Donald Trump, sociopath
The most despicable thing Donald Trump did during his 2015-2016 campaign for president was to mock a disabled reporter. Trump subsequently denied that he had mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting the joints. He insisted he was only mocking what he had written, that he’d never met the man or heard him speak in public.
Few people believed Trump at the time, noting that his mockery was very close to the way Kovaleski’s illness causes him to talk and gesticulate. It created a great deal of controversy and negative feeling toward Trump, causing him to worry that it might cost him the election. Of course, he needn’t have worried.
Today, of course, what once might have been considered disqualifying is a mere trifle, a nothing. Republicans have since become far more depraved in the time since the Trump presidency. Trump wouldn’t have worried had the incident happened today, and few journalists would raise a protest.
How do I know this? Because during a weekend campaign event in Georgia, Trump did it again. He made fun of someone’s disability. Trump said, mocking president Biden’s stutter, “I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together.” And few journalists raised a protest.
I suppose, in some sense, Trump found mocking Biden’s speech impediment “funny,” the way small boys might find tripping a man on crutches funny. It isn’t, of course. It’s cruel and hateful and ugly. It’s what cowards do. The fact that Trump found it funny is the latest important reminder why Trump should have never been president in the first place, let alone president again.
This is a recurring problem with Republicans. They understand neither humour nor tragedy, pathos nor bathos. They simply lack the subtlety to distinguish what emotions apply according to a given situation. This is a symptom of arrested development. At the extreme end, at the dark side of the spectrum, it’s an indication of sociopathic behaviour.
Sociopaths sometimes study how normal people with real feelings of compassion behave and try to mimic that behaviour. They usually aren’t very successful at it, and that’s why sociopaths often talk with flat affectations. Note the droning way Trump speaks when giving a speech for comparison.
I call out Trump’s latest gaffe by name because I think it’s important. It reminds us that, above all, a president must be compassionate. President Biden is a deeply compassionate man and he shows it in ways that cannot be faked. Donald Trump is a depraved sociopath, a sociopath that Republicans are about to make their candidate for president of the United States. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.