Donald Trump is sick with power

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 3, 2026. Mentally ill. We should feel sorry for him.

Well, this was an entirely new perspective for me. Yes, I’d long ago done my own armchair analysis of the current incumbent of the Oval Office at the White House and, yes, I had concluded thatDonald J Trumpis in all likelihood a certifiable narcissist – but to hear it from an actual psychiatrist was revelatory. Obviously he’s a narcissist, my pet psychiatrist said at our recent coffee catch-up during which conversation had naturally diverted to the state of the world and, as a narcissist, the leader of the free world simply can’t help himself.

He’s actually sick. And I laughed, because sometimes it’s that, or crying. There’s surely no denying it though, because Trump really does tick so many of the boxes: grandiosity, entitlement, manipulation, expecting unquestioning admiration and fealty, undoubting his own brilliance, arrogant, lacking in empathy… it’s a checklist he’d be proud to score so highly on.

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Gilded grandiosity is his core value: the biggest, the best, the most super-duper superlative – that’s what he’s talking about; that’s what he is. This is followed only by his sense of entitlement, because surely everyone owes him their gratitude and when people don’t show him the deference he believes is his due, he tries to destroy them. Narcissists can be charismatic and charming and clearly a lot of people think Trump is wonderful, God help them.

But shame, man, the dude is sick. Yet still, it’s difficult to feel sorry for someone who has trousered $2.2 billion (about R36 billion) in his first year back in the presidential seat – that’s according to his own 927-page public financial disclosure report, which is spectacular in its scope and shamelessness – and who has paused the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which kept just such self-enrichment and conflict of interest in check. So what is the solution?

The one thing I know for sure about dealing with narcissists is that it’s best not to. They won’t change and they won’t seek treatment, because they are the very last person to think they are the problem.

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