PIECES OF WORK: Is President Trump a piece of work?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2025

And the walls came tumblin' down: Is President Trump a "piece of work" in the sense we're discussing this week?

We'd have to say that the answer is no. As we've noted, Prince Hamlet put it like this:

What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Speaking from a great despair, Hamlet said he no longer took joy in the noble reason and infinite faculty of his own human species. That said, as President Trump portrays himself dropping waste on the heads of the public:

As he tears the walls of the East Wing down;

As he backs away from his plan to stage another dog-and-pony show with Putin:

As he engages in these behaviors, we'd have to call him "a real piece of work" in a less flattering modern sense.

Tens of millions of voters disagree with our view. That said, we'll remind you of this:

We've often shown you what the president's niece said about her famous uncle. For example, we've shown you what she wrote about the time, after he finished seventh grade at a private school in Queens, when his "Conduct disorder" may have been acknowledged for the first time.

The president's father ("Fred") sat on the board at the private school. But enough had become too much:

Though Donald’s behavior [at age 12] didn’t bother Fred—given his long hours at the office, he wasn’t often around to witness much of what happened at home—it drove his mother to distraction. Mary couldn’t control him at all, and Donald disobeyed her at every turn. Any attempt at discipline by her was rebuffed. He talked back. He couldn’t ever admit he was wrong; he contradicted her even when she was right; and he refused to back down. He tormented his little brother and stole his toys. He refused to do his chores or anything else he was told to do...

Finally, by 1959, Donald’s misbehavior—fighting, bullying, arguing with teachers—had gone too far. [The private] Kew-Forest [School] had reached its limits. Fred’s being on the school’s board of trustees cut two ways: on the one hand, Donald’s behavior had been overlooked longer than it otherwise might have; on the other, it caused Fred some inconvenience. Name-calling and teasing kids too young to fight back had escalated into physical altercations. Fred didn’t mind Donald’s acting out, but it had become intrusive and time consuming for him. When one of his fellow board members at Kew-Forest recommended sending Donald to New York Military Academy as a way to rein him in, Fred went along with it.

The future president was sent to NYMA, a high discipline boarding school, for the rest of his junior high and high school years. 

(For extensive excerpts from Mary Trump's best-selling 2020 book, click here for our report about "The Great I-Am.")

Was a syndrome taking shape during those early years? When the president posted the bizarre video in which he drops mounds of excrement on the heads of us the people, we journeyed back into the world of the DSM to see what we could possibly find.

We knew that no "journalist" would follow this path. One click led to another. Eventually, we landed on this:

Conduct disorder

Conduct disorder (CD) is a mental disorder diagnosed in childhood or adolescence that presents itself through a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior that includes theft, lies, physical violence that may lead to destruction, and reckless breaking of rules, in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate norms are violated. These behaviors are often referred to as "antisocial behaviors," and is often seen as the precursor to antisocial personality disorder; however, the latter, by definition, cannot be diagnosed until the individual is 18 years old. Conduct disorder may result from parental rejection and neglect and in such cases can be treated with family therapy, as well as behavioral modifications and pharmacotherapy.

"Conduct disorder!" As the name of a formal diagnosis, it almost sounds like an Onion parody—but, apparently, there it sits, a clinical diagnosis, in the (current) DSM-5:

Conduct disorder is classified in the fourth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It is diagnosed based on a prolonged pattern of antisocial behavior such as serious violation of laws and social norms and rules in people younger than the age of 18. Similar criteria are used in those over the age of 18 for the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. No proposed revisions for the main criteria of conduct disorder exist in the DSM-5; there is a recommendation by the work group to add an additional specifier for callous and unemotional traits. According to DSM-5 criteria for conduct disorder, there are four categories that could be present in the child's behavior: aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft, and serious violation of rules.

According to that same authority, "Conduct disorder" is seen as a precursor to antisocial personality disorder, which can't be diagnosed until the subject is 18 years of age. Concerning that particular syndrome, the president's niece—as you know, she's a doctorate-wielding clinical psychologist—said this is her best-selling book:

In the last three years, I’ve watched as countless pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have kept missing the mark, using phrases such as “malignant narcissism” and “narcissistic personality disorder” in an attempt to make sense of Donald’s often bizarre and self-defeating behavior. I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far.

[...]

Does Donald have other symptoms we aren’t aware of? Are there other disorders that might have as much or more explanatory power? Maybe. A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact that the president's niece said these things doesn't mean that the statements are accurate. That said, she describes the president's father—her own grandfather—as a "sociopath" (or as a "high-functioning sociopath") at various points in her book.

She stresses the fact that the children of a sociopath face a difficult path in life. She notes the fact that "sociopathy" is believed to be heritable, at least in part.

"Conduct disorder" may be diagnosed among children who behave in various ways. By the time such children reach age 18, that initial diagnosis may be replaced with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. That said:

Over the weekend, thee he sat, posting a videotape which pictured him dropping human waste on the heads of his fellow citizens. By the start of the week, photos emerged of the way he was tearing the East Wing down, having failed to engage in normal types of consultations, with the Washington Post reporting this:

White House expands East Wing demolition as critics decry Trump overreach

A demolition job that began Monday with the disappearance of the White House’s eastern entrance advanced Tuesday with the destruction of much of the East Wing, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post and two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the scene.

Photos of construction teams knocking down portions of the East Wing, first revealed by The Washington Post on Monday, shocked preservationists, raised questions about White House overreach and lack of transparency, and sparked complaints from Democrats that President Donald Trump was damaging “The People’s House” to pursue a personal priority.

“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University in Maryland. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”

[..]

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing construction, said Tuesday that historic artifacts of the East Wing had been “preserved and stored” under the supervision of the White House Executive Residence and the National Park Service with support from the White House Historical Association, a nonprofit organization. The official cited items such as elements from Rosalynn Carter’s Office of the first lady, and said that there were plans to use them. The person did not say if any of the building itself would also be saved.

One of the people who witnessed the demolition Tuesday said that views of the site from the Treasury Department’s headquarters, which is next to the East Wing, amplify the demolition, but a large portion of the structure still remained by late afternoon. However, it appeared that what remained was also headed for demolition, with no evidence that the structure was being protected and only jagged damage visible in the exposed building.

This strikes us as extremely peculiar behavior. That said, the unusual aspects of the behavior align with standard checklists of the psychiatric syndrome in question.

Michelle Goldberg's latest column appears this morning in print editions of the New York Times. She didn't write about the demolition of the East Wing, a property which doesn't belong to President Trump.

She wrote about last weekend's dumping of the excrement. Headline included, this is the way she starts:

Trump Posted a Video of Himself Dumping Excrement on Our Cities. It’s a Glimpse of His Deepest Drives.

This weekend, I was surprised to learn that Donald Trump seems to see himself in the same way I do: as a would-be monarch spraying the citizenry with excrement.

On Saturday, perhaps stung by the enormous nationwide “No Kings” protests, Trump posted an A.I.-generated video on Truth Social that inadvertently captured his approach to governing. In it the president, wearing a crown, flies a “Top Gun”-style fighter plane labeled “King Trump” above American cities crowded with demonstrators, dumping gargantuan loads of feces on them. Amplifying it on social media, the White House communications director Steven Cheung gleefully wrote that the president was defecating “all over these No Kings losers!”

The column continues from there. 

Is President Trump a piece of work? It all depends on what the meaning of "piece of work" is.

Tomorrow and Friday, we'll show you what Goldberg took from last Saturday's bizarre piece of videotape. Also, we'll show you the way these recent behaviors read to us.

On the whole, we Blue Americans have been abandoned by our major journalists and by our major news orgs. A mere nine months into his term, the president is dropping excrement on the public's heads, and the walls have come tumbling down.

Is there a "mental health / mental disorder" aspect to these behaviors? Could some such situation point to danger ahead? In the next two days, we'll show you how the situation reads to Goldberg and how it reads to us.

One final note:

Yesterday afternoon, the corporate stumblebums at The Five pretended to discuss the East Wing demolition. 

The Five is our failing nation's most-watched "cable news" program. After producers played tape of Mika Brzezinski expressing concern about the demolition, one co-host mocked her with this:

"I understand Morning Joe [being] upset. Mika knows a bad facelift when she sees one."

That's the garbage which crawls out of the can when the CEO removes the lid. Over here in Silo Blue, our news orgs won't discuss that situation either. 

Tomorrow, we'll show you what Goldberg believes she saw when she watched the president's excrement tape. We'll also tell you what we think we might perhaps be seeing. 

Tomorrow: What Goldberg saw