If the media can freely discuss Joe Biden’s apparently advancing dementia why do they avoid the elephant in the room with Donald Trump? His mental state and his very loose relationship with the truth.
OK, I’m not a psychiatrist but I can read and Trump has all the symptoms of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ – check out the Mayo Clinic website – including: having an unreasonably high sense of self-importance and requiring constant, excessive admiration (‘I could be the most popular person in Europe. I could be… I could run for any office if I wanted to, but I don’t want to); expecting to be recognised as superior even without achievements (‘nobody knows more about taxes than me, maybe in the history of the world’).
Then there’s: making achievements and talents seem bigger than they are (he claims he’s worth $10 billion but Forbes estimates it’s less than half that); being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance (‘Nobody’s ever been more successful than me’); being critical of and looking down on people they feel are not important (‘Romney… I have a Gucci store that’s worth more than Romney’); behaving in an arrogant way, bragging a lot and coming across as conceited; (‘I won every debate. I won everything I did, and I won, and I won easily’); and reacting with rage or contempt and trying to belittle other people to make themselves appear superior (‘[John McCain]… is not a war hero. He’s a war hero ‘cause he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured’).
And that’s just seven of 21 symptoms on the list.
Trump also has a serious problem with the truth and says things as patently untrue as they are totally unnecessary. He was in Texas two days before he said: ‘Well, I haven’t actually left the White House in months’. He had, actually, many times.
He claimed to have invented the word ‘caravan’ – and how about these for porkies? ‘No one respects women more than me’. Yeah, right. Where was it you said you grab them? ‘No one reads the Bible more than me’. Really?
Then there’s the biggest lie of all. That the election was rigged and he really won in 2020, a lie which he still repeats regularly. Perhaps his mental disorder just won’t let him believe he lost. Losing is not for narcissists. Maybe in Trump’s mind, he’s so talented and popular he couldn’t possibly have lost so it must have been rigged.
How can any world leader trust him when he treats the truth so loosely? Could they believe anything he says? Could he ever be trusted to keep his word when he contradicts himself so often? (‘People are too trusting. I’m a very untrusting guy’, ‘I surround myself with good people, and then I give myself the luxury of trusting them’,’Surround yourself with people you can trust’, ‘My motto is “Hire the best people, and don’t trust them” ‘).
And it could be crucial because a person like Trump, who believes he’s right about everything, finds it hard to take advice especially if it contradicts his own superior opinion (‘I’m speaking with myself, number 1, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things… My primary consultant is myself’). Would it be possible for advisers to talk truth to power when he’s likely to sack anyone who contradicts him? (There’s a whole Wikipedia page of resignations and sackings in his first term.)
Then this fluent liar says, ‘I think I’m almost too honest to be a politician’. Audacity or lack of self-awareness?
And he compares himself to Lincoln: ‘I can be more presidential than anybody. I would say more presidential, and I’ve said this a couple of times, more presidential other than the great Abe Lincoln’. Oh, come on Donald, such modesty, you’re more presidential than Abe (in your own mind).
Why is Trump’s mental state not discussed in the media? His condition is as evident as Biden’s. It seems so obvious, so problematic and potentially so risky.
Is the leader of the Free World again going to be this megalomaniacal narcissist with delusions of grandeur and a taste for revenge (‘When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades’; ‘If you do not get even, you are just a schmuck!’)?
Even the Americans deserve better.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
