In 2008, I was the first to suggest that Barack Obama is narcissistic personality disorder.
Then in March 2016, I granted an interview to American Thinker, a conservative online publication as right as right can get, not progressive, not liberal, not democratic, super republican, almost altright. The interview was published and I was the first ever to suggest that Donald Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.
March 2016, Google online "Vaknin American Thinker". Every time I mention Donald Trump's name in any of my videos, I get an avalanche of commentary.
Don't mix politics in your lectures. Politics has no place in psychology. Politics has no place in therapy.
Right? Wrong.
Imagine if I were living in the 1930s in Germany and I were to write a series of articles because there was no YouTube at the time. If I were to write a series of articles about Adolf Hitler, claiming that in my professional opinion, he's a narcissist and a psychopath.
You can imagine the avalanche of correspondence from Nazi sympathizers, castigating me, chastising me, and criticizing me for mixing my profession with politics.
And yetin the 1930s, intellectuals have failed to do exactly this. They failed to sound the alarm regarding this extremely dangerous leader. They failed to alert the public that Adolf Hitler is mentally ill.
I don't want to repeat this mistake. I have an obligation to my profession, to my conscience, and to you, my public, to alert you to the fact substantiated by my work and the work and opinions of thousands of others, other psychologists, including the niece of Donald Trump. We have all been warning you that Donald Trump is not well mentally, that he is in all likelihood a narcissist, whether he is a malignant narcissist, whether he is a covert narcissist, which he is not, I think, whether he is overt.
But besides the point, he has not been diagnosed formally by anyone. But that he is a narcissist.
There is extremely little doubt in the minds of anyone who knows narcissism.
Do we have an obligation to warn you against narcissists? Of course. What are all these YouTube channels for? We are warning you against narcissists. We're telling you don't date narcissists. Don't get married to narcissists. Don't have children to narcissists.
And yes, do not vote for narcissists because narcissists are sick in the head. They have cognitive distortions. They miss perceive reality. They falsify everything to buttress the grandiosity. They have no empathy. They abuse, exploit, and utilize people.
They are malevolent on multiple occasions. They are vengeful. They are sadistic. They are dangerous. They are dangerous to you and to themselves.
Narcissists should never attain power. They should never hold office.
In a law-based society, a proper civilization, people would be subjected to psychological assessment before being eligible to pose as candidates. Anyone who wants to have a public office would have to be tested extensively for personality disorders and other mental health issues.
So it is regrettable that in our so-called democracies, people like Donald Trump can rise to the top.
But wait a minute, you see. Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. Isn't this going over the top?
Of course he is not Adolf Hitler. He is in the United States where it is extremely difficult to become Adolf Hitler. Germany had a 20-year democracy, the Weimar Republic, and that is the only reason Hitler succeeded to upend it and become a dictator, the Fuhrer.
Donald Trump is unlucky in this sense, but had Donald Trump lived in a different America, of course he would have become an Adolf Hitler.
I have not the beginning of the slightest doubt about this. And mind you, I know a thing or two about narcissistic personality disorder, both personally and professionally. I have contributed a lot to the field.
And I am telling you, this man is not well. He belongs in an institution and it is not the White House.
Do I have a moral obligation to tell you this? Of course. Am I afraid of you, my public? Never. Nevermy allegiance is to the truth and to the principles of my profession.
Yes, but you say your profession prohibits you from diagnosing people remotely without interviewing them and subjecting them to medical tests and without their consent.
Truer. That's the Goldwater Rule, Article 7.
But the Goldwater Rule, which applies to public figures, is antiquated and wrong. Not all rules are right.
This particular rule is idiotic. The extent of information available about Donald Trump is such that it exceeds anything we can ever know about any other patient.
We have enough information to decide on and to diagnose him with absolute certainty and safety.
And so I have no hesitation to tell you that the man is a narcissist. I am just not sure where there is a psychopathic narcissist. That I have my doubts, but he is a narcissist for sure.
Grandiose, exploitative, dysempathic, problems with intimacy.
But you say, "Hold it. He has a family. They love him. It's easy to love someone with two or three or four billion dollars. And it's easy to succumb to an authoritative dictatorial father who wouldn't brook any dissent. It's easy to hand to the coattails of a successful man. It makes it easier to love him.
Are his family as mentally ill as he is? Time will tell. That I don't know. There is insufficient information there, but there is an abundance of information regarding this utterly horrible, ignorant, stupid man, Donald Trump.
And this is not to mention his conflicted relationship with the truth, with women, with minorities. The man is a menaceas had been proven during the COVID pandemic. He is a menace to himself. He is a menace to the collective, which he purportedly leads. And he's a menace to the world at large.
That he had not inflicted more damage than he had in the first four years is a miracle, an attribute to cooler heads around him.
He is impetuous. He lacks impulse control. He is defiantand he is reckless. Good grounds to assume that he is also a psychopath.
You have been warned. Do not complain afterwards that the therapist and the psychologist did not tell you in advance the price they're going to payshould you reelect this travesty of a human being.
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