Our Right-Wing “Intellectuals” and Trump’s Disabilities

As someone who pretty much lives in my head, I’ve always had a fascination with right-wing “intellectuals.” I read almost every column that Ross Douthat publishes, and a lot more of George Will’s work product than I view as worthwhile after reading.

Douthat is by far the most interesting. He uses lots of abstract words. He uses them not just correctly, but aptly. Sometimes his metaphors or clever use of language makes me laugh out loud. He’s by far the better writer of the two. Reading his columns can be like watching a skilled acrobat defy gravity (and often common sense!) and come out whole.

Douhat’s piece in this Sunday’s New York Times Opinion section is like that. In it, he explains, in great detail, how Trump has alternatively adopted, ignored or eviscerated the fundamentals of “conservative” ideology, in many ways, in his speeches, tweets, threats, promises and actions.

Douthat cites chapter and verse in geopolitics, foreign policy, economic policy, nationalism, and egalitarian policy (or its opposite). Aptly and succinctly, he describes how Trump has vacillated among opposing brands of so-called “conservative” thinking, and sometimes their antitheses, leaving his supporters, detractors and much of the world confused and even stunned. Douthat steps right up to the line of calling this wild inconsistency a “strategy” but never quite crosses it.

The column’s effect on me was profound. Overall, it seemed an attempt to place Trump in the framework of transformational presidents like FDR and Reagan. As such, it seemed the most subtle and therefore persuasive attempt to normalize, if not deify, Trump that I have ever read. I put the Opinion section down and began to wonder whether Douthat himself had gone mad.

George Will, it seems, has gone in exactly the opposite direction. In a series of recent YouTube streaming podcasts, he rants on, speaking rapidly, about what he views (without using that word) as a subtle revolution among Republican Senators and government officials who are, in his view, resisting Trump quietly and procedurally. This resistance, Will says, appears privately, in failing to publicly approve (rather than disapprove) Executive actions, silence (rather than comment, positive or otherwise) on Trump’s repeated reliance on ambiguous or non-existent emergency powers, and requests for Trump’s underlings to provide documents and answers (many of which, and many deadlines for which, are ignored). To Will, all these things are signs of a subtle institutional resistance to Trump which, precisely because it is subtle and quite (if not entirely) mute, will or must prevail in time.

Will’s remarkable podcasts struck me hard. They consisted almost entirely of what David Brooks once described—in a column many years ago about an unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee’s legal writing—as “vapid abstractions.” The abstractions were well-expressed, catchy even, as Will prided himself on short sentences. Some were even thought provoking. But nowhere in his speaking did I find so much as a single fact, let alone a tangible one.

I watched two roughly 25-minute podcasts, one about Mitch McConnell’s alleged rebellion in the Senate, the other about general institutional resistance, without hearing a single reportable fact about what McConnell actually said or did or who or what was behind this alleged quiet senatorial resistance. The closest Will came to reciting actual facts was quoting, without attribution, a few phrases from an unnamed memorandum (or notes in its margins) by unnamed senate staffers questioning the Trump White House’s failing to respond to requests for information or documents, or failing to meet deadlines for responding.

How this weak tea signaled an internal revolt, let alone a viable opposition strategy, eluded me. The image that came to mind was a cadre of anonymous accountants with green eyeshades striding boldly out to meet a group of anonymized ICE agents with their identities obscured, body armor, batons, tear gas, and handguns. I wondered whether Will knows what a fact is (or thinks facts irrelevant) and whether he has ever held so much as a screwdriver in his hand.

Doubthat’s column is undoubtedly a finer example of English prose and deeper thinking. It could be read in a course on English, writing, political science or history to spark discussions so deep that no AI could ever hope to duplicate them. Will’s podcast, however, had one signal advantage: a clear implication, repeatedly made, that what Trump is doing with his increasingly strident invocation of emergency powers and increasing state violence at home and abroad is neither right nor sustainable.

Both columns, however, failed even to identify a possible outcome from the things they deplore. Could it be that Trump has no coherent strategy whatsoever but is operating entirely on whim, solely in a deranged quest for self-aggrandizement, self-gratification, and personal gain? Could both columns, in different ways, validate the rising chorus of qualified professionals who see Trump as personifying malignant narcissism and suffering from rapidly advancing senile dementia much like that which drove Joe Biden from office, but getting visibly worse? Could it be that Trump, in ways that would make us recoil if he were merely the CEO of a profitable company, is functionally insane?

That appears to be the professional conclusion of John Gartner, a clinical psychologist who has been much publicized lately. He has concluded that Trump: (1) is a malignant narcissist who meets the four-part objective test for that disorder; (2) is suffering from rapidly advancing senile dementia (again, according to objective, clearly articulated criteria and based on Trump’s many publicized words and actions); (3) due to his disabilities, is unlikely complete his second term; and (4) does not fall under the purported “rules” against “remote” diagnoses of psychological disorders, which anyway are not held by all relevant professional associations, and which do not logically apply here, where so much of the subject’s relevant behavior has been widely recorded and publicized. (The best and most succinct podcast of Gartner’s conclusions on these points can be found on YouTube streaming TV by searching for “John Gartner Trump Times Radio.” I could not find an online Internet link to this podcast, but there are a number of longer and more diffuse interviews of John Gartner produced by The Daily Beast and other online news outlets.)

So, as we watch Trump’s malignant narcissism and mental degeneration get worse, we won’t get useful hints, let alone a valid clinical diagnosis, from the likes of Douthat or Will. We will probably get the first real hint from Vice President J.D. Vance. He rose, rocket-like, from Yale Law grad and hill-billy author to Vice President, in less than four years. That level of ambition, plus his apparently world-class successful opportunism, suggests that he might move to Amendment-25 Trump as soon as he can do so successfully.

Removal of a president for disability under Amendment 25 is much like impeachment and removal, but without the need for indictment in the House and a trial in the Senate. Under Section 3, all the Vice-President needs to assume control of the Executive immediately is the consent of “a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide[.]” (emphasis added). He needn’t even have the entire Cabinet on his side.

There is a catch, however. Section 4 allows the President, acting alone, to countermand the Vice-President’s notice of disability unless the Vice-President can get two-thirds of each House of Congress to back up the notice.

Thankfully, the time scale for this entire process is much abbreviated, as compared to impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate upon conviction. Congress must meet and vote within a mere twenty-three days after the president attempts to countermand an Executive-branch notice of disability.

That’s why, among many other reasons, the upcoming midterm elections are so vitally important. We have what appears to be an increasingly deranged malignant narcissist not only in charge of our national defense, international alliances and economy. He also has his finger on The Button that could blow our entire species away.

If we don’t want to roll the dice for three more long years to see whether that might happen, let alone how badly our economy and international standing might fail in the interim, our best hope is clear. The Dems must win decisively next November, and that win must give Vance and Republicans in Congress enough spine to invoke Amendment 25 and replace the madman. (Sane Republicans should jump at the chance to cooperate, if only to secure a new beginning, plus two more years before the next presidential election to undo the damage caused by Trump’s derangement.)

We all know what ancient Rome’s three mad emperors (Nero, Caligula and Commodus) did to it. We should not be eager to replay that tape, let alone in our age of AI, privatized propaganda, a global economy, a rapidly rising China and ultra-aggressive Russia, and nuclear weapons.