June 29, 2025

For those not well off, Trump's Big Beautiful Bill's message is "let them eat cake." By Hal M. Brown


 While there’s no evidence Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake" (the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche") upon being told that the peasants had no bread. The French phrase mentions brioche, a bread enriched with butter and eggs, considered a luxury food. The quote is taken to reflect either the princess's frivolous disregard for the starving peasants or her poor understanding of their plight. (Wikipedia)

In the case of Trump, he understands the plight of those his policies hurt. Depending who they are, he either doesn’t care or is happy that he has caused them to suffer.

Fleshing out what I mean by offering examples of how Turmp’s policies hurt people, and what Big Beautiful Bill will do to so many, seems superfluous since the meaning ought to be obvious and this is all over the non-Trumpian media news.

I’m not a student of French history which is why, as I wrote this, I had to look up Marie Antoinette on Wikipedia to find out the following:

As queen, Marie Antoinette became increasingly a target of criticism by opponents of the domestic and foreign policies of Louis XVI and those opposed to the monarchy in general. The French libelles accused her of being profligate,promiscuous, having illegitimate children, and harboring sympathies for France's perceived enemies, including her native Austria. She was falsely accused of defrauding the Crown's jewelers in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, but the accusations damaged her reputation further. During the French Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country's financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to social and financial reforms…

I suppose you can say that any similarities to President of the United States Donald J. Trump are purely coincidential. Most people know what her ulimtate fate was:

You’ve probably seen the above painting as it is often used online. Here’s a Google Image search.

Trump won’t suffer a violent and ignominious demise. If he falls from grace, the worst thing that will happen to him, no matter how many people he hurts, will be to retire to live a life of luxury at Mar a Lago surrounded by people who treat him like a king who was treated horribly by his enemies.

I suppose he could get embarrassingly fat by eating all that cake.

The vainglorious preening narcissist might ban photographers from his golf outing,s but this won’t stop cartoonists. (These are AI from Perchance)

Alas, this may prove to have been wishful thinking. Even though yesterday I tried to think of a best case scenario (link here), I fear that at 81 years of age I won’t live to see America return to the democracy I enjoyed all of my life. I dread thinking what kind of country today’s children will grow up to adulthood in.

With what seems to be only minor bumps in the road to autocracy Trump’s brag about never getting tired of winning seems to be holding true. (Reference)

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June 28, 2025

What will the country look like in a year? Here's the best case. I see the chance that Trump will have mellowed to some degree if, as I hope happens, he’s had his sadistic streak somewhat sated.

 


Last night a friend asked me what I thought would end up happening over the next year. I didn’t have an answer. I thought about it and come up with today’s Substack

I see two elements to consider when I try to answer the question shown above. 

One, probably the major element is based on my understanding of Trump’s personality. I’ve called this “his psychopathology” though basically his personality is fraught with psychopatholgy, however each and every person has a personality. Some people are lucky enough to have more or less healthy personalities, others struggle with self-doubt and inscurities, others have diagnosable psychopatholgies like depression, anxiety, or being too obsessive, and still others have disorders which lead them to hurt others. These include narcisstic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, the latter often refered to as being sociopathic. 

The second is based on what happens outside of Trump’s mind but causes him to react. The major ones follow:

The outcome of the elections, mainly in Congress, but to a much lesser extent in state governorships, will determine whether laws will be passed that thwart Trump’s agenda.

The decisions of the Supreme Court may put a damper on his attempts to be the sole arbiter of how the country is run.

The reactions of the public may become so overwhelming as they protest in pubic demonstrations that Trump is faced with the decision whether or not he wants to go full bore ruthless as a dictator using violence to put them down.

The screw-ups by some of his appointees and the failures of their policies may be so egregious that he fires them and modifies and reverses their policies. I see RFK Jr. as being the most likely to bite the dust first because contagious diseases are apolitical.

If his trade war doesn’t achieve his desired bragging rights it may simply quietly go away.

Trump’s big, bad signature juggernaut is his demonization of brown-skinned Hispanic people, non-citizens who he is hellbent on rounding up and sending to other countries. Trump not only doesn’t care about the criticism leveled at the mistakes his masked marauders make, he probably takes the “on ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser des œufs” attitude, or in English “you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs” attitude.1

Now that I think of it, this metaphor can be applied to much of what Trump thinks. On a personal note, when I woke up an hour ago and hadn’t even gotten out of bed I was thinking about making an omelette for breakfast. Before I put this online I’m going to do this and use a photo of it for my illustration. There are good omelettes and bad ones. Mine was delicious.

What does all this add up to looking forward a year from now?

I envision Trump as having turned the country into a moderately miserable place to live for freedom loving people who are lucky enough to be White, Black, or Asian. I see it as a massively miserable place to live for people whose skin color is an Hispanic looking brown.

I see the chance that Trump will have mellowed to some degree if, as I hope happens, he’s had his sadistic streak somewhat sated. If he feels firmly secure in his role as the decider-in-chief he may decide that when it comes right down to how he wants to spend most of his time. Instead of performing in front of cameras and picking on reporters or playing world leader overseas he may feel he has better ways to occupy his time. In other words, he may say to himself, fuck this governing shit, I’d rather be playing golf.

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  1. In order to achieve something, it is inevitable and necessary that some mistakes are made or some sacrifices must occur. Reference

June 27, 2025

A new article and an old one about Trump's dangerous malignant narcissitic psychopathology prompted this Substack. By Hal M. Brown, MSW (Retired psychotherapist)

 




D. Earl Stephens1 wrote a piece in Raw Story+ (the subscription opinion section of the website) today and my comment, below, became my Substack for today. The title is Holy hell! I literally wrote the book on Trump but this has me stunned.Fortunately for those without a subscrption to RawStory+ the same article is on the author’s Substack, Enough Already, here with the title THE MORON - Our pathetic media has learned NOTHING the past decade while covering the stupidest, most dangerous man on the planet .

Stephens is the author of the Toxic Tales book shown below.

The only quibble I have with it is that the title in RawStory+ should read “a book” not “the book.” Except for the group of mental heath experts who contributed to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” nobody can claim they wrote “the” book on Trump. “Dangerous Case” could be considered “the” book since it and a second edition with addtional articles were best sellers.

Below is my comment to the RawStory+ article, including the illustrations I used:

Even before you published your book (shown above), in 2017 John D. Gartner, the clincial psychologist who started the Duty to Warn group, published a book based on Trump's Tweets. Salon has an article about it here: What Donald Trump’s tweets reveal about his mental health.  

Trump told us who, and what he was before he was elected the first time. Psychologically he can be viewed as a malignant narcissist who has a sadistic streak as wide as the stripe down a skunk's back. People with this diagnosis depending on the position they hold can just be unpleasant to deal with or the more power they have the more dangerous they become. Since Trump has become the most powerful person in the world the book that laid this out from the point of view of therapists was "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" edited by psychiatrist Bandy Lee. Gartner authored one of the chaprters. See Wikipedia page.  

This is from Wikipedia: 

The authors argue that Trump's mental health affects the mental health of the people of the United States and that he places the country at grave risk of involving it in a war and of undermining democracy itself due to his dangerous pathology.  Consequently, the authors claim that Trump's presidency represents an emergency which not only allows but requires psychiatrists in the United States to raise alarms.

Since 2016 as much as eminent mental health professionals like Bandy Lee, James Gilligan, Lance Dodes, John Gartner, Justin Frank, Robert Jay Lifton, Phillip Zimbardo, David Reiss, Steven Buser and others, including not so eminent ones like myself, tried to warn about Trump’s dangerous psychopathology our warnings and reasoning was relegated to progressive venues and media outlets like Salon, The Atlantic, MSNBC , and Daily Kos where I used to post my stories. (I now post in Substack here) In fact, only John Gartner as far as I can tell made it into the mainstream media with an article published in USA Today in May 2017 Donald Trump's Malignant Narcissism is Toxic. (He used the word toxic in the title the way Stephens did in his later book.)  It is no solace that the predictions of so many have come true. We (I include myself because I have been one of the therapists writing about this since 2017) tried to warn people. It's possible this had an effect after his first term when he lost to Joe Biden. Obviously we failed in 2024. I venture to say that none of us are surprised at what Trump has done. The only surprise I think most of us would agree on is that he was able to do it this quickly.

Now I am fleshing out this Substack by referencing this article and the comments myself and others made to it.

For those who want to go into more depth about Trump and the role of mental health professionals read this article which was published in the website Mad in America in 2020: Muzzled by Psychiatry in a Time of Crisis The Man in the White Coat, The New York Times and The Stifling of the Public Debate about Donald Trump’s Fitness to Serve as President

I forgot about this article until today. Looking at it I was reminded that a comment I posted to it led to a long string of comments and replies. Many are from Steve McCrea, a mental health professional who has made nearly 10,000 comments to article on this website.

I first wrote the following:

Thank you for this behind the scenes account which explains a great deal. As one of the early members of John D. Gartner’s Duty to Warn group I am surprised it is the first that I learned of it. (A video of a Gartner speech was also presented as part of the Yale conference – you can read it here: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/23/1655450/-Exclusive-Dr-John-Gartner-s-speech-to-Yale-Duty-to-Warn-Conference-on-Trump-s-mental-unfitness

Both the APA and Dr. Allen Frances did a lot of harm. The latter is the psychiatrist who says that because he wrote the DSM criteria for narcissistic personality disorder he is the only one qualified to say Trump doesn’t fit the definition because he doesn’t suffer or perceive any ill effects. (see https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/2/16239892/allen-frances-twilight-american-sanity-goldwater-rule-trump-personality-disorder).

Since 2016 as much as eminent mental health professionals like Bandy Lee, James Gilligan, Lance Dodes, John Gartner, Justin Frank, Robert Jay Lifton, Phillip Zimbardo, David Reiss, Steven Buser and others including not so eminent ones like myself, tried to warn about Trump’s dangerous psychopathology. Our reasoning was relegated to progressive venues and media outlets like Salon, The Atlantic, MSNBC , and Daily Kos where I post my stories. In fact, only John Gartner as far as I can tell made it into the mainstream media with articles published in USA Today.

We should take issue with the argument put forth by Allen Francis because it is a ludicrous one (people with NPD like those with anti-social personality, don’t usually suffer, they make other people suffer). The leaders of the American Psychiatric Associate and their adherence to the Goldwater rule as if it was superglued to the Hippocratic Oath really kept the responsible mental health community from getting the message out that Trump was dangerous, not only because he was an autocrat but also because he was a malignant narcissist with no conscience or empathy and is an exemplar for The Dark Triad, the deadly combination of extreme narcissism, sociopathy, and megalomania.

To find the comment thread my post led to scroll down the comment section until you see what I copied above. I won’t report all of them. They are long and detailed. I will just post my response to this one from Steve McCrea, another mental health professional:

Steve McCrea April 26, 2020 at 10:04 pm

I appreciate both your viewpoint and the civil tone of the discussion. I think the challenge that professionals (and I qualify as one) face here is that concern for safety of the nation can be very legitimate without invoking any kind of “mental illness” as a causal factor. There are plenty of people who are willing to kill other people who have no “mental illness” at all, even by DSM standards. They just think killing people is a good way to solve certain problems. They may even have their own internal “ethics” of when it is and isn’t OK to kill. In some cultures, it may even be required to kill someone if one’s honor is sufficiently undermined.

It is in my view utterly impossible to disentangle “personality disorders” from problems of ethics, morality, and social values. Until and unless there is an objective way to “diagnose” someone with a verifiable “mental illness,” we’re building castles in the air. I’d rather go back to philosophy and ethics to handle this kind of situation. Bringing in “mental illnesses” just adds confusion and controversy.

Here’s my reply:

Steve, I see you live in Portland too, but this is besides the point since what with Covid-19 it may be 1-2 years before we can even consider discussing our different opinions in person.

That being said I think whether done from a distance or not diagnosis has never been precise. When I started working the DSM was nothing more than a little booklet with pages held together by plastic clasps. The the pressure of insurance companies led to the requirement we diagnose. My psychoanalyst friends find making a diagnosis irrelevant for most of their patients. Who when push comes to shove would probably just say they were neurotic or in the most difficult clients perhaps borderline and if they needed a diagnosis would use the code we used in community mental health for years, 309.28.

I think the conceptualization of Trump as a malignant narcissist which was first offered by John Gartner is very useful. As I’m sure everyone reading this knows the personality type never made it into a DSM after it was described by Erich Fromm as a combination of NPD, sociopathic disorder, aggression, and sadism. He described it as a “severe mental sickness” representing “the quintessence of evil”. He characterized the condition as “the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity” (Wikipedia)

No less than the distinguished psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg built on Fromm’s conceptualization. Again from Wikipedia, he noted that “malignant narcissism includes a sadistic element creating, in essence, a sadistic psychopath. In his article, “malignant narcissism” and psychopathy are employed interchangeably. Kernberg first proposed malignant narcissism as a psychiatric diagnosis in 1984.”

Of course it never became a diagnostic category, but this doesn’t mean the combination of other disorders can’t exist in one person. Add to that the third element of what is called the Dark Triad along with sociopathy and extreme narcissism, megalomania, and the power of the president, and you have an incredibly dangerous psychopathology.

Who better to explain this to the public, and to members of Congress as Bandy Lee has to Democratic members, than mental health experts? Those who understand this have a moral and ethical responsibility to sound the alarm as Bandy Lee who doesn’t outright diagnose but still makes the case for Trump having a psychiatric assessment, and others like those in my first comment have been doing. Should we leave it up to lawyers like George Conway who wrote GEORGE CONWAY SAYS TRUMP IS A ‘MALIGNANT NARCISSIST’: HE’S ‘BOTH MENTALLY DISORDERED AND EVIL’ in Newsweek?

I don’t think so. If you had a client who told you their spouse or partner was abusing a child or threatening to harm someone it would be very clear that even without the legal backing of Tarasoff you would also have a duty to warn – a moral and ethical obligation to use what you know as a psychotherapist to protect someone in danger.

As the book title says, in the dangerous case of Donald Trump because of our being experts in assessing psychopathology in person and , when we have an incredible amount of data from observations, from afar we are the only people with the training and expertise to warn about the most dangerous person in America.

Steve took over replying to numerous comments before I posted my last one in response to Gracie:

Hal Brown,

From the daughter of a narcissist, and a close family member of a 2nd, but infinitely more abnormal and dangerous malignant narcissist, thank you for speaking out and thank you for this very sensible comment.

Those of us from around the world, as well as in the US, who have survived a malignant narcissist up close for years recognised Trump very quickly. Malignant narcissists can “ never be wrong” are hyper vigilant in their application of their psychopathy/sociopathy, devoid of empathy or conscience, delighting in sadistic pleasure, and absolutely are not just abusive, but dangerous, homicidally dangerous, deliberately dangerous.

To leave someone we recognise as an extreme example of this condition in a position of national, international, and most importantly, nuclear power is unconscionable.

To leave them in that position of power when they could be curbed or replaced with a person of the same political party is a dereliction.

To deliberately, consistently, attempt to stop people most qualified to speak on this type of person is unconscionable.

To go further to stop the media from talking about it is staggering and blatantly self-serving in some respect, whether in terms of power, political, or financially.

In years to come, IMHO, there will be a reckoning in the US, and many millions saying “why weren’t we told”.

This is what I wrote:

Gracie,

I am sorry you had these experiences and learned the hard way how toxic these people are.

In my 40 years of practice I saw many people, mostly women, who felt trapped in close relationships with extreme or malignant narcissists. If you do a web search for surviving living with a narcissist you will find numerous articles… 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+survive+living+with+a+narcissist&t=h_&ia=web

If you search Amazon there are dozens of books with title like “Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse: The Complete Survival Guide to Understanding Narcissism, Escaping the Narcissist in a Toxic Relationship Forever, and Your Road to Recovery”

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=surviving+living+with+a+narcissist&ref=nb_sb_noss

Here’s a very brief therapy primer for treating victims of abusive relationship:

Once a trusting relationship is built, successful therapy with such people has several primary aspects. As therapists we help our clients build their self-esteem and gain insight as to what in their own personality keeps them in such a toxic relationship. But we also educate them as to why their abuser will never change no matter how many times they promise to do so. We essentially diagnose them from A DISTANCE as an extreme narcissist, sometimes combined with sociopaths, who are often master emotional manipulators. We sometimes recommend they read books on the subject.

Americans are married to Trump. Some married him the way women marry abusive men, falling in love with someone who manipulated them. Impeachment should have been a divorce. It didn’t work.

Congratulations to anyone who actually made it to the end of this lengthy Substack and who actually read every word. For thos who skimmed it I hope you got the idea. Put simply, mental health professionals were warning about Trump since 2017 and now everything they anticipated would happen, and worse, has be born out.

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(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters”and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

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Recent:

For those not well off, Trump's Big Beautiful Bill's message is "let them eat cake." By Hal M. Brown

 While there’s no evidence Marie Antoinette said " Let them eat cake " (the traditional translation of the French phrase " Qu...