It has taken a lot of head-spinning, incredulously inappropriate remarks, tweets, and insults but President Donald Trump has now finally acknowledged that his behavior might be a little off.
He actually said in a tweet that “it is not at all ‘Presidential’” to attack the media in ways that he has, speaking specifically about the way he criticized MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch when the host called Trump a criminal on his show.
But before anyone gets excited, it’s important to note that he quickly justified his behavior as usual. The rare admission of his inappropriate behavior is a big leap from his normal responses and replies to the many critics that have been calling him out on his lack of presidential decorum for ages. He usually takes any criticism pretty harshly and goes on the attack immediately, sometime viciously and without regard for the fallout.
For example, lawyer George Conway who is married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s trusted and loyal comrade and adviser, has been in a battle with Trump for the last year, specifically about his “deranged” behavior. He has suggested, more than a few times, that Trump is mentally ill and just getting worse.
He has taken to using the hashtag #derangedDonald on Twitter and often refers to portions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as context for Trump’s behaviors. As a response to all this criticism from Conway, Trump has called him the “husband from hell” and a “stone cold LOSER.”
In fact, after Trump’s tweetfeud with TV host Deutsch, Conway slammed Trump in a tweet saying, ““You’re not “presidential” at all, period… You’re mentally unwell…Do yourself and the country a favor. Resign and seek the psychological treatment you so obviously need.”
You’re not “presidential” at all, period. You’re mentally unwell. You engage in bizarre, irrational, self-defeating behavior, which prompts criticism of you, which triggers more bizarre, irrational, self-defeating behavior. You would have been fired from any other job by now. https://t.co/jZ1n21qptp
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 9, 2019
Conway recommended two books to Trump that could help define his questionable mental state. One of the books was Trump on The Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, by Justin A. Frank, a psychiatrist who psychoanalyzes presidents including George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
A quote from that book says, “There’s no question that Trump is mentally unfit in ways that make him psychologically unsuited for the presidency; this is in itself a truly alarming turn of events.”
Deutsch actually blurbed this book and said, “Behind all Trump’s tough guy theatrics, his petty cruelties and bloated ego is a tangled knot of pathologies that should terrify us all.”
