If It Isn't Mental Illness, Is It Senile Dementia?

A psychologist types at USA Today that Trump isn't mentally ill. He has another theory or two:

The small time window and sympathetic audience control also explain why Trump always seems to be creating foreign policy on the fly, why his meetings with world leaders rarely produce tangible results, why he can’t get congressional deals, and why he is almost certainly incapable of negotiating those famous bilateral agreements that were supposed to replace the multinational treaties he has swept aside.

If I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am, Trump is capable of only a minimal level of analytical or critical thinking. Perhaps more alarming, our president — the putative leader of the free world — doesn’t believe in anything and he rarely, if ever, means anything he says. The impulsive tweets, the conservative court appointments, the unfunded tax cuts, the obsession with a wall, the swipes at immigrants — all are byproducts (dross, if you will) of sympathetic audience control operating in small time windows. There are no principles operating here, just gusts of wind.

And if I’m right, Trump will continue to function this way — blindly, erratically and reactively, without principle or direction — for the rest of his life.

Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, is a former editor in chief of Psychology Today and the author of 15 books. 

We should note that the shrink compares Trump to the shrink's 92-yr. old mother, who also works in this small time window. Too bad the shrink can't explain why Trump is this way, or why it's not mental illness. If Trump's behavior ain't mental, it must be physical, right? A calcified brain should lead directly to the 25th Amendment, shouldn't it?

A bit later: Deeper analysis from Booman.

At a minimum, this argument is terribly incomplete. Trump may have a tendency to make up with people with whom he has quarreled, but he also is a legendary grudge holder. He did not forget how President Obama humiliated him at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011. In fact, there’s a good chance that one of his main motivations for making a run for president was so he could trash Obama from coast to coast.