Trump's Brain Makes Him Unfit to Serve
by Bill Ballas
October 20, 2024
Psychiatry, psychology, and social psychology are important disciplines within the neuropolitical domain. So too are political science, the law, sociology, history, genetics, and epigenetics, to name a few others.
Unfortunately, the majority of legitimate, mainstream media, with the largest audiences and most resources, most often ignore Mr. Trump's mental and behavioral health as though he is separate from his brain. A presidential candidate's brain cannot be severed from their policies and actions.
The brains of Vice President Harris and Mr. Trump are intricate and complex, and responsible for every facet of their personality, feelings, thoughts, and actions. Make no mistake, their brains are on the ballot.
Every brain has its individual neuronal patterns and is unique in its own right. Yet, as three-pound bags of jelly go, the former president's brain has been the top mystery in politics since 2016. (The brains of Trump supporters is the second biggest enigma.)
But there is something truly remarkable about Mr. Trump's brain. I found what it was while reading a 2021 study published in Frontiers in Psychology. Now, I believe Mr. Trump's brain is so exceptional it ranks in the top 1.2% of all brains in one particular category: meeting the clinical definition of a psychopath.
As a non-clinician, I admit to not being qualified to make such a diagnosis. However, neither is a board-certified psychiatrist or licensed clinical psychologist without the benefit of providing mental health care to the former president. And, if a medical professional were treating him, Mr. Trump's patient information would be confidential.
The categories psychopath and sociopath no longer exist in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). However, individuals with characteristics of either condition fall under the designation of antisocial personality disorder (APD).
Scholars have claimed that the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is the best, most utilized, and state-of-the-art assessment for clinical professionals to diagnose psychopathy. It is also useful in predicting negative outcomes (including violence) and identifying treatment options.
The PCL-R evaluation features twenty criteria on which a patient is rated 1, or 2 depending on how well their behavior or personality matches the item's description.
Let us perform a thought experiment: Using the PCL-R scale to assess Mr. Trump on the criteria below, do you think he meets the criteria for a psychopath/person with APD?
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Need for stimulation
Pathological lying
Conning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect (could not react emotionally)
Callous/lack of empathy
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavioral controls
Promiscuous sexual behavior
Early behavioral problems
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility
Failure to accept responsibility
Many short-term relationships
Juvenile delinquency
Revocation of conditional release (meaning someone was granted a conditional release from prison and that release has been revoked.)
Criminal versatility
In your evaluation, what score did you assign Mr. Trump? I gave him a 31.¹ The highest score a person can achieve on the PCL-R is forty, and a score of at least thirty is needed for someone to be classified as a psychopath.
There is more. As stated by the DSM-5 clinical criteria as listed in the Merck Manual, for a patient to be diagnosed with APD, the individual must show a "persistent disregard for the rights of others" in three or more of the following traits:
Disregarding the law (such as committing acts that are grounds for arrest repeatedly)
Acting in a deceitful manner (lying repeatedly, deceiving others for personal gain or using aliases)
Being impulsive or failing to plan ahead
Acting irresponsibly on a consistent basis
Being easily provoked or aggressive
Failing to feel remorse (feeling indifferent to or rationalizing the mistreatment of others)
How many of the six examples pertaining to the "persistent disregard for the rights of others" did you attribute to Mr. Trump?
He was 6 for 6 on my evaluation.
¹ I evaluated Mr. Trump four times over four days. His scores were 29, 33, 31, 31.