Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
Speaker 1: we all live through this, The subject that will surprise
Speaker 1: historians the most is for how long it was clear
Speaker 1: this man was mentally incoonfident and nobody did anything about it. Ordinarily,
Speaker 1: I would say my conscience was clear about this because
Speaker 1: I first brought it up in June of twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: on the Chelsea Handler Show on Netflix. Yes there was one,
Speaker 1: look it up. Then the next month Vanity Fair published
Speaker 1: a piece I did called could Trump Pass a Sanity Test?
Speaker 1: And we made a video of it. Apparently I didn't
Speaker 1: talk loud enough on the Chelsea Handler Show, or the
Speaker 1: article wasn't long enough, or we didn't make enough videos.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tank the could Trump pass a Sanity Test?
Speaker 1: Article and read it again now virtually unchanged with a
Speaker 1: few notes, because it's all still true, only way worse.
Speaker 1: But it was all there when this article came out
Speaker 1: one hundred and eleven months ago. One hundred and eleven
Speaker 1: Could Trump pass a Sanity Test? July twenty first, twoenty
Speaker 1: sixteen Short answer, probably not. First several important caveats. There
Speaker 1: is little worse and nothing cheesier than questioning the psychological
Speaker 1: stability of a public figure, especially a candidate for president,
Speaker 1: even in this case, except that in his year of campaigning,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has called Lindsey Graham a nut job, Glen
Speaker 1: Beck a real nut job, and Bernie Sanders a wacko.
Speaker 1: Trump has insisted Ben Carson's got pathological disease, and asked
Speaker 1: about Barack Obama is our president insane? He called Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz unstable, unhinged, a little bit of a maniac, and
Speaker 1: crazy or very dishonest. He also called the entire CNBC
Speaker 1: channel crazy. He called Megan Kelly crazy at least six times.
Speaker 1: Respectful reticence about aspersions and cliches and mental health questions
Speaker 1: in a time in which mocking was seemingly slowly maturing
Speaker 1: into concern. That died a long time ago in this
Speaker 1: presidential cycle of twenty sixteen, and it died at Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's hands. Moreover, if the question is asked seriously and
Speaker 1: not gratuitously, just the examination might explain how Trump has
Speaker 1: seemingly survived dozens of moments that might each have been
Speaker 1: campaign enders for almost anybody else. Why have we not
Speaker 1: asked if a given presidential candidate might be disqualified from
Speaker 1: office due to psychological reasons, because we not only can't
Speaker 1: see this forest for the trees, but each time we try,
Speaker 1: there are even more trees blocking our view. In the
Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycle, each successive John Yerke's Iceland
Speaker 1: moment is not registered cumulatively. It merely supplants the one
Speaker 1: from last week or yesterday this morning. This could also
Speaker 1: explain Trump's seeming imperviousness to his own mind bending campaign.
Speaker 1: Surely it must be exhausting to attack the Pope February
Speaker 1: eighteenth attack President Clinton, May eighteenth, attack, John McCain July eighteenth,
Speaker 1: attack Mexicans June sixteenth, attack Muslims December eighth attack. Candidates
Speaker 1: who use a teleprompter, May twenty sixth, just before you
Speaker 1: give a speech using a teleprompter, May twenty sixth. It's
Speaker 1: got to be exhausting unless, as the old joke goes,
Speaker 1: no pain no gain, also no brain, no pain anyway.
Speaker 1: The actual sanity test I found for this article is called,
Speaker 1: by delicious coincidence, the hair Psychopathy Checklist Revised, introduced by
Speaker 1: a Canadian criminal psychologist named Robert D. Hare in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty and that's Hare. It's still in use. In some quarters,
Speaker 1: though with ever more diffuse and specific mental health diagnoses.
Speaker 1: It is not without its critics, however, as a practicing
Speaker 1: therapist who walked me through it agreed, it serves as
Speaker 1: a kind of triage device to separate the injured from
Speaker 1: the tripping from the psychopathic. And about that word, we
Speaker 1: seem to have completely muddled up sociopath and psychopath. Sociopath
Speaker 1: think Ted Kaczynski, the unibomber, living out there and his
Speaker 1: shack in the woods, feeling nothing for other humans and
Speaker 1: unable to interact with them, literally mailing it in psychopath
Speaker 1: think Ted Bundy feeling nothing for other humans, but having
Speaker 1: long ago learned how to expertly mimic relationships by being
Speaker 1: whatever he needed to be to whomever he needed to use,
Speaker 1: killing at least thirty women serving as his own counsel,
Speaker 1: and cross examining a female witness, proposing marriage to her
Speaker 1: while she was on the stand, and getting her to
Speaker 1: say yes. For each of the twenty items on the
Speaker 1: hair psychopathy checklist, you're supposed to assign the subject a zero,
Speaker 1: one point or two. The highest and most dangerous score
Speaker 1: is thus forty. In the United States, the accepted minimum
Speaker 1: score for possible psychopathy meaning you might be nuts is thirty.
Speaker 1: So those are the rules. Let's play the freud. The
Speaker 1: test begins with an assessment of charm that is superficial,
Speaker 1: forced charm, faked charm? May I dare say this Trump charm?
Speaker 1: I had interviewed Donald Trump as long ago as nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, and I always thought he was a horse's ass.
Speaker 1: But after running into him when we both worked at NBC,
Speaker 1: and then in the lobby of one of his apartment
Speaker 1: buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter
Speaker 1: a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co worker and in essence landlord.
Speaker 1: In one role, he described himself as an anti Bush
Speaker 1: pro Obama Liberal. In the other, he urged me to
Speaker 1: contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the
Speaker 1: building in which I lived. And then he got on
Speaker 1: the campaign stage, and boom, he was America's newest Mussolinium personator.
Speaker 1: For a long while, I was flummixed as to which
Speaker 1: of these truly mutually ex exclusive personalities was the act.
Speaker 1: Then I was reminded that it didn't really matter, which
Speaker 1: that having multiple personalities should by itself preclude one from
Speaker 1: having access to multiple nuclear warheads. I was explaining this
Speaker 1: on Bill Maher's show in November twenty fifteen when mar
Speaker 1: suddenly got so g whiz that I almost didn't recognize him.
Speaker 1: Me too, he exclaimed boyishly. Mar cynical to such a
Speaker 1: degree that it makes me seem as earnestly faithful as
Speaker 1: a pope, said he had just been as convinced as
Speaker 1: I was, and thus just as stunned by this hydra
Speaker 1: of Trumpian personas he'd always been nice to me. I
Speaker 1: can easily imagine myself being taken in by a con
Speaker 1: artist like Donald Trump. I mean, Trump wrote me a
Speaker 1: fan letter once. But mar mar who called me a
Speaker 1: corporate allowed in nineteen seventy eight, when I had to
Speaker 1: that point earned about two hundred dollars from all the
Speaker 1: corporations in the world combined. He fooled Bill Maher. So
Speaker 1: if you're giving out points about fake charm, Trump gets
Speaker 1: both of them. The next topic was an excessive sense
Speaker 1: of self worth. No kidding, I feel like a supermodel,
Speaker 1: he said on June eighteenth, twenty sixteen, in Phoenix, except
Speaker 1: like times ten, it's true, I'm a supermodel. I'm on
Speaker 1: the cover of these magazines. I'm on the cover of
Speaker 1: the biggest magazines. This was stated by the first Umpealoopa
Speaker 1: American to run for national office. He is bright orange.
Speaker 1: He is an old man, affecting a hair color and
Speaker 1: style that would have been rejected by the eighties synth
Speaker 1: pop group A flock of seagulls. I served with supermodels.
Speaker 1: I knew supermodels. Supermodels were friends of mine. Donald, You're
Speaker 1: no supermodel. But that is two more points for you.
Speaker 1: The test moves on to ask if the subject can't
Speaker 1: mentally sit still, must he always try to make things
Speaker 1: happen good, bad, or otherwise? Not easily bored but almost
Speaker 1: impossible to focus? Acknowledging that a lot of us get
Speaker 1: a point or two here, I certainly do not. All
Speaker 1: of those job changes of mine were their fault. Let
Speaker 1: me first quote the introduction from Trump's think like a
Speaker 1: billionaire quote, don't take vacations. What's the point? Have a
Speaker 1: short attention span? Most successful people have very short attention spans.
Speaker 1: It has a lot to do with imagination. Here are
Speaker 1: some of the wide ranging businesses Trump's short attention span
Speaker 1: has dragged him and the world into real estate, vitamins, rentals, books, condos,
Speaker 1: trucolate bars, golf courses, pro football, beauty pageants, stakes, board
Speaker 1: game television hosting, bottled water, universities, men's wear, professional wrestling, mortgages, airlines, fragrances, coffee, restaurants,
Speaker 1: energy drinks, vodka, search, engines your analysis, and of course,
Speaker 1: bicycle racing. Bicycle racing the Tour de Trump in which
Speaker 1: I noted at the time, contestants raced three hundred laps
Speaker 1: around his ego. As a twenty twenty five aside. Can
Speaker 1: we add crypto and flags and bibles and merch and
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen hats and twenty twenty hats and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: eight hats and twenty thirty two hats and mugshot merch
Speaker 1: and influenced pedling and two more points? The test now
Speaker 1: gets heavy. Is there lying involved? Again? To June eighteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, at the Woodlands in Texas after the horrible
Speaker 1: Pulse Club shooting. Quote. If some of those wonderful people
Speaker 1: had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or
Speaker 1: right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch
Speaker 1: comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people
Speaker 1: in that room happen to have it and goes boom.
Speaker 1: You know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful site, folks,
Speaker 1: that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight. June twenty
Speaker 1: two days later on Twitter, when I said that if
Speaker 1: within the Orlando club you had some people with guns,
Speaker 1: I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees. Can
Speaker 1: I stop here or should I walk you through the
Speaker 1: hot and cold running lies? Alternating with the admissions of
Speaker 1: the Times in the nineties, he pretended to be his
Speaker 1: own spokesman, John Miller and John barn Or say virtually
Speaker 1: every other thing he said since this article came out
Speaker 1: nine years ago. Another two points on your scoreboard, please.
Speaker 1: The test then asks if the patient is manipulative or
Speaker 1: cons people you think I'll add today from the of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, who should we ask to write the
Speaker 1: guest essay on this question? Here? Mike Pence, maybe Trump's
Speaker 1: own daughter Ivanka. I'm giving another two points here. Next
Speaker 1: we remove to the absence of any sense of guilt
Speaker 1: or regret, ask about his faith. At the Family Leadership
Speaker 1: Summit in Ames, Iowa by the moderator Frank Lunce in
Speaker 1: July twenty fifteen, Trump said people are so shocked when
Speaker 1: they find out I am Protestant, I am Presbyterian, and
Speaker 1: I go to church and I love God and I
Speaker 1: love my church. Lunce then followed up with the softball
Speaker 1: of literally biblical proportions. Whether Trump has ever asked God
Speaker 1: for forgiveness for his own actions quote, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I have. I just go on and try to do
Speaker 1: a better job from there. I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: think if I do something wrong, I think I just
Speaker 1: try and make it right. I don't bring God into
Speaker 1: that picture. I don't. Trump then explained that Holy Communion
Speaker 1: sufficed quote when I drink my little wine, which is
Speaker 1: about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker,
Speaker 1: I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness,
Speaker 1: and I do that as often as possible because I
Speaker 1: feel cleansed. I think in terms of let's go on
Speaker 1: and let's make it right, unquote the art of the deal. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Trump picked up this thread with Jake Tapper in January
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Again the subject was religion. Quote. I like
Speaker 1: to be good. I don't like to have to ask
Speaker 1: for forgiveness. Tapper then asked about arrival, presumed to be
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, who was conducting field research into the efficacy
Speaker 1: of questioning Trump's religious convictions. Quote, he shouldn't be doing that,
Speaker 1: very unethical. Within a few weeks, Trump attacked Cruise's religious
Speaker 1: convictions on February twelve, health In fact, He's tweeted, how
Speaker 1: can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies
Speaker 1: so much and is so dishonest. Not a week after that,
Speaker 1: Pope Francis answered a question about Trump's overall tone quote,
Speaker 1: A person who thinks only about building walls wherever they
Speaker 1: may be and not building bridges is not Christian. Within hours,
Speaker 1: Trump slammed the Pope fantasized about an ISIS attack on
Speaker 1: the Vatican that only he Trump could stop and concluded
Speaker 1: this remarkable circle of illogic by writing, for a religious
Speaker 1: leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. This is
Speaker 1: right after he questioned a person's faith, after he twice
Speaker 1: admitted that his faith included the option to not ask
Speaker 1: forgiveness and not quote bring God into that picture, and
Speaker 1: just four months before he'd go back to this well
Speaker 1: and question Hillary Clinton's faith again. That's two more solid points.
Speaker 1: The next item had to be explained to me thoroughly
Speaker 1: from my analyst friend. It's the psychological jargon term shallow affect.
Speaker 1: In some it's tone deafness when it comes to explaining
Speaker 1: relationships between people. For instance, if somebody got up on
Speaker 1: stage for the sake of argument, we'll say it's Billy
Speaker 1: Joel at Madison Square Garden, and that person insulted you
Speaker 1: by sarcastically dedicating to you his song the Entertainer as
Speaker 1: a way of saying you weren't a leader or a politician,
Speaker 1: but merely an entertainer. You might take umbrage or at
Speaker 1: least recognize the insult, not if you are suffering from
Speaker 1: shallow effect. Thank you, Billy Joel, Trump tweeted on May
Speaker 1: twenty seven, twenty sixteen. Many friends just told me you
Speaker 1: gave me a very kind shout out at MSG. Appreciated
Speaker 1: love your music. Another example of shallow affect would be
Speaker 1: a kind of approach to how people influence each other's
Speaker 1: lives that could be diagrammed as event B follows event A.
Speaker 1: Therefore event A caused event B. If say, a prominent
Speaker 1: athlete ignored you or in some other tangential way, interacted
Speaker 1: with you before failing or being injured. You might think
Speaker 1: in passing that you would somehow jinxt him, especially if
Speaker 1: you were still nine or ten years old, but you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't publicly claim it, not unless you're suffering from
Speaker 1: shallow affect. Quote Derek Jeter had a great career until
Speaker 1: three days ago. Trump tweeted on October fifteenth, twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: after the baseball player shattered his ankle during a game
Speaker 1: when he sold his apartment at Trump World Tower. I
Speaker 1: told him not to sell karma. The answer this chain
Speaker 1: letter or many ankles will be broken theme was not
Speaker 1: some early passing expression of the now familiar syndrome we
Speaker 1: might describe as TWT tweeting, while Trump five days later
Speaker 1: quote Derek Jeter broke ankle one day after he sold
Speaker 1: his apartment in Trump World Tower, and just to finish
Speaker 1: this off. Another aspect to shallow affect would be an
Speaker 1: unwillingness to acknowledge reliance on others. On March sixteenth, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Trump was asked about which foreign policy consultancy was speaking to.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a
Speaker 1: very good brain, he said, apparently seriously. I know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, and I listen to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I talk to a lot of people, and at the
Speaker 1: appropriate time, I'll tell you who the people are. But
Speaker 1: my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good
Speaker 1: instinct for this stuff. As an aside, is the narrator
Speaker 1: anywhere to know he's off his break. On June twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, in Scotland, Trump again described his dream consultant,
Speaker 1: saying he spoke to quote foreign the advisors all the time,
Speaker 1: but the advice has to come from me. The advice
Speaker 1: has to come from me. The effect is shallow. The
Speaker 1: points score is not like that last statement. There's two
Speaker 1: of them. Then it's onto lack of empathy. How much
Speaker 1: lack of empathy can you have? June twelfth, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: hours after the last shots had been fired at the
Speaker 1: Pulse Club in Orlando, quote, appreciate the congrats for being
Speaker 1: right on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats. I
Speaker 1: want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart. As a reminder,
Speaker 1: you cannot give fifteen hundred points for just one item
Speaker 1: on the hair psychopathy checklist, even if that total is
Speaker 1: seemingly deserved. Just just two more here, then there's a
Speaker 1: lifestyle question. Does the subject of your exam live his
Speaker 1: life as you know a parasite. This does not mean,
Speaker 1: as I originally thought, living materially off mom and dad
Speaker 1: or others, although that can be a minor component, especially
Speaker 1: if dad gave you a million dollar loan circle nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy and you get nine million more from a bank
Speaker 1: on the promise of your inheritance, and ultimately you got
Speaker 1: about forty million on your father's death, and you considered
Speaker 1: all that just a small start in life. No, it
Speaker 1: has more to do with taking credit for the work
Speaker 1: of others, to the degree of erasing all record of
Speaker 1: their contributions and slapping your name on their efforts, often
Speaker 1: in transactions in which you are literally renting the use
Speaker 1: of your name as a brand and nothing else, you know,
Speaker 1: like Trump Pallace, the Tour, to Trump, Trump Steaks, Trump
Speaker 1: taj Mahal, Donald Trump, the Fragrance, and of course Castle
Speaker 1: TRUMPU law. And just as in court, a wife cannot
Speaker 1: be forced to give evidence of parasitic lifestyle against her husband,
Speaker 1: despite Millennia Trump's Conventions speech fiasco in twenty sixteen, unless
Speaker 1: her husband wrote or stole that for her. Remember that
Speaker 1: where her speech sounded suspiciously like Michelle Obama's. Again just
Speaker 1: two points. The mid point two point question asks if
Speaker 1: the subject had poor behavioral controls, Well, what's your definition
Speaker 1: of poor? As a twenty twenty five aside, I'd like
Speaker 1: to note the next sentence was written by me in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Well, he had poor behavioral controls, but everybody
Speaker 1: agrees he's going to dial it all back this time
Speaker 1: right after he pivots pivots towards dialing it back. Right
Speaker 1: Judge Gonzalo Curiel, right, Don King, Joel Austin, Ben Roethlisberger,
Speaker 1: Pete Rose, or anybody else who Trump claimed had endorsed
Speaker 1: him when they had not, Or the Hispanic ABC reporter
Speaker 1: he called a sleeze, or the losing Republican presidential hopefuls
Speaker 1: he mocked in a video the day after he insisted
Speaker 1: he was going to unite the Republican Party. So we
Speaker 1: are at the halfway mark of this twenty sixteen exam,
Speaker 1: and the article I wrote, could Trump pass a sanity
Speaker 1: test two points per topic? Thirty or thirty five points
Speaker 1: is real trouble. So far, he's been graded for possible
Speaker 1: twenty points, and he has twenty points the rest of it.
Speaker 1: The next topic is promiscuous sexual behavior. Oh, that's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown back with the second half of the
Speaker 1: July twenty sixteen Vanity Fair article I wrote, Can Trump
Speaker 1: pass a sanity Test? Where with the help of a therapist,
Speaker 1: I tried to score how nuts he was even then
Speaker 1: from afar All this in light of Congresswoman Dean's pithy
Speaker 1: and quick observation the President is unwell and Governor Pritzker's
Speaker 1: invocation of invoking the twenty fifth Amendment to remove him
Speaker 1: from office because there's something really wrong with him. Now,
Speaker 1: to remind you, you're supposed to give the patient no
Speaker 1: points one point or two point per topic. That's it,
Speaker 1: no variations. So far we've done half of the topics.
Speaker 1: Ten of them, he's gotten twenty points. That's not the
Speaker 1: flex that he would think it would be if you
Speaker 1: told him to resume with the test. Is the individual
Speaker 1: sexually promiscuous? Ahem. When I was a young radio sportscaster,
Speaker 1: I was given the great opportunity to interview by telephone
Speaker 1: a famous athlete who had just been suspended from his
Speaker 1: sport because he had gone to work for a casino
Speaker 1: the athlete now deceased, but will still use a pseudonym.
Speaker 1: We'll call him Jimmy Smith was expecting my call. This
Speaker 1: as near as I can remember, it was the transcript
Speaker 1: of the start of that call, ring, ring voice sounding
Speaker 1: kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress
Speaker 1: from Gone with the Wind. Mister Smith's residence. Me uh hi.
Speaker 1: Milton Richmond from UPI gave me mister Smith's number and
Speaker 1: said he would be willing to give me a brief interview.
Speaker 1: May I may I speak with him? Please? Voice sounding
Speaker 1: kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress
Speaker 1: from Gone with the Wind. Who's calling please me? My
Speaker 1: name is Keith Olderman from UPI Radio. Jimmy Smith. This
Speaker 1: is Jimmy. As silly as the story of the whole
Speaker 1: fake Trump spokesman was. Of course he has invisible friends.
Speaker 1: Of course they're pr flax. Lost in the laughter were
Speaker 1: three important details. Firstly, as my conversation with Jimmy Smith
Speaker 1: and his imaginary house keeper suggests, people do do this,
Speaker 1: but secondly, when they do it, they usually try to
Speaker 1: disguise their own voice. Thirdly, rarely do they assume other
Speaker 1: identities in order to provide the second component to what
Speaker 1: we categorize as promiscuity, besides multiple partners boasting about it.
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety one, John Miller to sue carswell than of
Speaker 1: people as of twenty and fifteen with Vanity Fair, for
Speaker 1: whom I wrote this article. Quote, He's meaning Trump, somebody
Speaker 1: that has a lot of options, and frankly, he gets
Speaker 1: called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book.
Speaker 1: In terms of women, I mean they call, they just call.
Speaker 1: He's living with Marla and he's got three other girlfriends.
Speaker 1: Unquote Trump in his own voice, pretending to be somebody
Speaker 1: else talking about Trump and the women he betted. That'll
Speaker 1: be two more points. Next. The test asks if there
Speaker 1: were conduct problems early in the subject's life. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, probably four or five, I twice hit
Speaker 1: a friend of mine in the back of the head
Speaker 1: with a metal toy. I remember shock, blood, no stitches,
Speaker 1: and then a series of family meetings. We talked, the folks,
Speaker 1: got some professional advice. They got me into organized sports
Speaker 1: and exercise, and I quickly realized that just because I
Speaker 1: was frustrated with somebody that was not a good reason
Speaker 1: to hit them regardless. When I had my analyst friend
Speaker 1: run the hair psychopathy checklist on me, I insisted she
Speaker 1: give me a point on this because hitting a kid
Speaker 1: in the back of the head with a toy fire
Speaker 1: engine and later a magnet was at minimum an indicator
Speaker 1: of the potential for early behavior problems. So if you're
Speaker 1: given me a point for this, how many points would
Speaker 1: you give a child who attacked one of his own teachers.
Speaker 1: Quote I actually gave a teacher a black eye, Trump
Speaker 1: wrote in the Art of the Deal in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: barely concealing his retroactively. He placed the time of the
Speaker 1: assault as the second grade, likely making him seven years old.
Speaker 1: Quote I punched my music teacher because I didn't think
Speaker 1: he knew anything about music, and I almost got expelled.
Speaker 1: What kind of kid punches an adult in the face?
Speaker 1: I mean, we hear about punching up, but think back
Speaker 1: to being that age seven. The one universal I can
Speaker 1: recall was that no seven year old ever dreamt of
Speaker 1: trying to physically take on an adult, for the simple
Speaker 1: and unavoidable reason that virtually any adult was several times
Speaker 1: your own weight. If you pick the wrong one, they
Speaker 1: might do more than just defend themselves. Even knocking an
Speaker 1: adult down could be an exercise in self destruction if
Speaker 1: he fell on you. The most reality challenged of all
Speaker 1: of my young classmates the kid who ran headfirst into
Speaker 1: the side of a moving school bus for reasons that
Speaker 1: still remain unclear ten presidents later. He would never have
Speaker 1: hit an adult. There is a second version of the
Speaker 1: same story from a Trump biographer. He did indeed give
Speaker 1: the teacher a black eye, but not with a punch.
Speaker 1: He threw an eraser at him and hit him just right,
Speaker 1: because that's way better. Regardless, the version Trump tells is
Speaker 1: of the four foot tall edition of himself punching what
Speaker 1: was at least a five foot tall adult in the eye,
Speaker 1: hard enough to give the man a shiner. The only
Speaker 1: argument against calling this early behavior problems is that the
Speaker 1: first word implies that it stopped at some point two
Speaker 1: more points. The tests you will have noticed bounces around
Speaker 1: a bit from topic to topic. From early behavior, we
Speaker 1: switch back to long term goals. Does the patient lack them?
Speaker 1: So far? Mister Trump is theoretically aced our exam, but
Speaker 1: reality now invades our idyllic scene. There could be a
Speaker 1: thousand things psychologically wrong with the process by which Trump
Speaker 1: ends up with a low score on this one. In
Speaker 1: the big picture, you would never have thought Mussolini was
Speaker 1: less crazy just because he left Italy for Switzerland in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh two in part to avoid military service, and
Speaker 1: exactly twenty years later Mussolini became head of the Italian
Speaker 1: state and often dressed up in his military uniform. But
Speaker 1: tests are tests, there are rules here. And if you say,
Speaker 1: this guy Trump so lacks realistic long term goals that
Speaker 1: he thinks he can become president and he winds up
Speaker 1: president twice, the long term goals turned out to be
Speaker 1: not that unrealistic. Huh. As I look back at this
Speaker 1: article from twenty twenty five, I desperately want to give
Speaker 1: Trump a point on this one here, because once again
Speaker 1: he boasts about having the very thing that psychology says
Speaker 1: is a warning sign. Except you know, he was right
Speaker 1: he became president. In the preface to Think Like a Billionaire,
Speaker 1: Trump quotes the author Richard Konniff quote, almost all successful
Speaker 1: alpha personalities display a single minded determination to impose their
Speaker 1: vision on the world and irrational belief in unreasonable goals,
Speaker 1: bordering sometimes on lunacy and it worked for him, So
Speaker 1: on this one, Trump, you'll get nothing and you'll like it.
Speaker 1: He could have twenty six points, he only has twenty four.
Speaker 1: Next is the patient impulsive? In March twenty sixteen, writing
Speaker 1: in Psychology Today, doctor Glenn Geher offered a different definition
Speaker 1: of impulsiveness. It's not necessarily the same as rashness or
Speaker 1: its positive twin quick thinking. True impulsiveness usually leaves fingerprints
Speaker 1: of edgy, though not automatically pernicious behavior. Rather, it makes
Speaker 1: one do these things in the wrong place, at the
Speaker 1: wrong time, Mike, As doctor Geher was analyzing discussing the
Speaker 1: size of your penis during a presidential debate, he didn't
Speaker 1: include the other examples where the context turns that behavior
Speaker 1: or that language from borderline to impulsive. You might appropriately
Speaker 1: bring up that topic in bed, or at a bar,
Speaker 1: or even at your tailor's. But it's like saying a
Speaker 1: female presidential candidate had been schlonged in a primary, criticizing
Speaker 1: the face of one of your female rivals during a speech,
Speaker 1: like crudely referring to a network television figures menstruation while
Speaker 1: on a rival television network. Back to two points out
Speaker 1: of two. Here down the stretch we come. This is
Speaker 1: another seemingly easy item that is actually difficult to nail
Speaker 1: to the wall. What is irresponsibility? Not crediting John McCain's
Speaker 1: heroism because he got captured when you yourself avoided the
Speaker 1: military draft and service four maybe five times? Is irresponsibility
Speaker 1: shown by taking a position on guns in nightclubs that's
Speaker 1: so extreme that the president and legislative director of the
Speaker 1: National Goddamned Rifle Association condemned. It is irresponsibility, at least
Speaker 1: to the millions of lost souls who actually thought you'd
Speaker 1: make a great American president rather than merely the last
Speaker 1: American president. Is irresponsibility to even make a joke if
Speaker 1: it was a joke that if you were offered five
Speaker 1: billion dollars to drop out quote, I guess we'd have
Speaker 1: to think about it. Is the word more applicable or
Speaker 1: less applicable if it comes out the next day that
Speaker 1: during May your campaign spent more than twice as much
Speaker 1: at business as you own than it did on payroll.
Speaker 1: The problem with this heading is that so much of
Speaker 1: what fits vaguely into irresponsibility, promiscuity, bankruptcy, punching out your
Speaker 1: teacher fits like jigsaw pieces into the other categories in
Speaker 1: this test. That doesn't mean the examples are ineligible, just imprecise,
Speaker 1: but it does mean we have to score conservatively. So
Speaker 1: let's give him one of the two points. We are
Speaker 1: asked next to assess whether the patient accepts responsibility for
Speaker 1: their own actions. Again, you cannot give more than two
Speaker 1: points in any category. Both of my favorite examples here
Speaker 1: involve interviews with The Washington Post, remember the one Washington Post.
Speaker 1: On May twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, Trump was caught having
Speaker 1: not yet donated the money from the purported veterans fundraiser
Speaker 1: he staged as counter programming to the January Republican debate
Speaker 1: that he bailed out of. The Post quoted his remarks
Speaker 1: at the fundraiser, which was televised nationally. We just cracked
Speaker 1: six million dollars, right, six million? Trump replied to them,
Speaker 1: I didn't say six. The somewhat startled Post staffer said
Speaker 1: it was on tape. Play it for me, Trump replied,
Speaker 1: because I'd like to hear it, The Post reported. Trump
Speaker 1: then manipulated the conversation to another topic, precluding the playing
Speaker 1: of the video. Eleven days later, the tape of him
Speaker 1: speaking in his own voice, but pretending to be his
Speaker 1: spokesman John Miller, was revealed when during a phone interview,
Speaker 1: a Post reporter brought up that proof, the John Miller tape.
Speaker 1: Trump simply hung up the phone. Two more points next,
Speaker 1: there's a question here about wedding vows, lots of marriages,
Speaker 1: short ones. This depends on numerical definitions. Despite the falling
Speaker 1: of religious barriers against divorce and the rise of the prenup,
Speaker 1: the mean is still around just one point two to
Speaker 1: one point three marriages per American and the number of
Speaker 1: men who marry more than once is only about fifteen percent.
Speaker 1: But Trump's marriage is still total only three and their
Speaker 1: lengths fourteen six and now nearly twenty one years are
Speaker 1: hardly in the annulled within thirty two hours range I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. So no points here. Okay, once we again
Speaker 1: we swing, We swing back to youth. Was the guy
Speaker 1: or gal ever a juvenile delinquent? Now not every student
Speaker 1: at Trump's high priced alma mater, New York Military Academy NIMA,
Speaker 1: as we used to call it when I was in
Speaker 1: high school and our teams played theirs, was automatically the
Speaker 1: son of rich p parents who had been afforded the
Speaker 1: choice not offered their less affluent fellowed troubled kids military
Speaker 1: school or reform school. That would be a cliche, but
Speaker 1: the one on the record, first hand assessment we have
Speaker 1: of Trump as child cuts through cliches and reputations. Quote.
Speaker 1: He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,
Speaker 1: said Donald Trump's father, explaining why he had to pull
Speaker 1: him out of a traditional prep school in their native
Speaker 1: Queens and ship him away to Nima. There are plenty
Speaker 1: of classmates at that military boarding school who paint a
Speaker 1: picture of a kid always throwing hands. On June twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, the Washington Post profiled Trump as Nima inmate quote,
Speaker 1: struck with a broomstick during a fight. He tried to
Speaker 1: push a fellow cadet out the second floor window, only
Speaker 1: to be thwarted when two other students intervened. The paper
Speaker 1: also quoted one of his pre NEMA teachers, quote, he
Speaker 1: would sit with his arms folded with this look on
Speaker 1: his face. I use the word surly, almost daring you
Speaker 1: to say one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him.
Speaker 1: The Post quotes a younger neighbor named Dennis Burnham once
Speaker 1: when she left Dennis in a playpen in a backyard
Speaker 1: adjoining the Trump's property. Martha Burnham returned to find Donald
Speaker 1: throwing rocks at her son. She saw Donald standing at
Speaker 1: the fence, Dennis Burnham said, using the playpen for target practice.
Speaker 1: This is the sort of stuff that would make a
Speaker 1: true bully flinch. Plus, we have the boast from little
Speaker 1: Donnie Trump at about seven, blackening the eye of an adult.
Speaker 1: Do we have records of the police being called? No,
Speaker 1: nor does the category heading ask for them. And that
Speaker 1: applies to the next question too. Has there been revocation
Speaker 1: of conditional release? The what now of conditional release? Now,
Speaker 1: don't be worried if this confuses you, Your confusion only
Speaker 1: means you are not a parole officer. This is legal
Speaker 1: dingo for getting your parole revoked or your probation converted
Speaker 1: into jail time because you were just caught doing that
Speaker 1: illegal thing that had gotten you in trouble in the
Speaker 1: first place. It is very specifically a criminal record issue.
Speaker 1: It's tempting based on what's happened since he left office
Speaker 1: the first time to give him a point here, But
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it because that's not what the
Speaker 1: record says at the moment. We'll revisit this in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine, if there is a twenty twenty nine. Finally,
Speaker 1: is there true criminality and is it multifaceted? Not just
Speaker 1: the same crime over and over again as in the
Speaker 1: previous question, but lots of different kinds of crimes. The
Speaker 1: psychological professional and I got into a big debate about
Speaker 1: this one. She argued that criminal is not necessarily meantal
Speaker 1: literally here that if you scammed charities, stole money from
Speaker 1: grandmothers via a phony university, and directed about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of yourr own campaigns, monthly spending towards companies you own,
Speaker 1: and the reimbursement for travel by your kids, it all qualified.
Speaker 1: My point was that the word criminal was used, not dishonest,
Speaker 1: not unethical, not nefarious, capital ce criminal and the purp
Speaker 1: walk or multimillion dollar fine in restitution, which that implies,
Speaker 1: not that that couldn't have been the end result from
Speaker 1: Trump you and then came, you know, is presidency and
Speaker 1: stealing all those you know, espionage kind of document stuffs
Speaker 1: and the Egene Carol case and the other Egen Carol
Speaker 1: case and January sixth and all the convictions, and and
Speaker 1: this just proves take heart, young man, no matter how
Speaker 1: old you are, you still can get crazier. Give him
Speaker 1: the two points for a final score of thirty three.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Trump peters out towards the end. There,
Speaker 1: but with thirty points being the marker at which professionals
Speaker 1: could present a diagnosis of psychopathy your psychopath, the implications
Speaker 1: are clear. Our Trumper's new clothes media rightly sees the
Speaker 1: latest Trump event, whatever it is this time, as one
Speaker 1: of the most unbelievable developments in American political history. But
Speaker 1: the simple mechanics of following, reporting, and writing the proverbial
Speaker 1: new high in low every single day means that they
Speaker 1: could be missing one overriding truth about the mental health
Speaker 1: of the most remarkable presidential candidate ever. In short, our
Speaker 1: amateurs exercise with the very professional hair psychopathy checklist suggests
Speaker 1: that if you were betting on it, you'd probably want
Speaker 1: to bet that Donald Trump couldn't pass a sanity test.
Speaker 1: Open book. Now, having slogged through this inventory of the
Speaker 1: citizen Kane storage unit of bizarre presidential candidate conduct, go
Speaker 1: look at social media because in the time it has
Speaker 1: taken you to listen to this podcast. Even if, as
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Dean says, the President is unwell, He's probably just
Speaker 1: done something new to raise his score, hasn't he. I've
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil, our
Speaker 1: musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister
Speaker 1: Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Speaker 1: Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music. Other
Speaker 1: music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: The test is copyrighted by the people from the Test.
Speaker 1: The article some of that's mine, some of that belongs
Speaker 1: to Benny Fair. Whatever they want ten dollars, I'll send
Speaker 1: them ten dollars. Everything else was, as always my fault.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty six
Speaker 1: of America held hostage just two hundred and seventeen days
Speaker 1: until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame
Speaker 1: brain term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein, or the pavement on his hand, or a
Speaker 1: stuck escalator, or the psychopathy test or tail and all,
Speaker 1: or the President is unwell. The next schedule countdown is
Speaker 1: Monday till then. I'm Keith Lraman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alreman is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.