Trump, dementia, and the duty to warn
To ensure that the United States will always be led by a coherent, functioning President, the Twenty-Fifth Amendmentprovides for the prompt, orderly, and democratic transfer of executive power in the event the president is incapacitated, physically or mentally. Trump’s tariff debacle, where he strutted his economic incoherence, bragged about world leaders kissing his ass, then flip flopped the next day, was the strongest evidence yet- in a roiling sea of proof- that he is mentally incapacitated.
Despite inheriting the strongest post-covid economy in the world, Trump keeps insisting that the US economy is broken and in need of a ‘savior’- him. He insists global trading partners who sell us more than they buy from us- even countries that are a fraction of our size- are “taking advantage,” and that America’s economy, despite being the strongest industrialized economy in the world for decades, has been "pillaged" by foreigners.
Most world leaders are too disciplined to sneer out loud at Trump’s bellicose ignorance. Aware of his unhinged lust for revenge, they are reluctant to utter the truth. But the world is aware, even if Americans aren’t, that our president is deranged.
Mental health professionals sound the alarm
As discussed in more detail in Friday’s Haake Take, a petition is currently circulating among psychiatrists and other mental health professionals about Trump’s cognitive impairment. The petition was begun by Dr. John Gartner, former faculty member of Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Over 3000 psychiatrists have signed the petition, concluding that Trump has probable dementia. To reach their conclusion, they reviewed recordings of his speech patterns over a nine year period. (Gartner reviewed records dating back through the 1980s.) They note Trump’s shrunken vocabulary, misuse and mispronunciation of words, and that Trump often breaks now in the middle of sentences to digress into inappropriate ramblings.
They write, “Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills…. his vocabulary is impoverished, he often has difficulty finishing a thought, sentence or even a word. Typical of dementia patients he perseverates and overuses superlatives and filler words…” Their concern supersedes their competing professional duty of neutrality; it also outweighs concerns about diagnosing someone without conducting an in-person assessment known as the “Goldwater rule.”
Wall Street apparently agrees. Analysts at notoriously conservative Wall Street Journal wrote, following the tariffs, that another Trump impeachment is “already in the bag.” Calling Trump’s tariffs stunt “neurotic,” a WSJ op-ed said Trump, clearly divorced from reality, had “fabricated a gratuitously ambitious mission to meet his misguided sense of importance… Nobody in Mr. Trump’s orbit actually shares his belief in the magical efficacy of tariffs because it makes sense only in a world that doesn’t exist, where other countries don’t retaliate.” About Trump’s dissociation from reality, the op ed noted that “no consensus or even significant coalition exists for trying to force into existence a new American “golden age” with tariffs, which is like asking a chicken to give birth to a lioness. (Trump) invented this mission out of his own confused intuition.”
Scores of universities have also published papers concluding that Trump has dementia—too many to summarize here. Even Former White House strategist Steve Bannon thought Donald Trump had dementia, and campaigned covertly to remove him from office via the 25th amendment early on. A simple Google search for “Trump has dementia” identifies hundreds of articles from think tanks, universities and MSM outlets like the New York Times, reporting on Trump’s cognitive decline and the concern it presents among mental health professionals.
It should be a concern to all of us.
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
Trump’s tariff fiasco resulted in market losses of $8 trillion, not all of which reversed when he changed his mind. The long-term economic costs, in terms of volatility and permanent loss of trust among investors and global partners, cannot yet be quantified, nor can the economic impact of the escalating trade war with China.
Trump has shown a penchant for reckless conduct that feeds his ego and keeps him in the media spotlight, with little regard for the human suffering it causes. The irreversible trade destruction from his tariffs came less than two weeks after Signalgate, another outrageous and potentially disastrous debacle.
If Trump’s insistence that he can deploy the US military on Mexico’s sovereign territory, retake the Panama Canal, annex Canada, buy Greenland, and develop Gaza into a wealthy resort isn’t proof enough that he is mentally unfit to serve, he now says he will seek a third term, despite the clarity of the 22nd Amendment. ("No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…”)
Most frightening of all, this impaired man can now launch nuclear weapons.
Dr. Bandy Lee wrote The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President near the conclusion of Trump’s first presidency. In the book, psychiatric experts came forward due to what they saw as their professional moral and civic “duty to warn” America about Trump’s dementia.
It’s also an implied duty of anyone who swore an oath to protect the nation and uphold the Constitution.
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows the Vice President and either the Cabinet, or a body approved “by law” formed by Congress, to jointly agree that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Democrats and Republicans have a professional duty to talk in earnest about this clause, and to act on it before Trump commits another disastrous, potentially world annihilating, blunder.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
The problem, Sabrina, is that invoking the 25th Amendment would make Vance president and imo he would be more dangerous. Trump is a dumb demented fuck. Vance is a smart, cruel fuck who learned his fascist tactics from Peter Thiel. And Thiel IS a fascist. He had an uncle who worked in Nazi Germany as a rocket propellent scientist. It's in his DNA.
And if Vance was unable to be President then it goes to Mike Johnson who is even more problematic because he is a fucking religious fanatic.
Increasingly, I see the only way to solve our national problems is to give those desiring 1939 Germany 1789 France instead. Viva la Revolucion.
Trump is the closest politician to Nero in US history. Trump is not only a malignant narcissist who set the world economy on fire, but then went to play in his athletic games where "surprisingly" he won. It won't be long before Trump starts reciting and writing poetry like Nero...well I guess he already does with all the time he recites his favorite poem "You knew I was a snake".