Bob Sheak, Oct. 8, 2026
Is Trump mentally delusional or just a super self-aggrandizer when he tells the public that he is by far the greatest president in US history. Indeed, there are many experts who view him as the worst president ever.
There is no dispute that he is using his position to increase his personal wealth. His sons are helping to increase the family’s wealth though their foreign investment ventures, made easy by their father’s power and influence.
Trump is also corrupting the government through his appointments of cronies and sycophants to important positions in the federal government. He demands absolute loyalty. The hollowing out of thousands of experts at the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense have been well covered by the press.
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Some elected officials worry about Trump’s “mental stability”
The following letter was sent to the bipartisan leadership of Congress on April 13, 2026, citing the concern of top psychiatrists about Trump’s mental instability (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/top-psychiatrists-issue-urgent-letter-to-congress-about-trump-s-mental-instability-opinion/ar-AA20WQwAl). This is not the first time experts have issued a concern. Check out Bandy X. Lee, MD. MDIV, books, Trump Contagion: The Existential Danger to American Democracy and All Humankind and The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
The letter:
“We write to you today with a sense of urgency that we do not use lightly. The behavior and rhetoric of President Donald Trump have crossed a threshold that demands the immediate and bipartisan attention of Congress. This is not a partisan assessment. It is a judgment grounded in observable fact, consistent professional assessment, and the constitutional responsibilities that your offices carry.
“President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss.
“What makes this more than an academic matter is what predictably happens when this personality structure collides with immovable obstacles. The clinical literature is clear: individuals with Dark Triad profiles, when confronted with situations they cannot control or escape, do not recalibrate. They escalate. The psychological imperative to relieve narcissistic collapse overrides strategic calculation, concern for consequences, and ordinary self-restraint. Rage surges to domination. Impulsivity overrides caution. The urgent need to extinguish psychological pain eclipses every other consideration.
“We are watching this dynamic unfold in real time.
“The President’s recent public communications have been, by any normal standard of political discourse, alarming. His posts demanding that Iran “open the f——’ strait, you crazy b——” and his threat to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages,” adding that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” are not the rhetoric of calculated geopolitical pressure. They are the expressions of a man in profound psychological distress who is reaching for the most extreme retaliatory threats available to him. That these statements were addressed to an adversary in the context of an active military confrontation makes them not merely shocking but profoundly dangerous.
“President Trump has now ordered a US naval blockade of Iran — an action that has sent world oil prices soaring and placed the United States in direct opposition to the international community. His ongoing actions carry the potential to trigger a global economic catastrophe, draw in regional and great powers, and ignite a wider conflict with consequences that no one can bound. These orders are being issued without adequate deliberation, without congressional authorization, and in a context in which the President’s judgment is, by every visible measure, severely compromised.
Here is one of the recommended actions.
“Congress must immediately retake its constitutional authority over war. The bombing of Iran and the initiation of a naval blockade — acts of war under both US and international law — cannot be authorized by presidential fiat. Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress the sole power to declare war and to regulate commerce with foreign nations. The Framers intended Congress to deliberate upon and be accountable for precisely such consequential actions. Congress must assume its constitutional authority now, before further escalation renders the question moot.”
They continue.
“A President who publicly threatens to destroy a foreign civilization, who launches a bombing campaign and then imposes a naval blockade without congressional authorization, and who shows every behavioral sign of a personality in acute crisis is not merely a political problem. He is a constitutional emergency. The mechanisms for addressing such an emergency exist. They were placed in the Constitution and its amendments for moments precisely like this one.”
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A president who can’t restrain his exuberance when his increasing wealth is discussed
Jeet Heer writes on how “Trump Gloats About ‘Making a Fortune’ While Americans Suffer” (https://www.thenation.com/articles/politics/trump-economy-iran).
“Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making due to the war he launched in the Middle East. Left to his own druthers, Trump would be exulting in the hundreds of billions of dollars produced by skyrocketing oil prices—if it weren’t for the pesky fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying roughly 40 percent more every time they fill up the gas tank than they were before Trump started bombing Iran nearly three months ago.”
“We know this thanks to Trump’s endless dedication to saying the quiet part out loud. Speaking with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Thursday, Trump chortled that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, ‘people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.’ Trump added, ‘So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”
Heer continues. “The juxtaposition between ‘making a fortune’ and the ‘little man’ suffering at the gas station underscores just how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic message. Their response to the harm caused by Trump’s policies is not to reverse those policies, or even to appear sympathetic about their effects. It’s to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people. At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself such as a new White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch that will squat in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s query as to whom the arch would celebrate, Trump pointed to himself and said ‘me.’”
“Speaking to reporters last Monday,” Heer writes, “Trump said, ‘I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.’ He also said that concern for the financial suffering of Americans would not be a factor in making a deal with Iran ‘not even a little bit.’”
Meanwhile, “consumer prices last month rose at their fastest clip in about three years, outpacing workers’ wages, while businesses saw their costs increase at a rate not seen since 2022.
“Americans are racking up more debt. Families are saving less. And a key measure of consumer confidence dipped to an all-time low this month. The anxiety has bled into recent political polls, which have registered broad public disapproval of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy.” At the same time, “Trump, his family, and his cronies belong to the rarified club of the ultrarich who are thriving under current conditions.”
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Trump is in rapture about his increasing wealth
John Feffer refers to Trump’s thirst for wealth as the “Trump Enrichment Syndrome” in an article published by Counter Punch (https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/06/trump-enrichment-syndrome). Here’s some of what he reports.
“The Trump administration concluded a recent mineral deal with Kazakhstan that, not surprisingly, enriches not only Trump’s own family but that of his secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump’s two eldest sons, part owners of Dominari Securities, are set to profit from the Kazakh tungsten deal. So is Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm run by Lutnick’s two sons.”
Feffer cities The New York Times investigation of the scheme. “Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.”
Feffer writes the phrases “self-enrichment” and “few precedents” are interesting ways of characterizing this latest instance of the administration’s corruption.
“As with much of Trump’s disrespect for norms, his corruption has been massive and largely in full view. The two outstanding questions are: will Trump and company ever be held accountable for their graft and will this corruption have an enduring impact on political institutions in the United States?”
Trump and his family view their money-making projects as just smart politics.
Feffer continues. “The administration has endeavored to negotiate every peace deal, trade agreement, investment arrangement, and mineral pact in such a way as to deliver Trump, his family, and their circle of close supporters a good chunk of change.
Some evidence. “The Center for American Progress runs Trump’s Take, which estimates that the president has received a little over $2.6 billion in cash and gifts since he took office in January 2025. Much of this money has come from various crypto schemes, including the Trump meme coin, but also such dubious ventures as the documentary about Melania Trump and a number of legal settlements (more colloquially known as shakedowns). Corruption Counter puts the value at $2.2 billion and includes such recent items as the $100 million savings for Trump from the recent effort to bar the IRS from auditing the president. (Courts blocked the overall $1.8 billion ‘settlement fund,’ but the Justice Department is upholding the IRS amnesty.)
Feffer refers to David Kirkpatrick, at The New Yorker, who has been keeping a running total of Trump’s ballooning assets. “In January, he updated his total to $4 billion, which details, among other things, the Gulf money flowing into Trump pockets. Meanwhile, at Represent US, you can find a timeline of shady deals, from the no-bid contract to a presidential supporter for the Reflecting Pool ‘upgrade’ to an Air Force contract for drones awarded to a company backed by Trump’s eldest sons.
The profits from critical minerals
The Kazakh deal on tungsten is but one of several ways that the administration has cashed in on critical minerals. Feffer adds, “The Trump sons have a financial interest in 14 companies working with the U.S. government on mineral deals that involve nearly $9 billion in federal funding. This includes $620 million Pentagon loan, fast-tracked by the White House, to a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company in which Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm has invested. Several Trump associates stand to gain from any future deal involving Greenland minerals.”
Feffer also reports that in The Atlantic, several months after Trump took office, David Frum summed up the corrupt activities of the administration this way:
“Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.”
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The staggering cost of Trump’s vanity projects
Leigh Kimmins reports on this (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/staggering-cost-of-trumps-tacky-vanity-projects-revealed).
Kimmins writes, “The full price tag of Donald Trump’s determination to reshape Washington, D.C., in his own image is coming into focus—and it is staggering.
The total cost of the president’s various vanity projects across the capital, combining private donations and public funds, is on track to exceed $1 billion, according to Financial Times estimates. The new East Wing ballroom and its security costs alone account for nearly $800 million of that figure.
She refers to some examples
“A 250-foot Triumphal Arch is planned for the stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. A National Garden of American Heroes would feature 250 statues of historical figures ranging from Thomas Jefferson to game show host Alex Trebek. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been recoated ‘American flag blue.’ The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is to be painted white to match the White House next door. And a public golf course is being converted into a championship-level complex for the president’s preferred pastime.
The ballroom is central to Trump’s projects
Kimmins continues. It is something Trump considers part of his “legacy” to the country. “He framed the project as a matter of national dignity, recalling Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hosting the U.S. at the ‘incredibly beautiful’ Akasaka Palace in Tokyo and King Charles III welcoming Trump at Windsor Castle.
Not everyone is enthusiastic
“David Scott Parker, an architect on the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the ballroom would disturb the White House’s architectural equilibrium. ‘Classicism is about symmetry and balance. The composition is out of balance,’ he said, adding that the structure’s 120-foot colonnade would include fake windows, and that the ballroom would be so large it could feel ‘sparse’ even with 500 people inside.”
Rich donors contribute to the ballroom project
“Trump’s spokesperson said donors would contribute approximately $400 million toward the East Wing—double the initial estimate. The pledge list includes Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s family, Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman, oil tycoon Harold Hamm, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United co-owner Edward Glazer, the Winklevoss twins, and Ike Perlmutter, alongside companies including Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Coinbase, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, and Tether. Taxpayers will still be on the hook for security, which could add hundreds of millions more.”
The Reflecting Pool is a mess
Kimmins reports that Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has not gone well. “The Interior Department handed a no-bid contract to a Trump-allied contractor to recoat the basin in ‘American flag blue.’ Costs have already surpassed $14.7 million, and the project’s most visible achievement so far has been turning the water a vivid green in its worst algal bloom in years.”
Many people don’t approve of Trump’s projects
The public is not impressed, according to Kimmins. “ A Washington Post poll from April found 52 percent of Americans opposed the Triumphal Arch, against just 21 percent in favor. Opposition to the ballroom ran even higher, with 56 percent against and only 28 percent in support.
Nevertheless, Trump remains supportive of his projects
Kimmins: “Trump, however, shows no signs of slowing down. A Washington Post analysis of his speeches, interviews, and online posts found he mentioned his Washington renovation plans almost every day last month—up sharply from roughly one in three days in January, and one in eight days a year ago. For three straight months, he has invoked his building plans more often than healthcare or wages.
The costs of the vanity projects include taxpayer money
“The total cost of the president’s various vanity projects across the capital, combining private donations and public funds,” Kimmins continues, “is on track to exceed $1 billion, according to Financial Times estimates. The new East Wing ballroom and its security costs alone account for nearly $800 million of that figure.
“A 250-foot Triumphal Arch is planned for the stretch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. A National Garden of American Heroes would feature 250 statues of historical figures ranging from Thomas Jefferson to game
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“Easily the Worst President In History”
New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall offers this title for one of his weekly reports (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/trump-legacy-history-presidents.html).
Edsall opens his article with this piercing statement: “The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.
“I have described in earlier columns bits and pieces of Trump’s destructiveness, but the list grows daily. He gives examples.
“Projections suggest there will be millions of dead men, women and children as a result of his budget cuts, which were made without direct Congressional approval.
“A study published in The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, found that Trump administration cuts in U.S.A.I.D. funding “would result in approximately 1,776,539 all-age deaths and 689,900 deaths in children younger than 5 years” in 2025 alone.
“Over the remainder of the period,” the study continues, “the complete defunding of U.S.A.I.D. would cause an estimated 2,450,000 all-age deaths annually, leading to a total of 14,051,750 excess all-age deaths and 4,537,157 excess under-5 deaths by 2030.”
“There are the fraud victims who will never get court-ordered restitution because Trump pardoned the guilty. In a June 2025 report, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found that ‘Trump’s pardons cheat victims out of an astounding $1.3 billion in restitution and fines, allowing fraudsters, tax evaders, drug traffickers to keep ill-gotten gains.’”
Edsall offers examples of the harm done by Trump’s environmental policies.
“America can thank the president for environmental deregulation that could sicken and kill people by the tens or even hundreds of thousands.”
“An Associated Press investigation published in 2025 found that Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was seeking to eliminate or weaken ‘at least 30 major rules that seek to protect air and water and reduce emissions that cause climate change.’”
“If successful, the E.P.A. would gut pollution rules that were estimated, according to The Associated Press, to save ‘more than 30,000 lives annually.’”
Cuts in medical research, according to Edsall’s report
At the same time, the administration has been canceling funding for lifesaving scientific and medical research. In November, JAMA Internal Medicine published “Clinical Trials Affected by Research Grant Terminations at the National Institutes of Health.”
It said that “in the first half of 2025, the N.I.H. terminated grants supporting 383 unique clinical trials, affecting 74,311 individuals.”
In an accompanying commentary, two researchers, Dr. Teva D. Brender and Dr. Cary P. Gross, wrote about the JAMA study:
“There is a more direct and sobering impact of premature and scientifically unjustifiable trial terminations: the violation of foundational ethical principles of human participant research.
“‘First and foremost, it is betrayal of the fundamental principles of informed consent for research’ and “participants who have been exposed to an intervention in the context of a trial may be harmed by its premature withdrawal or inadequate follow-up and monitoring for adverse effects.
“In the October 2025 issue of Nature Medicine, Marianne Guenot reported that ‘at least 148 clinical trials have been impacted, with over 138,000 patients due to be enrolled or already enrolled,’ as a result of cancellations. The word ‘impacted’ falls far short of what’s needed to describe the plight of those 138,000 patients.
In their steadfast disregard for scientific study, Trump and his appointees have purposely elevated unfounded fears of vaccines, effectively guaranteeing more childhood illness and infection epidemics.”
Falling behind China in clean energy
“In addition to policies inducing sickness and death, Trump has undermined America’s ability to compete with China on clean energy. In September, CarbonCredits.com, an energy news platform, published “The A.I. Energy War: How China’s Solar and Nuclear Outshine the U.S.,” summing up the problem nicely.
“China is on track for 1,400 GW, while the U.S. will reach only about 350 GW.”
“China plans to add 212 gigawatts of solar and 51 GW of wind, compared to less than 100 GW combined” in the United States.”
Trump makes no secret of his disdain for renewable energy and the concept of climate change. In a speech in September to the U.N. General Assembly, the president said climate change, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He added:
All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.
Trump’s threats to pull out of NATO, his tariffs, not to mention his endless carping against and routine faulting of European leaders, have alienated allies who have stood with us for more than seven decades.
Alienating European Allies
Here is some of what Edsall reports.
“Over the Trump years, European views of America have nose-dived.
“On April 8, Politico published the results of a survey under the headline ‘More Europeans See U.S. as Threat Than China.’ The survey found:
“Only 12 percent of those polled in March in Poland, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy saw America as a close ally while 36 percent saw it as a threat. By contrast, China was seen as a threat by 29 percent of those polled across the six countries.”
The White House as a “corrupt enterprise”
Edsall writes, “Trump has assaulted the integrity of the presidency, turning the White House into a corrupt enterprise, pardoning donors as his family’s companies receive millions through cryptocurrency purchases from foreign companies and crypto operators subject to U.S. regulation.”
Trump’s agenda reaches far into the private sector.
“Trump and his regulatory appointees cleared the way for his conservative allies Larry Ellison and Ellison’s son, David, to acquire CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, along with the streaming service Paramount+.
“If, as expected, Trump regulators approve their acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the Ellison media empire will grow further to include HBO Max, CNN and Warner Bros.”
Other harmful measures by the Trump administration
“He’s driven a deep divide into the country: between the states, between migrants and many others, between classes and between the intellectual elite and the rest of the country.
“He’s slashed the size of the federal bureaucracy and made federal jobs much less attractive. It will be a very, very long time until college students will trust the federal government with their careers.
“He’s fundamentally undermined the idea of an annual budget process and the concept of a balanced federal budget. These ideas were teetering before his presidency, but the Trump administration gave up on any pretense of seeking balance or an annual spending plan.
“Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown, listed three of Trump’s damaging policies. prefaced his assessment of Trump’s consequentiality by pointedly noting that he would rank Trump ‘as easily the worst president in U.S. history. The corruption and damage to long-term U.S. institutions and reputation are far beyond anything we’ve seen before,’ including Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and Rutherford Hayes.
The three Trump legacies
“The erosion of trust in the U.S. by European and Asian allies; the erosion of U.S. dominance of higher education; and huge budget deficits (not only due to Trump but exacerbated by him).”
Additional examples of Trump’s harmful policies
Gary Jacobson, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of California-San Diego expanded the case against Trump:
“The mass firing of dedicated and experienced civil servants has made government dumber and weaker and will make it harder to attract talented replacements even if the next administration wants to make it smarter and more effective.
“The damage to scientific and medical research, the environment, relations with allies and trading partners, disaster preparedness, consumer safety, higher education, military leadership, civil rights, etc. will take years to repair even in cases where that is possible.”
Concluding thoughts
There is plenty of evidence that Trump is narcissist and spends a lot of time on how to buttress his legacy. Meanwhile, his policies are harming most Americans, especially his tariffs, war in Iran, preoccupation with vanity projects, amassing of wealth, and his general authoritarian approach to matters of government.
Fortunately for the country, his poll ratings and general influence have diminished while upcoming elections appear to favor Democrats.
