THURSDAY: "Grandiose" and "delusional," the specialists said!

THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2026

We live in a subpar world: What is the president's mental state or mental condition? If only as a matter of theory, how might a journalist start to discuss that topic?

As we noted on Tuesday, we were intrigued by one part of the recent letter on this topic from 34 medical specialists. We refer to this part of the statement which Senator Whitehouse recently entered in the Congressional Record:

Medical Concerns About President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness for Office  

[...]

Grandiose and delusional beliefs, including assertions of infallibility, imagery of himself as Pope suggestive of a divine mission, being a mythical warrior hero, depicting himself as combat pilot—dropping feces on civilians, and claims that his decision-making authority is unlimited...   

"Grandiose and delusional beliefs." The medical specialists listed such apparent beliefs among their long list of concerns about the president's fitness for office. That inclusion rang a bell with us, because we'd recently perused the Wikipedia entry on the simple term, "Grandiosity." 

On its own, "grandiosity" doesn't seem to exist as a clinical mental health diagnosis. The Wikipedia report starts like this:

Grandiosity

Not to be confused with grandiose delusion...

In psychology, grandiosity is a sense of superiority, uniqueness, or invulnerability that is unrealistic and not based on personal capability. It may be expressed by exaggerated beliefs regarding one's abilities, the belief that few other people have anything in common with oneself, and that one can only be understood by a few, very special people. Grandiosity is a core diagnostic criterion for hypomania/mania in bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.  

As described (and to the extent that we understand that passage), "grandiosity" doesn't exist as a diagnosis in and of itself. That said, it does constitute "a core diagnostic criterion" for conditions which may obtain in narcissistic personality disorder.  

That said, how do specialists measure the presence of "grandiosity?" As the entry continues, it offers a checklist of manifestations which fits the conqueror of Venezuela and Iran to something quite close to a T:

Measurement

Few scales exist for the sole purpose of measuring grandiosity, though one recent attempt is the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale (NGS), an adjective rating scale where one indicates the applicability of a word to oneself (e.g. superior, glorious).

Grandiosity is also measured as part of other tests, including the Specific Psychotic Experiences Questionnaire (SPEQ), Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5), Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, and diagnostic interviews for bipolar disorders and NPD. The Grandiosity section of the Diagnostic Interview for Narcissism (DIN), for instance, describes:

1. The person exaggerates talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way.
2. The person believes in their invulnerability or does not recognize their limitations.
3. The person has grandiose fantasies.
4. The person believes that they do not need other people.
5. The person over-examines and downgrades other people's projects, statements, or dreams in an unrealistic manner.
6. The person regards themself as unique or special when compared to other people.
7. The person regards themself as generally superior to other people.
8. The person behaves self-centeredly and/or self-referentially.
9. The person behaves in a boastful or pretentious way. 

Is it our imagination, or do those traits fit the past and future conqueror to something resembling a T? 

The president does in fact seem to "regard himself as unique or special when compared to all other people," except perhaps for a handful of the world's most prominent strongmen. Does he seem to imagine himself as one of Them but as separate from everyone else?

Also, does the president "exaggerate his talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way?" Might it seem that the man who said "Only I can fix it" believes, in an almost magical way, in his own (extremely limited) capabilities?  

Did he possibly feel, as some have suggested, that his godlike powers would cause Iran to fall in the same way Venezuela had? With Cuba sure to follow?

We've linked you to Wikipedia's report on "grandiose delusion / delusions of grandeur" in the useless past. This entry on simple "grandiosity" should not be confused with that, the Wikipedia entry warns.   

Having said that, we ask you this:   

What would it be like to live in a world where major journalists were willing to pursue a medical topic like this with some of those medical specialists? Where journalists were capable of some such undertaking?

(On balance, ours almost surely are not.)

Where journalists pursued the question, in a sensitive and capable way, of where runaway grandiosity on the part of a sitting president might conceivably take us? What would it be like to live in a world where journalists were capable of (skillfully) doing that?  

We live in no such world, of course. We live in a world where mainstream journalists swear a blood oath that they will never pursue any such vital questions. Also, where the pitiful children of our most-watched "cable news" channel behave in the astonishing ways we've described in the past two days—first telling us Where The Douchebags Are, then telling viewers who should be baited as gay as the major organs of Blue America agree to avert their gaze.  

That's the world in which we actually live. We repeat a basic observation:   

Man [sic] is the rational animal, Aristotle is frequently said to have said.  

On balance, and all too plainly, that famous old bromide just isn't quite right. In fact, understood in the flattering way we humans have chosen, that famous old bromide is wrong.   

It has always felt good when we've housed such beliefs. It has felt good, but it's been wrong!