It’s way past time to talk seriously about Trump Derangement Syndrome — his, not his critics’.
For years it’s been clear to mental health experts as well as the armchair variety, to Republicans as well as Democrats, that Donald Trump is not well. Yet his behavior — the pathological lying, childish name-calling, grandiosity and narcissistic obsession with crowd sizes, open bigotry, erraticism, desire to be liked (loved!) by murderous dictators — long ago became normalized.
Trump’s fire hose of cray-cray has inured Americans to his outrages. He unabashedly owns the offenses, then repeats them. And enough of our fellow citizens like that about him, and dislike his opponents, that they may elect him president — again.
“God help us,” in the words of retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff.
But now that President Joe Biden has been pushed out of the 2024 race over concerns about his age and mental acuity, Trump’s more manifest unfitness for office should be ignored no longer — by the media, former advisors and military leaders who remain silent and, yes, Republicans.