Why a CIA Psychiatrist Called Trump Nuts

Jerrold Post said 'the period between the election and the inauguration will be a very dangerous period.'

Dr. Jerrold M. Post was a highly respected trailblazer as the CIA’s first political profiler, the founder of the discipline of political psychology. Post, a psychiatrist who served for two decades at the  CIA, died on November 22 of covid-19. He was 86 years old. 

In January, just  before the start of the pandemic, Post participated in one of his final interviews with Jonathan Winer and me for our podcast, Unconventional Threat.

By that time, his concerns about President Donald Trump had led him to break with the strictures other colleagues felt to produce and publish a profile equivalent to others he had done for the CIA. Post had created the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the CIA. Over time, he had profiled Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for President Jimmy Carter prior to the Camp David Accords. He also produced profiles of  Kim Jong-Il, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, among others.

He now decided to apply the same techniques he had used on world leaders and others to analyze the President of the United States. In so doing, he was breaking a longstanding guideline established by the American Psychiatric Association, known as the Goldwater rule, in which professionals do not diagnose public figures who they have not personally examined and assessed. However, in a long-ranging interview, Post said that Donald Trump represented a clear and present danger to the United States. He said that Trump’s actions in plain sight and his well-known biography made it possible to describe the dangers in psychiatric terms. And he felt compelled to discuss his findings.

One of Post’s fellow psychiatrists, Dr. Bandy Lee of Yale University, also spoke to us for the podcast. Specializing in violence prevention and prison reform, Lee edited a book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, essays by 37 psychiatrists and mental health specialists about Trump. Lee said that Post offered his prominence to highlight analysis of the Trump presidency and Trump’s mental state, despite the strictures placed on psychiatrists by the Goldwater rule. Post contributed an essay to that volume, before writing his own book, Dangerous Charisma: The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers.

Lee praised Post’s decision to go public and said that his support and prominence in the field helped guide her role. 

 “He, too, was very disturbed about the president's dangerous psychology,” she said. Post’s “generous concern moved me since, in this country, while the CIA may have done profiles regularly for decades, the same is not permitted for the public (the American Psychiatric Association also made clear with the Trump administration that our own leaders are off-limits, no matter the dangers they pose).”

In our interview, Post said he applied the profiling categories he had pioneered over time not only to describe Donald Trump as a dangerous personality. Among other things he said he had fears for the 2020 elections: If Trump won by a small margin, he would once again declare a landslide. But if he lost, he would never accept the outcome. 

Here are condensed, edited excerpts from our talk:

Q: In your book, "Dangerous Charisma," you describe Donald Trump as a malignant narcissist.

Post: He's almost a caricature of the narcissistic personality, in particular, malignant narcissism. He's consumed with self-adoration. Certainly he is, without any shred of empathy for others. Consider the way he dealt with John McCain, mocking him as he was on his deathbed with malignant brain cancer. Or consider him mocking the reporter who had a congenital disability, which gave him a tremor. Recall his remarkably unempathetic response to the Pakistani American who was a Gold Star father, having lost his heroic son in Afghanistan. In each of these cases he, in a rather cruel way, mocked these individuals.

This is an extremely unattractive characteristic, but he also led his followers to mount their feelings in opposition to these individuals. So that's one striking quality. He's very sensitive to slight, which is one of the characteristics of the narcissist. And he can then retaliate angrily for a minor offense. So that this is one of the makings of a sycophantic leadership, because to criticize constructively [will] lead to his angry response.

Q: How dangerous is this behavior? 

Post: Well this is unique. If you have a young person who is damaged in some way and starts exhibiting these characteristics, they may not go any place other than to exhibit these characteristics in private, and just go off into a medium level life. But then you might have somebody who has a father who is a multimillionaire and you're able to start seeing that the whims of this type of personality are able to be answered because of the wealth that surrounds the personality. And then as things grow and grow with more and more accumulation, more and more ability to fulfill the whims of this personality.

Q: But this is now more than a wealthy person, this is the ultimate extreme, isn’t it?

Post: One of the things that concerns me has to do with his decision-making under stress.

That is when he is most apt to give voice to extreme positions and that is very worrisome. The assassination of Soleimani [Quds commander Qasem Soleimani by U.S. forces in Iran last January] is perhaps a good example. [Trump] was looking for an array of possible options to choose...And he chose the most extreme position on that list, which was the assassination of Soleimani, who was a very revered figure in Iran. This was an extremely over-reactive policy and one which it stopped only after the Iranians decided after their careful attacks on our air bases in Iraq that it would stop. But it greatly weakened our policy. And we were within an inch of what would have been a dreadful situation. This is not the first time this has happened. We've seen the possibility of conflict suddenly emerge with North Korea and on trade with China and then disappear. 

Q: What is it about his personality that seems to thrive on creating a crisis and then having it go away? And that is a pattern, is it not?

Post: It is indeed. He had as a mentor, Roy Cohn, who was the right hand man to Senator [Joseph] McCarthy. One of the maxims Trump adapted from him…is when someone slaps you, hit him back 10 times harder. Well, that's an interesting prescription. So this is defensive aggression, which can then drive a situation out of control.

Q: Is there an element of cowardice in behavior like this at the same time? Is it possible that somebody lashes out actually because of feeling frightened and inadequate and they kind of lash out as a result?

Post: It's really important to think of Trump in layers. The outside layer is one of grandiosity. And what's underneath that? Think of an onion, hollow in the center. This is a very difficult personality. He's learned a number of maxims, which he regularly details in his book, The Art of the Deal. His books give a very vivid portrait of someone who has a very powerful exterior, which, inferentially we can conclude, has a great deal of insecurity underneath them.

Q: Well, he seems every time to escape scrutiny, and to be able to accomplish more. Are there any limits?

Post: The limits of his ambition are boundless. Let me give one example. I've been struck by the desire to build a secure border wall [on the Mexican border]. He has been obsessing about this and in a remarkable fashion. And I think indeed he wants this to be the Great Wall of Trump…I think that this transcends just the security question and has meant to cement his reputation.

Q: We were talking about Donald Trump's not telling the truth. And by being a malignant narcissist, does your psychological profile suggest might be the reason he lies so much. What is the lying about and why is the lying increasing over time?

Post: Well, the lying is usually about aspects of history and concluding contemporary relations. He is recasting history to put himself in a more favorable place. But I don't know that he after a while sees this as a lie as much as coming to believe his own propaganda. He ends up after saying it enough times that this becomes his truth too.

Q: What are the implications of his lying not only for his followers, but also for the rest of the world?

Post: He's being mocked in other parts of the world for his grandiosity and for his not telling the truth. But his followers don't see either of those things.

Q: What do they see? And why? 

Post: Well, that raises an interesting question. You're talking about his followers homogeneously as if it's one block and there's a spread from the core of totally committed followers. In other words, some people will follow him all the way to the top of the cliff onto the shores below, and others won't.

Q: You’ve written about the elections and how that would play out. And you quoted from Dylan Thomas in that regard.

Post:  Yes, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Drawing on that, I think we can say of Trump, facing the loss of the limelight of the presidency, he will not go gentle into that good night, but full of rage, rage at the passing of the light. As a narcissist, he collects every day newspapers that write about him, and has a pile of magazines with him on the cover. His need for glorification is insatiable, insatiable…insatiable.

Q: So what happens if he sees a threat to the loss of glory? The voting tally comes in and he's behind. What does someone like that do? You  quoted in your book that Trump said he would not honor the results of the election in 2016 if he lost.

Post: Yes,  he continues to be obsessed with Hillary Clinton, who actually beat him by three million.

Q: So what happens this time? So what happens in November 2020 if millions of legal voters reject him and if it looks like he's losing, what do you think that happens?

Post: If he loses, the period between the election and the inauguration will be a very dangerous period. He is quite capable of taking strong actions while still the president that could lead to a major conflict or major power reversals. He needs to demonstrate, “I am still strong. I am your leader.” There is no limit as to what he might do.”

Q: You mentioned Hillary Clinton and his enemies. Trump often seems to assign to them elements of fear or self-knowledge of his own. It’s called projection, isn’t it?

Post: Yes, projection is an important psychological mechanism, which has to do with taking feelings within you and, and projecting them out upon another or as a view of the other...And as you're suggesting, this is probably exactly what's happening there. He's obsessed with [Clinton and former president Obama].It is remarkable how he keeps waging the last election, while he's on a course trying to dismantle the entire Obama legacy….It’s the capacity to rewrite a history in such a way as to glorify himself and impugn any of his rivals. He wanted to destroy and eliminate the Iran nuclear deal because it was Obama's. What does he really know about the Iran nuclear deal? He didn't know any of the details to this moment of coming close to a war with Iran, which he created by simply wanting to get rid of Obama's legacy.

Q: Have you compared your profile of Trump to the profiles of other authoritarian leaders?

Post: I have looked at the entire Kim family in North Korea, grandfather, Kim Il Sung, father Kim Jong Il, the son, Kim Jong Un. It’s total control of the country. They preside over a wasteland in some places that is dark, doesn't even have electricity. This can be seen with the satellite photos and it's quite, quite stark. 

In the case of Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, I see the results of what [he does] to be more predictable and possibly even logical compared to what comes out of the White House these days.

Whereas Fidel Castro and he used to be giving these eight hour perorations that were quite extraordinary, while his followers were dropping of exhaustion in the heat. But you could see their energy flowing into him. 

Q: So what is in it for the followers? What do they get out of it? Why is it good for them?

Post: They are feeling incomplete unto themselves. They are often wounded psychologically and he promises to heal those wounds.

Q: And what about the people who aren't followers of a charismatic leader? When you've got a charismatic leader and somebody who stays outside the charismatic gaze or rejects it, what's the attitude of the charismatic leader towards those people and what's the attitude of the followers of the charismatic leader towards those people?

Post: Well one could go back to those rallies again with Donald Trump,where the protesters who infiltrated the rallies were often violently treated and Trump encouraged violence towards them and said he would pick up the legal costs for them. The attitude of a big charismatic follower is that there are threats and they must be eliminated. And this is the reason for violence that often occurs.

Q: You're suggesting that when you have a charismatic leader, there's a lot of us versus them, that  the relationship of charismatic leaders with their followers is inherently polarizing.

Post: Yes, indeed. The “us versus them” is extremely important. One of the things that the charismatic leader does is to demonize the others. One of the things that's striking about Trump is his artistry at building up hatred towards the outsider. 

Q: So you see a danger for violence?

Post: Yes. And I  must say I'm quite concerned. What's happened to the social fabric of the nation? We should be able to have a civil conversation that is embodied in understanding our similarities and differences. It is as if the middle has disappeared. We have two echo chambers on the far right and the far left. I find this very distressing.

 Q: And what is the impact of his criticizing the entire intelligence community and saying that he accepts the word of Putin over his own intelligence community.

Post: It's really, really remarkable. 

Q: Well, what does that tell his followers?

Post:  It tells them something that they already know, which is that they're not supposed to trust any authority except him. He is the authority. And one better not deviate or criticize the intelligence community has no authority. Federal law enforcement, he says, is corrupt. It has no authority. The generals he had working with him, career generals, they're all gone. The people he started out with, the generals are all fired or resigned.

Q: So it is an erosion of the system, piece by piece.

Post: For me it all goes back to the poem. He will not pass into the night, but rage at the passing of the light. Should he win a close election? He will say as he did that it was not so close and it was an overwhelming victory, but also it will make him even more king-like in his decision making. I have a chapter in my book, King Donald, and suggest that his decision style is more like a monarch with unlimited power than it is as a president. And he really doesn't govern in anything resembling a typical kind of way.