COGNITION(S): Stephens and Brooks describe President Trump!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2026

Ever so slowly they turn: As the snow becomes general over the west, the flooding of the zone has become a deluge, a tsunami. As of yesterday, we the people were trying to puzzle out such competing topics as these:

Minneapolis, Greenland, The Board of Peace, the impending demise of the western alliance! Jack Smith and January 6 were suddenly back on our TV screens, with Venezuela—and Ukraine—now long gone, crowded out, forgotten.

Is there any possible way to get back out of all this? This morning, a pair of (traditionally conservative) columnists at the New York Times help define the central part of the problem.

In the 2024 election, Bret Stephens (reluctantly) voted for Candidate Harris.  Was he at Davos this week? His column almost reads like he was, but we aren't totally sure.

Perhaps he merely watched from afar. With a reference to a famous novel in his headline, here's part of what he says he saw:

An Unhinged President on the Magic Mountain

[...]

The underlying spirit of Davos this year is fear.

That spirit arrived with Donald Trump, whose hourlong speech to a packed audience on Wednesday sounded, in places, as if it had been ghostwritten by Mario Puzo. Wrapped in self-aggrandizing boasts and exaggerations, along with ugly jibes, meandering asides and shopworn grievances, lay a premeditated threat worthy of a padrino: “You can say ‘yes’ and we will be very appreciative,” the president said, in reference to his demand for Greenland. “Or you can say ‘no’ and we will remember.”

The line didn’t get the attention it deserved in news headlines that focused on Trump’s promise not to use force to take the semiautonomous Danish territory ...

President Trump is "unhinged," the columnist's headline says. That word doesn't appear in the text of the column, but Stephens' portrait of the padrino—the godfather—is unflattering and rather clear.

So speaks Stephens in a column which appears in today's print editions. The new column by David Brooks may turn up in print tomorrow.

Brooks goes a bit farther than Stephens in his portrait of President Trump. It seems to us that he comes close to describing a combination of medical situations we've explicitly mused about:

Is the headline weirdly hopeful, or does it describe a source of great danger? You can read it either way. Here's some of what Brooks describes:

The Coming Trump Crackup

Last week Minneapolis’s police chief, Brian O’Hara, said the thing he fears most is the “moment where it all explodes.” I share his worry. If you follow the trajectory of events, it’s pretty clear that we’re headed toward some kind of crackup.

We are in the middle of at least four unravelings: The unraveling of the postwar international order. The unraveling of domestic tranquillity wherever Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents bring down their jackboots. The further unraveling of the democratic order, with attacks on Fed independence and—excuse the pun—trumped-up prosecutions of political opponents. Finally, the unraveling of President Trump’s mind.

Of these four, the unraveling of Trump’s mind is the primary one, leading to all the others. Narcissists sometimes get worse with age, as their remaining inhibitions fall away. The effect is bound to be profound when the narcissist happens to be president of the United States.

Every president I’ve ever covered gets more full of himself the longer he remains in office, and when you start out with Trump-level self-regard, the effect is grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights.

Furthermore, over the past year, Trump has been quicker and quicker to resort to violence...

Explicitly, Brooks refers to Trump as a narcissist. That can be a technical medical term, though it's also a term which is routinely used in a colloquial manner.

"Narcissists sometimes get worse with age," Brooks suggestively says. He explicitly says that we're "in the middle of...the unraveling of President Trump’s mind."

No, that doesn't sound good! To our ear, that suggests that President Trump may be subject, at this time, to some sort of cognitive decline, possibly layered on top of a pre-existing medical condition.

At any rate, as a part of the overall portrait he paints, Brooks refers to the president's "grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights." He says he greatly fears where this might be headed. He asserts that the president, as he unravels, is now "quicker to resort to violence."

To our ear, it sounds like Brooks is describing a set of medical problems without being willing to "make a medical diagnosis" (Anne Applebaum). That said, what is the type of narcissism which can be part of a medical diagnosis? The leading authority speaks:

Narcissistic personality disorder

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a complex and heterogeneous personality disorder characterized by patterns of grandiosity, entitlement, low empathy, and interpersonal difficulties, which can manifest as either grandiose (“thick-skinned”) or vulnerable (“thin-skinned”) forms. Grandiose individuals display arrogance, social dominance, and exploitative behaviors, while vulnerable individuals show shame, inferiority, hypersensitivity, and extreme reactions to criticism. NPD often involves impaired emotional empathy, superficial relationships, and difficulty tolerating disagreement. It is often comorbid with other mental disorders and associated with significant functional impairment and psychosocial disability.

And so on, at great length, from there.

Grandiosity, lack of empathy, thin-skinned difficulty tolerating disagreement? Stephens and Brooks are both describing the characteristics which help define this clinical "personality disorder." 

Keeping that thought in ming, you may recall the way Mary L. Trump, Ph.D. described her famous uncle in her best-selling 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man:

MARY L. TRUMP, PH.D. (pages 12-13): 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 only gets us so far.

[...]

A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe forms is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others...

The fact is, Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for.

So wrote the clinical therapist niece. To our ear, Brooks is describing a situation in which cognitive decline may now be layering over a pre-existing "personality disorder," or perhaps over a set of such clinical disorders.

Very, very slowly they turn, slowly walking away from a long-standing rule—a rule which has held that such possibilities must never be advanced when discussing political leaders. 

Is it possible that President Trump is confronting a new medical situation, layered on top of a pre-existing medical situation which may have obtained at birth? Ever so slowly they turn, but it sounds to us like Brooks is describing a tragic—and dangerous—medical circumstance, without quite saying as much.

This very morning, we're off to the medical mission ourselves, so we must hurry forward. We'll close with a question:

Could anything really be gained by a less guarded discussion of President Trump's thin-skinned, angry, unfeeling behavior? We can't necessarily answer that question.    

We will make this suggestion:

Such discussions are likely to be counterproductive—are likely to do more harm than good—where the possibility of "mental illness" is treated as the ultimate insult, rather than as the description of a tragic medical roll of the dice. 

Within our vastly limited culture, we've largely learned to fashion alcoholism as a disease, rather than as a failure of character or as a source of mockery and laughter. In other columns in the Times, and on at least one cable news program, the flickering suggestion that President Trump is medically impaired is generally being treated as the ultimate insult.

The "personality disorder(s)" in question may, in fact, have been bred in the bone. We Blues don't know to discuss such tragedies at this point in time, and—for better or worse—our journalists don't seem ready to head down the path in which intelligent, empathic people deal with the possibility of a provisional "medical diagnosis."

To their credit, Stephens and Brooks are strikingly frank in certain ways. One of the columnists says "unhinged." The other scribe says "unraveling."

That said, what medical tragedy may explain the fearful and dangerous "unraveling of President Trump's mind?" Ever so slowly our columnists turn toward a less guarded day.