This article was updated Dec. 18, 2025
Americans should face it: Donald Trump is mentally ill and is unfit for office.
But his sad mental state, which may be tied to dementia, serves a purpose: Trump is a front for the right-wing Christian nationalist technocrats who want to run the nation. Trump is tolerated as a pathetic clown who can never utter anything true because he allows the billionaire technocrats to advance their tech-centric agenda to loot the treasury and force millions into poverty.
No U.S. president has ever displayed this variety of mental problems, yet remained on the job. Trump’s hard-core Republican “base” continues to support him despite his inability to speak in complete sentences, aggressive outbursts, reliance on fabricated facts and causes, abysmal leadership record, and lack of legislative success, policy formulation, and implementation.
So, why don’t the media and Congress recognize this situation?
If the media and Congress admitted that Trump is mentally ill and unfit for office, they would acknowledge that the system has failed. This is something many Americans already know. They see it every day in the corrupt court system, as well as when MAGA Republicans remain silent as Trump victimizes their own constituents, reduces their standard of living and health benefits, and has a thug gang roam the country threatening citizens. Simultaneously, Trump and his gang make billions through private deals while posing as federal servants.
If die-hard Trump supporters respect their leader, they should adopt his personal life and business practices. If Trump supporters want to emulate him, they should model their personal and business lives on his example.
But if they did, they would be ostracized from most social interactions, including personal, family, and business ones.
The reason is that Trump has mental problems. As psychiatrists point out in these videos, Trump’s erratic behavior, self-contradictions, repetition of words, inability to talk in complete, coherent sentences, failure to remember, aggression, compulsiveness, lack of sympathy for others, incitement to violence, and proven sociopathic and aggressive behavior against women are all indicative of a lack of self-control and uninhibited (i.e., no self-control).
In the words of one psychiatrist, Dr. Russell Razzaque, Trump has no “filter” separating his logic from his feelings. Other psychiatrists in this video, “Mental Health Experts on Donald Trump,” present different possible diagnoses of Trump’s odd mental behavior.
The bottom line is that Trump has problems with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain controls inhibitions, which may explain why he acts erratically, selfishly, and antisocially. Trump has even bragged about swindling others and groping women.
The military routinely performs mental health evaluations of anyone who has access to nuclear weapons to determine if they are mentally stable enough to be entrusted with following orders to launch a nuclear attack. This has been routine for decades. However, these suitability tests are not done on presidents, including Trump.
These videos give more details on Trump’s dangerous behavior, such as his malignant narcissism and grandiosity. He is also guilty of “confabulation,” or of always lying. This could be a brain or personality problem, the psychiatrists say. The psychiatrists also say Trump is prone to violence and inciting others to violence.
Trump’s Constant Lies Serve a Purpose
As Hannah Arendt (Oct. 14, 1906 – Dec. 4, 1975), the German historian and philosopher, said: “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one thinks anything anymore. A person who can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot differentiate between right and wrong.
“And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such people, you can do whatever you want.”
Trump’s Mental Illness Is Designed to Raise Anxiety
Trump’s stream of lies and attacks is designed to raise the blood pressure and mental anxiety of people worldwide. For Americans, the attacks make people more anxious and unstable and prepare them for the next big attack on their liberties by MAGA supporters.
According to one journal, “Caring for a person with mental illness takes a substantial toll on social relationships, employment and income, and psychological well-being. Most families fear for their future health in addition to the stress of caring for their ill family member. 10 Families of people with SMI have worse physical health and seek more medical care than those families without SMI.” Trump’s visible mental problems are taking their toll on Americans in the form of more anxiety, increased tension in relationships, and decreased productivity and health.
Fooling the Media
The media certainly knows that Trump lies more than anyone who has ever held public office. However, the incessant media world of headline cycles, reporting, and analysis of lies provides endless speculation to fuel the cable news networks and social media posts.
Traditional cable media is not used to deal with an incessant stream of lies. Traditional journalism outlets cannot call Trump mentally deranged since they technically need a psychiatrist who has examined him, conducted tests, and then has the patient’s permission to release his findings. That will never be allowed by Trump.
Instead, we have to rely on our common sense (a big phrase in the MAGA world) to acknowledge that Trump is a sociopathic liar and narcissist. Those of us who are not MAGA supporters all see that.
The cable TV pundits, however, cannot acknowledge that since they have to fill the air time with their “analysis” of a mental case and a liar. This is why the media plays into Trump’s sick world by constantly covering his lies with even more empty analysis.
The Bottom Line
Trump supporters cannot admit they made a huge mistake. Elected Republicans cannot remove their leader who has mental problems because they would lose power.
Worse, they are also not knowledgeable politically. How else can we explain that many Trump supporters initially liked Bernie Sanders and his authentic populist and economic message, but they were then tricked by a known fraudster and reality TV host, Trump? It’s hard to admit you made a big mistake. It’s hard to recognize that these people were so easily fooled. But they were two times when they elected this mental case president.
The fact that Americans elected Trump the sociopath twice shows how far the nation has fallen. It looks like half the country must rely on some “savior” to elevate their own sunken lives, or else they are grossly dissatisfied about how a nation that produced the highest standard of living in world history has failed them.
But they have a point, but do not accept the causes. The cause of economic disparity is the wealth gap. When the top one percent own half of the nation’s total wealth, ordinary people scramble to acquire wealth that is out of their reach.
MAGA supporters who don’t focus on their financial insecurity are attracted to Trump’s racism, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, and super-patriot positions. All that makes no sense since Trump readily employed illegal immigrants on his construction sites, married an illegal immigrant, and never served in the armed forces.
So, how does Trump stay in power?
Trump is merely a straw man, an empty, crazy human whom the right-wing Christian nationalists need to be in power to execute their Project 2025 takeover of the US. This includes the anti-vaccine policies that will allow the poor, weak, infirm, and other people down the social ladder to die, so the Elon Musk-Peter Thiel ideologues can see their vision of a new tech society inhabited by the most virile, intelligent, elitist people inthe US to run the country. Trump, the mentally ill TV showman, is merely the frontman for this coup.
How the Right-Wing Bolsters Trump
The MAGA think tanks and other financial engines of this neoliberal takeover of the U.S. are very open about their methods and goals.
According to the president of Hillsdale College, a right-wing academic front for the MAGA movement, “We are witnessing the most direct assault on the entrenched and corrupt bureaucracy (i.e., the Federal and State governments) that I have ever seen, and that is because the people’s common sense has again found a voice in their government. Rule by expertise has proven folly, and men like President Trump and Mr. Musk, on behalf of the people, are righting the ship.”
“Righting the ship” means they are engaged in a radical change to upend “the entrenched and corrupt bureaucracy that I have ever seen.” Hillsdale College is only one of scores of right-wing think tanks, money-generating machines, strong-arm groups, and right-win enablers behind Trump working in every state in the union and overseas.
Trump’s policies are intentionally designed to create a recession and economic hardship. When people are economically weak and financially terrorized, they are weak and more pliable to the fascist message. That is why many people recognize that Trump and his Cabinet and followers are a threat to Democracy.
However, half the nation voted for Trump because they either believed he was a sociopath with distinct mental problems or were disgusted with their lives. Some may have unknowingly voted for Trump. But his supporters will not learn their lesson until they suffer financial and emotional consequences. Like the flu, the Trump plague will have to run its course.
