An embittered and increasingly isolated Donald Trump will become more erratic and dangerous as he confronts the prospect of spending his final two years in office as a lame-duck president, a top cognitive doctor has warned.
With Republicans suffering a midterm wipeout and the president’s grip on his party slipping, clinical psychologist Vincent Greenwood has raised alarms about how Trump would react as the dust settles on Tuesday’s elections.
“I’m worried, frankly,” Dr. Greenwood, the director of the Washington Center for Cognitive Therapy, told the Daily Beast.
“I’m afraid we can count on his impulsive nature. I’m afraid we can count on his remorselessness.”
Greenwood, who has conducted more than 1,700 psychological evaluations and has been studying Trump for years, believes the president is a clinical psychopath whose personality is characterized by three particularly destructive traits: impulsivity, remorselessness and an intense drive to dominate.
The 80-year-old has already signaled how he wants to govern in the aftermath of a blue wave, declaring he would become “Mr. Veto” to thwart the Democrats’ agenda.
He has also considered striking Iran again, with reports before the election that the Pentagon had drawn up various military options, such as using the enormous MOAB—“the Mother of All bombs.”
But the prospect of subpoenas, congressional hearings, and investigations into everything from his administration’s conduct to its spending and political vendettas could leave Trump increasingly frustrated and politically cornered, while he blames others for his “loss of status,” Greenwood said.
And while most people might feel humiliation, guilt or shame after such a defeat, he was not wired that way, he added.
“It’s just not in his psychological makeup to reflect on his own possible mistakes or fallibilities,” Greenwood said.
“Most of us might feel humiliation or shame, but the clinical psychopath is absent from those feelings. He’s hardwired to blame others.”
The blame and recriminations within the GOP didn’t take long in the wake of Tuesday’s electoral rout, in which Democrats flipped both the House and Senate, largely by winning Republican seats once deemed “safe”.
“Americans don’t like chaos, narcissism, tariffs, corruption, Putin, rudeness to our allies, arrogance & indecency,” wrote Nebraska Senator Don Bacon.
“The GOP should embrace our roots: free markets, economic freedom, peace through strength, federalism, law and order, low taxes, pro-life… and we should act like leaders of the free world.”
Voters blamed the president and his top allies for the political earthquake as voters raged over cost of living pressures, the Iran war, government corruption and Trump’s bizarre obsession with vanity projects.
In Texas, James Talarico beat Trump’s scandal-plagued candidate Ken Paxton; in Georgia, Democratic star Jon Ossoff beat MAGA candidate Mike Collins; in South Carolina, Democrats pulled off an upset against Darline Graham; and in Kansas, pastor Adam Hamilton beat Mike Rogers.
As the results came in on Tuesday night, Trump was holed up in White House with various aides as Natalie Harp, the “human printer” who ensures he reads mostly positive news stories, screened his calls.
Asked to what extent sycophants in his orbit should bear some culpability for the president’s behaviors, Greenwood replied: “It’s all really within his psychology. He went out of his way to select people who would behave like that around him.”
“The arrogance of this disorder is hardwired: so in the first term, he just eventually got rid of people who didn’t do what he wanted, and in the second term, he just bypassed that by selecting people who would not challenge him in any way,” said Greenwood, whose book Puppet on a String: Trump Is Ruled by an Ominous Psychological Condition presents a forensic-style assessment of the president through the lens of clinical psychopathy.
“It’s undesirable that people are reinforcing that, but that’s not really a significant factor.”
According to Greenwood, he is who he is—“and we should all be worried.”
In response, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said: “If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor.”
“President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history,” he said.
“Vincent Greenwood is a total moron engaging in armchair diagnosis for political purposes and should immediately seek psychiatric help to treat his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He is a disgrace to the medical profession.”
