Part 6. “People Will Die Today”
Clinical Perspective: Trump Will Refuse to Leave Office
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. (Sarcastically) And we’re probably not going to cheer too much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to stay strong” — Donald Trump, inciting a mob to storm the Capitol, January 6, 2021.
Yesterday morning, I said four words to my wife before heading to my office: “People will die today.” No further explanation or discussion was needed. In attempting to comprehend the terrifying scenes that would transfix the world a few short hours later, we come full circle to the opening quote in the first of this six-part series:
“I can tell you, I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” — Donald Trump, Breitbart News, March 14, 2019.
At 1 pm yesterday, as Congress convened to certify the presidential electoral victory of Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris, Trump spewed to the “tough guy” mob he’d summoned to Washington a 70 minute delusional rant directing them to overrun the Capitol a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue in order to disrupt the typically routine process. The entire globe was shocked by what followed.
My distinguished colleagues in mental health have been trying to sound the alarm since Trump won the Republican candidacy in August, 2016. I personally have been wrong on several occasions that the psychotic meltdown we are now witnessing was imminent. On each of those occasions, we underestimated that Trump could be rescued from detachment from reality by such enablers as Kellyanne Conway, James Comey, Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham, and — most importantly — Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr (his Roy Cohn). Again and again, when self-inflicted sabotage threatened his demise, Trump was pulled back from the brink by his despicable, self-serving cadre of sycophants.
Until now.
The first major crack in his support came with Bill Barr, who had led the Department of Justice to save Trump from Mueller and removal from office, to attack Trump’s enemies and to save his friends. Shortly before the election, to my own amazement, Barr refused to pursue ludicrous indictments against Biden, the Clintons, and Obama, drawing blind rage from Trump. McConnell began tactfully to disagree with some of Trump’s more outrageous assertions in an obvious desire not to inflame Trump’s wrath and cause him to sabotage the Georgia Republicans in the senate run-off elections in Georgia, which would end McConnell’s iron-fisted majority control of the Senate.
The hour long audio tape that surfaced this past weekend of Trump brazenly bullying the Georgia Secretary of State to “find me 11,780 votes” to overturn his pivotal defeat in the state, did much to deepen the cracks in his support and inspire mutiny.
When he began to recognize that he was running out of options, that indeed there was no one to rescue him this time, his rogue rage and disconnection from reality spiraled, leading to the bizarre and terrifying acts of desperation on display yesterday.
In one of many papers attempting to distinguish between strategic lies (“I never met David Duke,” “I never called that country a ‘shithole’”) versus delusional falsehoods that he actually believes (“I know more than all the generals,” “God stopped the rain for my inaugural speech”), I described what the process would be of his descent into psychosis if he were cornered:
“Trump’s repeated delusional falsehoods provide a persuasive glimpse into his vulnerability to panicky decompensation and disconnection from reality…It is not possible to exaggerate the clinical risk of the president deteriorating into a dark, delusional paranoid phantasmagoria in which his appearance of relative normality melts away and only enemies remain everywhere.” Clinical Perspective: Trump Must Be Blocked from the Nuclear Codes, Medium.com, May, 2018.
Given the shocking events that unfolded yesterday, the exodus from Trump among most of his inner circle has been near-total. The appearance of a mere narcissist and an typical psychopath has melted away. As with asthmatics and epileptics who can seem completely healthy one minute and fighting for their lives in the next, Trump’s lifelong grandiose and paranoid detachment from reality has been unmasked. This naked revelation has been valuable for many to see.
And yet, make no mistake about it. For the next 13 days, we have entered a period of extreme danger and unpredictability. As I have repeatedly emphasized, we must never forget Trump has unfettered access to the nuclear codes. The overwhelming majority either doesn’t understand this or simply doesn’t believe it. There is no filtering consensus required. The assistant carrying the nuclear football merely certifies that the proper code is entered and missiles are in the air in under five minutes.
Despite the horrifying events of yesterday and the audio of Trump attempting to steal the Georgia vote over the weekend, talk of the 25th Amendment or a second impeachment seem implausible. But without question, Trump needs immediately to be severely restrained, with some form of authoritative presence that watches every single move.
As shocked as we are by the mob take-over incited by Trump, we nevertheless are not nearly as afraid as we should be.
Impulsive, vengeful, deranged incineration of the planet? If I’m going down, I’m taking everyone down with me? As we learned yesterday, until Trump is no longer president, we must continue to stretch ourselves to imagine the unimaginable.
Michael Tansey, PhD
drmjtansey.com
