Nothing even remotely like a cop concerned about his welfare. And no "shrink" can just order one out of the blue.

Involuntary psych evaluations can only be done if you can show the person is a physical danger to themselves or others.

I really knew that, but I was kinda hoping for a Presidential Exception. Maybe if the Palm Beach police got a lot of anonymous calls about an elderly gentleman who appears disconnected from reality at 1100 South Ocean Boulevard?

A physical danger to others?

I guarantee that if they reactivated Trump’s Twitter account it would be less than 48 hours before we’d have evidence that most any judge would sign off on.
Well, any judge not afraid of death threats.


The downside is that many tinpot dictators round up their opponents, declaim them mentally unbalanced, and throw them in the locked wing of a psychiatric hospital.
So, it would be difficult to deal with the Trumpkins screaming about the spectacularly-dressed emperor being treated like a political prisoner.

The man is a narcissistic psychopath.
I'm amazed frankly that there weren't more deployments / attacks by the US military around the world when he was President.

He's a sociopath, not a psychopath. I think if a situation had arisen with just the right conditions, that could well have happened. However, Trump has an aversion to actually getting involved in foreign conflicts for all his big talk about bombing the oil fields, ISIS, etc. He's a lot of big talk. Note his order to withdraw troops from the Middle East, Germany, etc.

He has an aversion to anything that might make him look bad, such as starting a war. He knows he hasn't the skills to be a leader. Usually he has minions to do all the hard stuff for him. But as president he would be forced to be in charge and, most importantly, shoulder any blame. T**** never, EVER takes any blame for anything. Thus he will avoid any situation that might lead to that. Or shift the blame to someone else, a more usual tactic.

Evidence suggests otherwise. Most of the things he has done for the past 4 years make him look ******* awful.

Not really. He doesn't think those things make him look bad. Quite the contrary: he thinks those things make him look good. Thus the "perfect" phone calls and the constant use of hyperbolic language such as "great, fantastic" etc. His behavior and actions were constantly being reinforced as not only acceptable but positive by his supporters and sycophantic people that he surrounded himself. As Cohen wrote in his book, no one contradicted him, no one told him what he did not want to hear.

To whom?

As long as he gets adulation from millions, he doesn't seem to mind that there are even more millions that hate him. There were plenty of people who liked what he did as President, and even more people who liked what he did until the pandemic.

And even more yet who decided he did not make an acceptable president. The things that he did over the past 4 years made him look bad to all those who voted against him. If he "had an aversion" to the things that made him look bad he would not have done things that cost him the presidency. Fact is, he has no idea what makes him "look bad" so he has no aversion to those things.

Trump does not know he lacks leadership skills because he does not know what (real world) leadership skills are.

Yes, he has his minions do the heavy lifting. But that is exactly what Trump thinks is leadership. Specifically: telling underlings to do work, to fix problems, to pay off porn stars, and to smooth ruffled feathers.

He, almost certainly, thinks his leadership style (capriciously firing people, jumping in to claim credit for positive things, bragging about how impressed experts in a specific field are, throwing people under a bus) is pure unprecedented genius. After all no one has ever honed these leadership skills so sharply.

You don't understand how Trump's mind works by now? Millions of people didn't vote against him because they "decided he did not make an acceptable president": it was because the election was rigged, it was stolen from him. Trump won the election "by a landslide" if only legal votes were counted, remember?

He has an aversion to anything that he considers makes him personally look bad because, as a narcissist, that is the only thing that matters.

There's the key. The man took sycophancy to a whole new level. Not only were people close to him yes men, or they got fired, but he only listened to adoring media and adoring members of the public. He had no clue.

It's so much nicer now that he's gone.

Oh, come on. Of course he knows what makes him look bad to people that he doesn't care about. That's the key: he doesn't care what they think thus he no aversion to doing those things. In fact, he does those things on purpose because he enjoys triggering those people. That's why he says and does the things he does at his rallies and encourages his supporters to react to them. He only has an aversion to things that he thinks make him look bad . Everything else be damned.

I suppose you are right. I think he figured those few small number of people were insignificant. There weren't many, and they were all bad people anyway, so insulting them and making them angry was a public service, or something.

The mind of Trump is so difficult to figure out. On any given question where he's not telling the truth it's so hard to tell if he is lying, crazy, stupid, or some combination of the same.

Trump's mind is not difficult to figure out. Trump epitomizes the American Dream:

'You are a winner because you believe in yourself. Never let others tell you that you are not. If you stick to that belief, nothing can get you down. Never let anybody else tell you that you are wrong. They are just envious and that is the way they get to you.
Your success proves you right. Your lack of success proves you wrong, so don't ever recognize failure. The moment you do, you are no longer a winner.'

Trump is far from the only guy with that belief. His followers believe the same thing. He just happened to inherit millions of dollars and was better at promoting himself than all the losers he looks down on for letting him get away with it.

He does these things to people who are not him not because he doesn't care about them. He does it because it makes OTHER people praise him for being so vicious. His obsession with publicity and ratings supports this.

Example: He searched desperately for approval from his crowds at rallies by continuously moving through his regular list of targets of his insults until the crowd cheered at something loud enough. Then he kept on hammering that nail. He didn't give a damn who the targets were, one way or another. Just that he received massive adulation when he insulted them. The massive adulation is the key point here, not the insults so much. I got the feeling that if he **** in his shoes on stage and they cheered the roof off, he would have done that too.

I agree he's not difficult to figure out: he's a sociopath with extreme NPD. Once you understand that, he's very easy to understand. What's difficult to understand is how so many people can't see that, or if they do, think it's just fine.

Don't forget that one of T****'s biggest spiritual influences is Norman Vincent Peale. Fulfilling the prophetic quality of Adlai Stevenson's famous quips, "I find the apostle Paul appealing, but the apostle Peale appalling."

Ok, I can accept that Trump, in his own weird way, has an aversion to things that he thinks will make him look bad to a certain segment of the US population.

In politics they often say “never get caught in bed with a dead woman or a live man.” (Most often attributed to Larry L. King or Edwin Edwards.)

I really think his approval rating would not move very much if he were found with a dead woman. Well, a dead woman who wasn’t famous. Especially if he could get in front of television cameras before the police did.

Yale shrink contends Trump was excited by attack on Capitol.
https://www.salon.com/2021/02/12/dr-...ible-pleasure/

I agree with Frank except on the being tried for treason. First of all, he cannot be tried for treason because treason is only possible in times of war. He would have to be tried for insurrection. McConnell implied heavily that Trump could and should be tried in a criminal court for incitement.

A lot of what he said we've already discussed before but these stood out for me:

Michael Cohen wrote the same thing in his book. Trump will not directly confront anyone: he makes someone else do his dirty work. Ironically, despite The Apprentice's tag line, he hates to fire people himself and never does it. At heart, Trump is a coward for all his blustering and swaggering.

Again, something Cohen writes about in Disloyal. He wants everyone to be dependent upon him. No one is to show any disagreement with Trump. You are there to back up Trump even if you know he is wrong. You're only reason for being is to serve him and no one and nothing, not even family, comes before your loyalty to him personally. But he owes loyalty to no one but himself.

I agree. That's much more reasonable than claiming that everyone who voted for Trump is insane.

Did he come?

No, he got to nervous and pulled out before any action took place.

I shudder to think what America would be like if President Sparky had a police force that answered only to him and his own secret court where the standard for a search warrant was simply whatever POTUUS wants.

Trump-head with the ability to arrest people, hold them incommunicado forever, and even “disappear” them.

Oh, and DJT would love those videotaped “confessions” with pleas for forgiveness. Which, of course, are made after his goon-squad threatens the prisoners’ families.

ETA
Would someone as allegedly crazy as Trump have any compunction about killing a person’s children as punishment for disloyalty.

"Trump is afraid to directly stand up to people," explains why he fired people via Tweet. People think he's smart like a mob boss who would get others to commit crimes while the boss was legally in the clear. But he isn't smart.

Now we're going to see how he does with multiple legal charges both criminal and civil but this time he doesn't have an army of attorneys to keep the prosecutors at bay. And his sources of funding might also be drying up quickly.

Melania is supposedly mad at him for ruining her reputation (that's odd in itself) but maybe she knows his future income is now in question.

"It is actually erotic for him. It turns him on. . . it really is a source of powerful, deep and incredible pleasure for him." What a stupid thing for a "professional" to say. I think we can all surmise that Trump enjoys the idea that he has followers who will storm the capital in his name and sure, I can buy into the idea that Trump is a fundamentally weak-willed person who can't stand up to people. But to say that it's this deep sexual thing for him is just a way over-the-top stretch.

But you don't know that. You don't have the expertise to know that.

And the term 'erotic' can be used outside of genital pleasure.

Are you a "professional"? If not then how can you make such a prognosis?

That might generally be true. But Trump has a lifetime history of abusing women and bullying everybody to assert power. And in this particular case, people who were around him say he was thrilled to watch the attack on the Capitol, even as lives were threatened. Once again, there is more psychiatric evidence against Trump than there would be against anyone else.

I made no “prognosis.”

I didn’t make a diagnosis either.

I said that it’s stupid for a professional to say something like that and I don’t need to be a professional to know that’s true.

Nobody has the “expertise” to read someone else’s mind. Dr. Frank doesn’t actually know if Trump is “turned on,” either, seeing as how Dr. Frank has never asked Trump, “Do your followers make you horny?”



“Erotic” is a sexual term, genital pleasure or not. Dr. Frank clearly employed it to imply that Trump is sexually stimulated by his follower’s fervor. “Turned on,” is clearly meant in the sexual sense.

Don’t try to redefine words to make what this “professional,” said somehow less ridiculous.

This is the aspect of the whole thing that fascinates me: you guys are willing to defend the most ridiculous stuff just so you don’t have to say, “ok, xjx388...some of this stuff is indeed a little ridiculous.”

Fascinating.

Understanding the presentation of mental illness does not require mind reading. It requires a knowledge base of how the disorder presents.

Understanding what motivates an individual requires either: 1)Spending some time speaking with that individual, especially with the benefit of clinical expertise OR 2)Mind reading.

Oh, here we go again.....

NO, it does not. So now you've gone from "You can't diagnose Trump without an in-person interview" to "You can't know what motivates him without an in-person interview".

We jolly well can know what motivates him. Jesus H. Christ on a freaking skate board going down Fifth Avenue during blizzard.

How can you diagnose someone without understanding what motivates someone? How can you know what motivates someone without talking to them?

Like I said, you guys are willing to defend some crazy ****...

No, that's his professional (not "professional") opinion based on his years of experience as a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and as a psychoanalyst. Yes, yes...I know...resorting to 'appeal to authority'. But exactly what else or who else should we look to? You? Because after all, you're basing your opinion on "I don't need to be a professional to know that’s true". How is that? How do you know that's not true? Do tell us.

Appealing to authority fallacy does not include referring to expertise.

When someone is so desperate that they put an actual professional in quotation marks in an effort to minimize his professional opinion and tells us Dr. Frank can't know Trump's motivations without meeting with him in person, there's a pretty good chance the appeal to authority fallacy charge could be coming next. I thought I might just go ahead and head that baby off at the pass.