SORROW, PITY, OUTRIGHT FEAR: In search of the actual President Trump!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2026

Sources of pity—and fear: Who is the actual President Trump? This very day, on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough called attention to a new column in the (conservative) Washington Examiner. 

The column was written by Dan Hannan. He's described by the Examiner as "a member of the [British] House of Lords and a former Conservative MEP [Member of the European Parliament]." 

Hannan isn't a "lefty lunatic." He also isn't a medical specialist, but his Examiner column—provocative headline included—starts off like this  

Donald Trump is losing his mind  

Imagine it was someone other than President Donald Trump. Suppose a different leader were posting deranged rants in the small hours, insulting the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, threatening entire civilizations with annihilation, and comparing himself to God. What would be the reaction?

We all know the answer. Both parties would be rushing to bundle him out of office before he did irreversible harm to the republic. Yet, as we all also know, different rules apply to Trump. Democrats, having had their fingers burned by two failed impeachment attempts, are reluctant to try again, for they know that there is no surer way to boost his support. Republicans, who privately despair at the electoral damage he is doing, let alone the constitutional damage, are paralyzed by fear of upsetting their primary voters. 

You can read the entire column here. Presumably, Hannan didn't write the headline on his piece, but along the way, he makes such statements as these: 

[Continuing directly] 
Harold Macmillan, the suave British postwar leader, liked to quip that there were three institutions that no sensible man challenged: the Brigade of Guards, the National Union of Mineworkers, and the Roman Catholic Church. Yet Trump, in one of his nocturnal forays, decided to conjure a fight with the Bishop of Rome out of thin air...

The president, whom critics accuse of having a God-complex, then followed up with an image of himself as Jesus healing the sick. This image was offensive, not only to Catholics, but to almost every practicing Christian and, come to that, to almost every Muslim. 

[...]

[Various] things are possible, I suppose. The likelier explanation, though, is that this is exactly what it looks like. A 79-year-old man who has long dealt in chaos is now being consumed by that chaos. His episodes are becoming more frequent, his good days further apart. What he has lost is not a sense of decency or decorum—he never had those—but any remaining sense of self-control.

Everyone around him can see it. Yet, whether from ambition, cowardice, or weary acceptance, they keep looking for ways to rationalize his behavior. The tragedy is no longer Trump’s. It is now America’s. 

That's the way the column ends. Hannan doesn't quite say that the president "is losing his mind," but some might say he comes close.   

Hannan does say that the president's critics "accuse [him] of having a God-complex." It isn't entirely clear what that "accusation" might mean, but if critics have been making that accusation, they've done so very rarely and only among themselves.  

Is the sitting president "losing his mind," perhaps as once happened with Lear—perhaps as may have happened with former President Biden? The claim is fuzzy, but given the president's enormous power, the claim is cause for enormous fear—and that fear is not just "America's."  

Some such fear would belong to the world.

Hannan's column returns us to a familiar journalistic play, in which people who aren't medical specialists seem to be expressing views about the president's (mental) health.  So too with MS NOW's Alex Wagner, who offered a sidelong assessment of President Trump as she discussed Tucker Carlson's recent disavowal of the president.

Along the way, Wagner assesses President Trump. Headline included, Mediaite offers this report:  

...MS NOW’s Alex Wagner Says Tucker Carlson’s Trump Apology ‘Feels’ Genuine

MS NOW’s Alex Wagner admitted Tucker Carlson’s apology for helping to elect President Donald Trump “feels” genuine, though she remains skeptical of how much help he could actually be to Democrats.   

Wagner joined Ari Melber on MS NOW’s The Beat on Tuesday evening, where she reacted to Carlson offering an apology on his show this week for ever supporting and campaigning for Trump. Though he threw an endorsement Trump’s way, Carlson has become increasingly critical of him over issues like the Iran war.  

[...]

"I guess it’s welcome if overdue. Pardon me for being a little cynical about [Carlson's] mea culpa. Ari, this is someone who witnessed Trump stage and foment an insurrection at the Capitol and still went and campaigned for the man. Like, did you not think his narcissism was malignant in early January of 2021? Because I sure did. Like, here was a man that clearly was going to stop at nothing, including tearing down our own democracy, to regain power. So the idea that it’s just dawned on [Carlson] that this man’s moral compass may not be pointing in the right direction, and he may not be operating with the most strategic manual is like maybe a little bit late and maybe a little bit not as genuine as I wish it was."  

For ourselves, we'd be reluctant to assess the sincerity of anything Carlson says. But along the way, Wagner seemed to say that she has believed, ever since January 2021, that the sitting president can be characterized as a "malignant narcissist."   

Malignant narcissism! That's an actual medical / clinical term, though only, it appears, of a sort. (The leading authority discusses "malignant narcissism" here.) 

Should the sitting president be viewed as a "malignant narcissist?" If so, it seems to us—we aren't medical specialists either—that that would be cause for a great deal of fear.   

That said, Wagner isn't a medical specialist—and, as far as we know, she has never gone on the air and directly stated this major cause for concern. This has been the game our Blue American journalists have played down through these (apparently) dangerous years.  

Wagner apparently thought the sitting president was a "malignant narcissist!" As far as we know, she never challenged her news org to bring (carefully selected) medical specialists on the air to discuss this possibility—this obvious source of concern and fear.  

In such ways, our Blue American thought leaders have, for better or worse, played a type of double game. For ourselves, we want to express a different reaction to the president's most recent behavior. 

We're very sorry, but yes! Given his enormous power, we do regard the president's erratic conduct—his endlessly bizarre behaviors—as an obvious source of concern and outright fear. 

We'll also admit that, even in the face of that fear, we feel pity for a 79-year-old man who has been reduced to the pitiful state in which he offers messages to the world as pitiful as this:

Truth Details

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open so they can make $500 Million Dollars a day (which is, therefore, what they are losing if it is closed!). They only say they want it closed because I have it totally BLOCKADED (CLOSED!), so they merely want to “save face.” People approached me four days ago, saying, “Sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait, immediately.” But if we do that, there can never be a Deal with Iran, unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included! President DONALD J. TRUMP

So reads his latest Truth Social post. For a report from Mediaite, you can just click here.

That's the president's explanation for his latest change of course. As with Lear, so too here: 

We feel sorry for any person who's been reduced to such desperate twaddle as that.

"How did it get this far?" Don Corleone once asked. Tomorrow, we'll ask The Ghost of Childhood Past to refresh you as to how this deeply dangerous situation seems to have started to surface, way back in the distant past.

Tomorrow: First inklings?