One of the most dangerous lies of Trump's involved the most serious threat to his presidency: his downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic. TRUTH: The US exceeded the White House's 2020 death estimate by 100K lives. TRUMP: The coronavirus pandemic is under control. Trump is the only president not to reach 50% approval rating during his time in office, since Gallup started polling the number in 1938.īut despite no evidence to support the view, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, one out of every three Americans - and two in every three Republicans - believes that there was widespread voter fraud in the presidential election, indicating damage on the country's democratic institutions needing repairs far beyond the Capitol's shattered glass. The most recent Gallup poll on Trump's favorability found that he is leaving office with his lowest approval rating of his four years in office at 34%. In the current political landscape he nurtured, truth seekers – whether scientists, academics, journalists or intelligence agency officials - were often attacked, or in some inspector generals' cases, fired, simply because the facts unavoidably collided with the alternate reality created in the White House - one amplified by Trump's allies in Congress and right-wing media.

The president advanced falsehoods on everything from the mundane to what some called the 'big lie' - that the 2020 election was stolen, a repeated assertion that ended in the Capitol siege. His critics and even a number of supporters say something far more sinister and pervasive was at work - Trump weaponizing misinformation, or and even lies, to achieve his goals. As someone who espoused 'truthful hyperbole,' Trump's supporters viewed him as a showman who sometimes exaggerated, but ultimately fulfilled his most important promises, such as filling the Supreme Court with conservative judges.īut many took a decidedly darker view. In the best light, Trump was seen as occasionally struggling with the truth. The APA has also stated that “psychiatrists are medical doctors evaluating mental illness is no less thorough than diagnosing diabetes or heart disease.” That’s true - but what might a cardiologist say if a public figure kept having heart attacks? Would he need to be subjected to a “thorough” diagnostic regimen for a doctor to speculate that there might be an underlying heart condition? If the person who kept having heart attacks was a pilot who refused to seek medical attention, wouldn’t it be malpractice not to speak out? It is not an exaggeration to say that Donald has exhibited pathological behavior that is equally alarming - as evidenced most recently by his callous disregard for his own health and the well-being of those around him when he left Walter Reed hospital while still shedding coronavirus, or when he holds rallies and encourages thousands of people to attend without wearing masks or social distancing in order to prop up his ego.President Donald Trump is not a beacon of truth. It is one thing to declare definitively that a person has anti-social personality disorder (a specific diagnostic term) it is another to point to behaviors - such as deliberately putting other people in harm’s way for no discernible reason (for example, abandoning our Kurdish allies) beyond one’s own self-interest - and express the general conclusion that it is dangerous to have somebody in the Oval Office who is incapable of empathy. While psychiatric diagnosis is a technical process, it is entirely within bounds to draw conclusions based on observable behavior. This is absurd on its face and has potentially serious consequences for the safety of the American people.

Trump psychotic break