, because such discussions aren't permitted by the largely unspoken rules of our upper-end press corps establishment.

As far as we know, you can't get diagnosed as a "sociopath" by a sanctioned psychiatrist. That said, the term is in widespread informal use. The experts at Psychology Today explain the matter like this:

Sociopathy is an informal term that refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulative and deceitful behavior, often arising from environmental factors. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), sociopathy is most closely represented by Antisocial Personality Disorder. It is important to note that sociopathy is not a formal diagnosis, but is often invoked in discussing people who are on the antisocial spectrum, those who generally display callous behavior with little regard for others.

That's what Brooks was talking about—and he wasn't alone this day. At New York magazine, Andrew Sullivan had already broken the very same rules, in the following way:

SULLIVAN (8/9/19): [S]omehow, at 73, Trump’s psychological sickness gives him an edge: a gob-smacking drive to keep going and going and going, with no signs of flagging at all, and many signs of mania. Who in their 70s is crazy enough to keep up? Even as he claimed he was seeking healing and unity this week, Trump was still tweeting insults, filming a shameless campaign video, and comparing crowd sizes with Beto O’Rourke’s. The sheer sociopathic narcissism in the face of such grief and trauma beggars belief.

Looking at Trump that very same day, Sullivan saw a "sociopathic narcissism" in the chief executive's conduct. He saw a "psychological sickness" featuring "many signs of mania."

In offering these assessments, Brooks and Sullivan were breaking the rules. Ever since the 1960s, the press corps has, in theory if not always in practice, adhered to the so-called Goldwater Rule, which said that political journalism should avoid psychiatric diagnosis.

In theory, the Goldwater Rule has held sway. It's a very good journalistic rule—until you have a commander in chief who seems to be mentally ill. Inevitably, though, it happened:

In January 2018, the New York Times editorial board decreed that the press should continue adhering to the Goldwater Rule in the case of President Trump. Inevitably, the children fell in line. Speculations about the president's health have been conducted by samizdat from that time to this.

Bandy X. Lee was disappeared. Pundits agreed to be "shocked shocked," day after day after day after day, by the latest crazy thing the commander in chief had most recently said.

Brooks and Sullivan broke that embargo last week. They dared to voice their speculations about the commander in chief's mental state.

That said, peculiar mental states have been on display, for decades now, across the American landscape. You have the peculiar mental states displayed by the stars of the upper-end press. Beyond that, you have the peculiar mental states displayed within the American public—by wide ranges of people within both major tribes, the blue as well as the red.

We in the west have long adhered to the comically self-flattering "rational animal" framework. We insist on seeing ourselves as fundamentally rational players.

We're persistently shocked, and puzzled, by departures from this preconceived norm. "The American people are pretty sharp," major pundits have constantly told us.

It's long past time when we should be discussing Donald Trump's mental state. We could start by letting Dr. Lee return from the re-education camp to which she was frog-marched away.

As the week proceeds, we'll also discuss the metal states of the mainstream press—and even of us over here within our own self-impressed tribe. We'll suggest the radical move which lies at the heart of what is now being called The New Retroactive Anthropology, though only by top experts who live in a dystopian future:

We'll suggest a move which will break all the rules. We'll suggest that we experiment with seeing that famous duck-rabbit in the less flattering way.

Tomorrow: Return of the Clintons most foul

The fuller assessment: Brooks made a fuller statement about Trump. This was his fuller assessment:

BROOKS (8/9/19): Yes. Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit, where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, you know, "The Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?"

And I look at that photo, I think, "Well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone who is unloved, and made himself unlovable, and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn't do the consoler-in-chief just because he doesn't do that emotional range. And that's a burden and a cost for any of us.

To Brooks, Donald J. Trump is unloved, and has made himself unlovable. Our questions:

Following Dylan, should we "pity the poor immigrant" in this case? Or should we continue to call him those names?

Compare and contrast. Discuss. You each get 15 seconds.