Mary Trump writes of her uncle, Donald Trump, “Personally, I’d prefer he keep hiding and leave our exhausted, terrorized nation alone. But after watching him meltdown on national television this afternoon, I’ve changed my mind. The more America sees this vicious, broken man, the better it will be for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz. The better it will be for all of us—because his unremitting darkness and unrelenting negative have to be wearing people out.”[1]
A lot of Joe Biden supporters, replying to attacks on Biden’s age and cognitive capacity, pointed to Trump, saying, what about him? I am not a psychologist, but I think Trump might make an interesting case study for whomever could stomach actually doing the inquiry.
I think people can be so consumed with rage that they cannot see straight. Mary Trump is a psychologist and is a lot closer to him. She can perhaps see what I cannot—and she does not, here at least, suggest cognitive decline, instead calling him “a bitter, vengeful man sliding into irrelevance.” What she describes[2] looks a lot like narcissistic rage,[3]progressively turning ever more malignant.
Her description: “At his rally in Atlanta last weekend, Donald was a rambling and incomprehensible as he usually is, but he had the kind of bullying energy—focused mainly on extremely popular Republican governor Brian Kemp—that has led a lot of people to believe he’s still cognitively intact. Today, standing alone behind a podium in an echoey ballroom in front of a small gaggle of reporters, he seemed lost and unfocused.
“As he meandered from one unrelated topic to the next, he repeated his greatest hits—20 million immigrants released from prisons and insane asylums! World War III!—and reminded us just what a nihilist he is. He flailed and he fumbled, the desperation coming off him in waves.”[4]
It’s the sort of performance that led me to suggest the Trump campaign should put up a ‘hallucinating’ artificial idiocy-powered humanoid robot instead—it would make more sense than he does—and I don’t know how “a lot of people” get from “bullying energy” to “cognitively intact.” This looks to me like a non sequitur. Absence of proof is not proof of absence—we don’t know that Trump is cognitively intact. We also don’t know that he isn’t. But one also has to wonder about the effects of his coronary-inducing diet.[5]
[1] Mary L. Trump, “Donald, Don’t Stop Talking,” The Good in Us, August 9, 2024,
[2] Mary L. Trump, “Donald, Don’t Stop Talking,” The Good in Us, August 9, 2024,
[3] Arlin Cuncic, “What Is Narcissistic Rage?” Very Well Mind, December 6, 2023, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-narcissistic-rage-5183744
[4] Mary L. Trump, “Donald, Don’t Stop Talking,” The Good in Us, August 9, 2024,
[5] Jonathan Rees, “President Trump loves fast food. But does he love it for the wrong reasons?” Washington Post, January 23, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/23/president-trump-loves-fast-food-does-he-love-it-wrong-reasons/