According to a new report from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Trump’s recently ousted Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, apparently recognizes that the president of the United States is a mentally ill individual — he just seems to believe that it’s a good thing.
Kicking off her article, Dowd wrote that many a Trump supporter has now taken to questioning “Joe Biden’s mental acuity.”
“Democrats can resort to this sort of sniping, too. Many Trump critics in 2016, and in the year after his election, pushed the idea that his father had suffered from Alzheimer’s and now Trump was losing it and that his vocabulary was eroding,” she penned.
“And it has become common among his attackers to say the president is deranged, suffering from malignant narcissism.”
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Dowd then recounted that Trump’s former Chief of Staff once allegedly suggested that White House staffers read a book by the director of the mood disorders program at Tufts Medical Center, Nassir Ghaemi, titled A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness — an anecdote from Mulvaney that was originally reported by ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl in his new book, Front Row at the Trump Show.
First sneak peak at my upcoming book via @maureendowd:
As Karl writes: “The new acting chief of staff seemed to be saying President Trump was mentally ill — and that this was a good thing.“ https://t.co/hYlzKBWzZ2
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) March 7, 2020
Ghaemi wrote of his work, “This book argues that in at least one vitally important circumstance insanity produces good results and sanity is a problem. In times of crisis, we are better off being led by mentally ill leaders than by mentally normal ones.”
But NYT columnist Dowd isn’t buying it, especially not when it comes to the deadly coronavirus that’s currently sweeping the globe.
“Trump is continuing his Panglossian handling of the coronavirus,” Dowd asserted. “Meanwhile, the stock market is still freaking out and financial angst is spreading from boardrooms to kitchen tables.”
“We can vividly see in this crisis how close to the surface Trump’s id is and how easily he cleaves to delusions. He personalizes everything so much that when things go bad, he can only see it as an attack on him by the forces out to get him,” she continued. “He seems psychologically incapable of dealing with a virus that is complex and uncertain. The virus will be in every community and needs truth, honesty and intelligence — all absent from the unstable Trump, who at his core is a frightened boy and pretender.”
As @JonKarl reports, when Mulvaney took acting CoS job he suggested WH staff read “A First Rate Madness,” about mental illness and leadership. What will he recommend to staffers now that he’s off to Northern Ireland? How about “Say Nothing?” https://t.co/rswjPdm0es
— Maureen Dowd (@maureendowd) March 7, 2020
Perhaps it’s an interesting theory. However, it’s certainly not one you want to test out on an entire country for four years. And furthermore, Trump has pretty well disproven as much by now.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
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