With reports that a giddy commander in chief is running around the White House like a kid freed of any adult supervision, having dispatched every moderate who hasn’t resigned in hopes of saving a shred of his integrity, Donald Trump now appears to be in a state of mania as he escalates his efforts to bolster his fragile ego before he goes into the cage with special prosecutor Robert Mueller—or fires him.
This was exactly what the contributors to the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump warned about six months ago. The psychiatric professionals who contributed to the book have monitored and come to know Trump’s character better than most clients they have treated or people they have interviewed. As the special prosecutor’s noose tightens around the president and his cultish family, it is increasingly clear that he is an imminent danger to the public, and this impinges on professionals’ duty to society. Sheehy wrote about the book and its genesis in these pages last October.
Lawmakers with experience as prosecutors or foreign affairs experts are sounding red alerts about how far out of control is this tormented tweeter. In this White House it’s now every man for himself. As authors of the book warned, Trump trusts no one. Predictably, that has taught everyone who works for him that they can’t trust their boss. Praised today, fired tomorrow.
The authors of the book warned that the Trump effect was creating a “malignant normalcy,” a collective psychological anesthesia in the face of people’s free-floating fears about the stability of this president. Last fall, it was the kind of hush that falls before an impending hurricane or an October Surprise. The book warned that the worst was ahead.
Trump’s paranoia, exaggerated by the real and imminent threat of prosecution for obstruction of justice, money laundering, and physical intimidation of women he has bought for sexual pleasure, is reaching a break point. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal warns of a “catastrophic crisis” pitting an unhinged president against the rule of law and the future of democracy.
“It’s an onrushing train heading straight at us,” warned Sen. Chris Coons this week. The Democrat from Delaware likely has inside knowledge from his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Even more ominous are the coded words of former CIA Director John Brennan, who this week told MSNBC that “perhaps the Russians have something” on Trump, and “Mr. Trump knows better than any one of us why the Russians might have something on him.”
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The Russians are taking it to slow on him.