October 3, 2025 • 42 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? Warning: this is a PARTIAL RE-RUN. If you heard Thursday's episode, don't bother. But I got such a great response to re-reading and annotating and updating my July 2016 piece for Vanity Fair Magazine on this topic that I wanted to post this as a stand-alone segment in case you skipped it and had time to listen now. The Thursday news-of-the-day stuff has gotten slightly outdated so I've stripped it off. As you know, I don't make a habit of re-posting episodes and I'm not going to start. Again: if you listened to the whole thing Thursday, this is NOT going to be new to you. Don't listen - unless you're trying to memorize it.
SO... COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? I have grown old talking about Trump's sanity. As I wrote then: short answer? Probably not. This is a layman using professional tools: an actual kind of "triage" test used by working psychology professionals to assess if somebody is injured, tripping, or psychopathic. I had an active therapist walk through the examination and assign the points per topic. It's an important time to review what we knew - or should have known - nine long years ago. Because he was unwell then, too.
B-Block (24:31) PART TWO OF "CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST": We conclude the annotated 2016 piece on Trump's already provable mental distress with the disturbing reality that takes us back to where we began on Thursday with Representative Madeleine Dean's lament: "The president is unwell."
C-Block (45:00) THIS IS JUST THE SIGN-OFF: Honestly, there is no reason to listen to this. It's just the credits.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
we all live through this, The subject that will surprise
historians the most is for how long it was clear
this man was mentally incoonfident and nobody did anything about it. Ordinarily,
(00:26):
I would say my conscience was clear about this because
I first brought it up in June of twenty sixteen
on the Chelsea Handler Show on Netflix. Yes there was one,
look it up. Then the next month Vanity Fair published
a piece I did called could Trump Pass a Sanity Test?
And we made a video of it. Apparently I didn't
(00:47):
talk loud enough on the Chelsea Handler Show, or the
article wasn't long enough, or we didn't make enough videos.
I'm going to tank the could Trump pass a Sanity Test?
Article and read it again now virtually unchanged with a
few notes, because it's all still true, only way worse.
(01:07):
But it was all there when this article came out
one hundred and eleven months ago. One hundred and eleven
Could Trump pass a Sanity Test? July twenty first, twoenty
sixteen Short answer, probably not. First several important caveats. There
(01:35):
is little worse and nothing cheesier than questioning the psychological
stability of a public figure, especially a candidate for president,
even in this case, except that in his year of campaigning,
Donald Trump has called Lindsey Graham a nut job, Glen
Beck a real nut job, and Bernie Sanders a wacko.
(01:55):
Trump has insisted Ben Carson's got pathological disease, and asked
about Barack Obama is our president insane? He called Ted
Cruz unstable, unhinged, a little bit of a maniac, and
crazy or very dishonest. He also called the entire CNBC
channel crazy. He called Megan Kelly crazy at least six times.
(02:19):
Respectful reticence about aspersions and cliches and mental health questions
in a time in which mocking was seemingly slowly maturing
into concern. That died a long time ago in this
presidential cycle of twenty sixteen, and it died at Donald
Trump's hands. Moreover, if the question is asked seriously and
(02:40):
not gratuitously, just the examination might explain how Trump has
seemingly survived dozens of moments that might each have been
campaign enders for almost anybody else. Why have we not
asked if a given presidential candidate might be disqualified from
office due to psychological reasons, because we not only can't
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see this forest for the trees, but each time we try,
there are even more trees blocking our view. In the
twenty four hour news cycle, each successive John Yerke's Iceland
moment is not registered cumulatively. It merely supplants the one
from last week or yesterday this morning. This could also
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explain Trump's seeming imperviousness to his own mind bending campaign.
Surely it must be exhausting to attack the Pope February
eighteenth attack President Clinton, May eighteenth, attack, John McCain July eighteenth,
attack Mexicans June sixteenth, attack Muslims December eighth attack. Candidates
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who use a teleprompter, May twenty sixth, just before you
give a speech using a teleprompter, May twenty sixth. It's
got to be exhausting unless, as the old joke goes,
no pain no gain, also no brain, no pain anyway.
(04:06):
The actual sanity test I found for this article is called,
by delicious coincidence, the hair Psychopathy Checklist Revised, introduced by
a Canadian criminal psychologist named Robert D. Hare in nineteen
eighty and that's Hare. It's still in use. In some quarters,
though with ever more diffuse and specific mental health diagnoses.
(04:29):
It is not without its critics, however, as a practicing
therapist who walked me through it agreed, it serves as
a kind of triage device to separate the injured from
the tripping from the psychopathic. And about that word, we
seem to have completely muddled up sociopath and psychopath. Sociopath
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think Ted Kaczynski, the unibomber, living out there and his
shack in the woods, feeling nothing for other humans and
unable to interact with them, literally mailing it in psychopath
think Ted Bundy feeling nothing for other humans, but having
long ago learned how to expertly mimic relationships by being
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whatever he needed to be to whomever he needed to use,
killing at least thirty women serving as his own counsel,
and cross examining a female witness, proposing marriage to her
while she was on the stand, and getting her to
say yes. For each of the twenty items on the
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hair psychopathy checklist, you're supposed to assign the subject a zero,
one point or two. The highest and most dangerous score
is thus forty. In the United States, the accepted minimum
score for possible psychopathy meaning you might be nuts is thirty.
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So those are the rules. Let's play the freud. The
test begins with an assessment of charm that is superficial,
forced charm, faked charm? May I dare say this Trump charm?
I had interviewed Donald Trump as long ago as nineteen
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eighty three, and I always thought he was a horse's ass.
But after running into him when we both worked at NBC,
and then in the lobby of one of his apartment
buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter
a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co worker and in essence landlord.
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In one role, he described himself as an anti Bush
pro Obama Liberal. In the other, he urged me to
contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the
building in which I lived. And then he got on
the campaign stage, and boom, he was America's newest Mussolinium personator.
For a long while, I was flummixed as to which
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of these truly mutually ex exclusive personalities was the act.
Then I was reminded that it didn't really matter, which
that having multiple personalities should by itself preclude one from
having access to multiple nuclear warheads. I was explaining this
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on Bill Maher's show in November twenty fifteen when mar
suddenly got so g whiz that I almost didn't recognize him.
Me too, he exclaimed boyishly. Mar cynical to such a
degree that it makes me seem as earnestly faithful as
a pope, said he had just been as convinced as
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I was, and thus just as stunned by this hydra
of Trumpian personas he'd always been nice to me. I
can easily imagine myself being taken in by a con
artist like Donald Trump. I mean, Trump wrote me a
fan letter once. But mar mar who called me a
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corporate allowed in nineteen seventy eight, when I had to
that point earned about two hundred dollars from all the
corporations in the world combined. He fooled Bill Maher. So
if you're giving out points about fake charm, Trump gets
both of them. The next topic was an excessive sense
of self worth. No kidding, I feel like a supermodel,
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he said on June eighteenth, twenty sixteen, in Phoenix, except
like times ten, it's true, I'm a supermodel. I'm on
the cover of these magazines. I'm on the cover of
the biggest magazines. This was stated by the first Umpealoopa
American to run for national office. He is bright orange.
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He is an old man, affecting a hair color and
style that would have been rejected by the eighties synth
pop group A flock of seagulls. I served with supermodels.
I knew supermodels. Supermodels were friends of mine. Donald, You're
no supermodel. But that is two more points for you.
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The test moves on to ask if the subject can't
mentally sit still, must he always try to make things
happen good, bad, or otherwise? Not easily bored but almost
impossible to focus? Acknowledging that a lot of us get
a point or two here, I certainly do not. All
of those job changes of mine were their fault. Let
me first quote the introduction from Trump's think like a
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billionaire quote, don't take vacations. What's the point? Have a
short attention span? Most successful people have very short attention spans.
It has a lot to do with imagination. Here are
some of the wide ranging businesses Trump's short attention span
has dragged him and the world into real estate, vitamins, rentals, books, condos,
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trucolate bars, golf courses, pro football, beauty pageants, stakes, board
game television hosting, bottled water, universities, men's wear, professional wrestling, mortgages, airlines, fragrances, coffee, restaurants,
energy drinks, vodka, search, engines your analysis, and of course,
bicycle racing. Bicycle racing the Tour de Trump in which
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I noted at the time, contestants raced three hundred laps
around his ego. As a twenty twenty five aside. Can
we add crypto and flags and bibles and merch and
twenty sixteen hats and twenty twenty hats and twenty twenty
eight hats and twenty thirty two hats and mugshot merch
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and influenced pedling and two more points? The test now
gets heavy. Is there lying involved? Again? To June eighteenth,
twenty sixteen, at the Woodlands in Texas after the horrible
Pulse Club shooting. Quote. If some of those wonderful people
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had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or
right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch
comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people
in that room happen to have it and goes boom.
You know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful site, folks,
that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight. June twenty
two days later on Twitter, when I said that if
within the Orlando club you had some people with guns,
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I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees. Can
I stop here or should I walk you through the
hot and cold running lies? Alternating with the admissions of
the Times in the nineties, he pretended to be his
own spokesman, John Miller and John barn Or say virtually
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every other thing he said since this article came out
nine years ago. Another two points on your scoreboard, please.
The test then asks if the patient is manipulative or
cons people you think I'll add today from the of
twenty twenty five, who should we ask to write the
guest essay on this question? Here? Mike Pence, maybe Trump's
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own daughter Ivanka. I'm giving another two points here. Next
we remove to the absence of any sense of guilt
or regret, ask about his faith. At the Family Leadership
Summit in Ames, Iowa by the moderator Frank Lunce in
July twenty fifteen, Trump said people are so shocked when
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they find out I am Protestant, I am Presbyterian, and
I go to church and I love God and I
love my church. Lunce then followed up with the softball
of literally biblical proportions. Whether Trump has ever asked God
for forgiveness for his own actions quote, I'm not sure
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I have. I just go on and try to do
a better job from there. I don't think so. I
think if I do something wrong, I think I just
try and make it right. I don't bring God into
that picture. I don't. Trump then explained that Holy Communion
sufficed quote when I drink my little wine, which is
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about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker,
I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness,
and I do that as often as possible because I
feel cleansed. I think in terms of let's go on
and let's make it right, unquote the art of the deal. Indeed,
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Trump picked up this thread with Jake Tapper in January
twenty sixteen. Again the subject was religion. Quote. I like
to be good. I don't like to have to ask
for forgiveness. Tapper then asked about arrival, presumed to be
Ted Cruz, who was conducting field research into the efficacy
of questioning Trump's religious convictions. Quote, he shouldn't be doing that,
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very unethical. Within a few weeks, Trump attacked Cruise's religious
convictions on February twelve, health In fact, He's tweeted, how
can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies
so much and is so dishonest. Not a week after that,
Pope Francis answered a question about Trump's overall tone quote,
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A person who thinks only about building walls wherever they
may be and not building bridges is not Christian. Within hours,
Trump slammed the Pope fantasized about an ISIS attack on
the Vatican that only he Trump could stop and concluded
this remarkable circle of illogic by writing, for a religious
leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. This is
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right after he questioned a person's faith, after he twice
admitted that his faith included the option to not ask
forgiveness and not quote bring God into that picture, and
just four months before he'd go back to this well
and question Hillary Clinton's faith again. That's two more solid points.
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The next item had to be explained to me thoroughly
from my analyst friend. It's the psychological jargon term shallow affect.
In some it's tone deafness when it comes to explaining
relationships between people. For instance, if somebody got up on
stage for the sake of argument, we'll say it's Billy
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Joel at Madison Square Garden, and that person insulted you
by sarcastically dedicating to you his song the Entertainer as
a way of saying you weren't a leader or a politician,
but merely an entertainer. You might take umbrage or at
least recognize the insult, not if you are suffering from
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shallow effect. Thank you, Billy Joel, Trump tweeted on May
twenty seven, twenty sixteen. Many friends just told me you
gave me a very kind shout out at MSG. Appreciated
love your music. Another example of shallow affect would be
a kind of approach to how people influence each other's
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lives that could be diagrammed as event B follows event A.
Therefore event A caused event B. If say, a prominent
athlete ignored you or in some other tangential way, interacted
with you before failing or being injured. You might think
in passing that you would somehow jinxt him, especially if
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you were still nine or ten years old, but you
probably wouldn't publicly claim it, not unless you're suffering from
shallow affect. Quote Derek Jeter had a great career until
three days ago. Trump tweeted on October fifteenth, twenty twelve,
after the baseball player shattered his ankle during a game
when he sold his apartment at Trump World Tower. I
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told him not to sell karma. The answer this chain
letter or many ankles will be broken theme was not
some early passing expression of the now familiar syndrome we
might describe as TWT tweeting, while Trump five days later
quote Derek Jeter broke ankle one day after he sold
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his apartment in Trump World Tower, and just to finish
this off. Another aspect to shallow affect would be an
unwillingness to acknowledge reliance on others. On March sixteenth, twenty sixteen,
Trump was asked about which foreign policy consultancy was speaking to.
I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a
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very good brain, he said, apparently seriously. I know what
I'm doing, and I listen to a lot of people.
I talk to a lot of people, and at the
appropriate time, I'll tell you who the people are. But
my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good
instinct for this stuff. As an aside, is the narrator
anywhere to know he's off his break. On June twenty fourth,
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twenty sixteen, in Scotland, Trump again described his dream consultant,
saying he spoke to quote foreign the advisors all the time,
but the advice has to come from me. The advice
has to come from me. The effect is shallow. The
points score is not like that last statement. There's two
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of them. Then it's onto lack of empathy. How much
lack of empathy can you have? June twelfth, twenty sixteen,
hours after the last shots had been fired at the
Pulse Club in Orlando, quote, appreciate the congrats for being
right on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats. I
want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart. As a reminder,
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you cannot give fifteen hundred points for just one item
on the hair psychopathy checklist, even if that total is
seemingly deserved. Just just two more here, then there's a
lifestyle question. Does the subject of your exam live his
life as you know a parasite. This does not mean,
as I originally thought, living materially off mom and dad
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or others, although that can be a minor component, especially
if dad gave you a million dollar loan circle nineteen
seventy and you get nine million more from a bank
on the promise of your inheritance, and ultimately you got
about forty million on your father's death, and you considered
all that just a small start in life. No, it
has more to do with taking credit for the work
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of others, to the degree of erasing all record of
their contributions and slapping your name on their efforts, often
in transactions in which you are literally renting the use
of your name as a brand and nothing else, you know,
like Trump Pallace, the Tour, to Trump, Trump Steaks, Trump
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taj Mahal, Donald Trump, the Fragrance, and of course Castle
TRUMPU law. And just as in court, a wife cannot
be forced to give evidence of parasitic lifestyle against her husband,
despite Millennia Trump's Conventions speech fiasco in twenty sixteen, unless
her husband wrote or stole that for her. Remember that
where her speech sounded suspiciously like Michelle Obama's. Again just
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two points. The mid point two point question asks if
the subject had poor behavioral controls, Well, what's your definition
of poor? As a twenty twenty five aside, I'd like
to note the next sentence was written by me in
twenty sixteen. Well, he had poor behavioral controls, but everybody
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agrees he's going to dial it all back this time
right after he pivots pivots towards dialing it back. Right
Judge Gonzalo Curiel, right, Don King, Joel Austin, Ben Roethlisberger,
Pete Rose, or anybody else who Trump claimed had endorsed
him when they had not, Or the Hispanic ABC reporter
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he called a sleeze, or the losing Republican presidential hopefuls
he mocked in a video the day after he insisted
he was going to unite the Republican Party. So we
are at the halfway mark of this twenty sixteen exam,
and the article I wrote, could Trump pass a sanity
test two points per topic? Thirty or thirty five points
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is real trouble. So far, he's been graded for possible
twenty points, and he has twenty points the rest of it.
The next topic is promiscuous sexual behavior. Oh, that's next.
This is countdown back with the second half of the
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July twenty sixteen Vanity Fair article I wrote, Can Trump
pass a sanity Test? Where with the help of a therapist,
I tried to score how nuts he was even then
from afar All this in light of Congresswoman Dean's pithy
and quick observation the President is unwell and Governor Pritzker's
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invocation of invoking the twenty fifth Amendment to remove him
from office because there's something really wrong with him. Now,
to remind you, you're supposed to give the patient no
points one point or two point per topic. That's it,
no variations. So far we've done half of the topics.
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Ten of them, he's gotten twenty points. That's not the
flex that he would think it would be if you
told him to resume with the test. Is the individual
sexually promiscuous? Ahem. When I was a young radio sportscaster,
I was given the great opportunity to interview by telephone
a famous athlete who had just been suspended from his
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sport because he had gone to work for a casino
the athlete now deceased, but will still use a pseudonym.
We'll call him Jimmy Smith was expecting my call. This
as near as I can remember, it was the transcript
of the start of that call, ring, ring voice sounding
kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress
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from Gone with the Wind. Mister Smith's residence. Me uh hi.
Milton Richmond from UPI gave me mister Smith's number and
said he would be willing to give me a brief interview.
May I may I speak with him? Please? Voice sounding
kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress
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from Gone with the Wind. Who's calling please me? My
name is Keith Olderman from UPI Radio. Jimmy Smith. This
is Jimmy. As silly as the story of the whole
fake Trump spokesman was. Of course he has invisible friends.
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Of course they're pr flax. Lost in the laughter were
three important details. Firstly, as my conversation with Jimmy Smith
and his imaginary house keeper suggests, people do do this,
but secondly, when they do it, they usually try to
disguise their own voice. Thirdly, rarely do they assume other
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identities in order to provide the second component to what
we categorize as promiscuity, besides multiple partners boasting about it.
Nineteen ninety one, John Miller to sue carswell than of
people as of twenty and fifteen with Vanity Fair, for
whom I wrote this article. Quote, He's meaning Trump, somebody
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that has a lot of options, and frankly, he gets
called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book.
In terms of women, I mean they call, they just call.
He's living with Marla and he's got three other girlfriends.
Unquote Trump in his own voice, pretending to be somebody
else talking about Trump and the women he betted. That'll
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be two more points. Next. The test asks if there
were conduct problems early in the subject's life. When I
was a kid, probably four or five, I twice hit
a friend of mine in the back of the head
with a metal toy. I remember shock, blood, no stitches,
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and then a series of family meetings. We talked, the folks,
got some professional advice. They got me into organized sports
and exercise, and I quickly realized that just because I
was frustrated with somebody that was not a good reason
to hit them regardless. When I had my analyst friend
run the hair psychopathy checklist on me, I insisted she
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give me a point on this because hitting a kid
in the back of the head with a toy fire
engine and later a magnet was at minimum an indicator
of the potential for early behavior problems. So if you're
given me a point for this, how many points would
you give a child who attacked one of his own teachers.
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Quote I actually gave a teacher a black eye, Trump
wrote in the Art of the Deal in nineteen eighty seven,
barely concealing his retroactively. He placed the time of the
assault as the second grade, likely making him seven years old.
Quote I punched my music teacher because I didn't think
he knew anything about music, and I almost got expelled.
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What kind of kid punches an adult in the face?
I mean, we hear about punching up, but think back
to being that age seven. The one universal I can
recall was that no seven year old ever dreamt of
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trying to physically take on an adult, for the simple
and unavoidable reason that virtually any adult was several times
your own weight. If you pick the wrong one, they
might do more than just defend themselves. Even knocking an
adult down could be an exercise in self destruction if
he fell on you. The most reality challenged of all
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of my young classmates the kid who ran headfirst into
the side of a moving school bus for reasons that
still remain unclear ten presidents later. He would never have
hit an adult. There is a second version of the
same story from a Trump biographer. He did indeed give
the teacher a black eye, but not with a punch.
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He threw an eraser at him and hit him just right,
because that's way better. Regardless, the version Trump tells is
of the four foot tall edition of himself punching what
was at least a five foot tall adult in the eye,
hard enough to give the man a shiner. The only
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argument against calling this early behavior problems is that the
first word implies that it stopped at some point two
more points. The tests you will have noticed bounces around
a bit from topic to topic. From early behavior, we
switch back to long term goals. Does the patient lack them?
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So far? Mister Trump is theoretically aced our exam, but
reality now invades our idyllic scene. There could be a
thousand things psychologically wrong with the process by which Trump
ends up with a low score on this one. In
the big picture, you would never have thought Mussolini was
less crazy just because he left Italy for Switzerland in
nineteen oh two in part to avoid military service, and
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exactly twenty years later Mussolini became head of the Italian
state and often dressed up in his military uniform. But
tests are tests, there are rules here. And if you say,
this guy Trump so lacks realistic long term goals that
he thinks he can become president and he winds up
president twice, the long term goals turned out to be
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not that unrealistic. Huh. As I look back at this
article from twenty twenty five, I desperately want to give
Trump a point on this one here, because once again
he boasts about having the very thing that psychology says
is a warning sign. Except you know, he was right
he became president. In the preface to Think Like a Billionaire,
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Trump quotes the author Richard Konniff quote, almost all successful
alpha personalities display a single minded determination to impose their
vision on the world and irrational belief in unreasonable goals,
bordering sometimes on lunacy and it worked for him, So
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on this one, Trump, you'll get nothing and you'll like it.
He could have twenty six points, he only has twenty four.
Next is the patient impulsive? In March twenty sixteen, writing
in Psychology Today, doctor Glenn Geher offered a different definition
of impulsiveness. It's not necessarily the same as rashness or
its positive twin quick thinking. True impulsiveness usually leaves fingerprints
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of edgy, though not automatically pernicious behavior. Rather, it makes
one do these things in the wrong place, at the
wrong time, Mike, As doctor Geher was analyzing discussing the
size of your penis during a presidential debate, he didn't
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include the other examples where the context turns that behavior
or that language from borderline to impulsive. You might appropriately
bring up that topic in bed, or at a bar,
or even at your tailor's. But it's like saying a
female presidential candidate had been schlonged in a primary, criticizing
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the face of one of your female rivals during a speech,
like crudely referring to a network television figures menstruation while
on a rival television network. Back to two points out
of two. Here down the stretch we come. This is
another seemingly easy item that is actually difficult to nail
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to the wall. What is irresponsibility? Not crediting John McCain's
heroism because he got captured when you yourself avoided the
military draft and service four maybe five times? Is irresponsibility
shown by taking a position on guns in nightclubs that's
so extreme that the president and legislative director of the
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National Goddamned Rifle Association condemned. It is irresponsibility, at least
to the millions of lost souls who actually thought you'd
make a great American president rather than merely the last
American president. Is irresponsibility to even make a joke if
it was a joke that if you were offered five
billion dollars to drop out quote, I guess we'd have
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to think about it. Is the word more applicable or
less applicable if it comes out the next day that
during May your campaign spent more than twice as much
at business as you own than it did on payroll.
The problem with this heading is that so much of
what fits vaguely into irresponsibility, promiscuity, bankruptcy, punching out your
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teacher fits like jigsaw pieces into the other categories in
this test. That doesn't mean the examples are ineligible, just imprecise,
but it does mean we have to score conservatively. So
let's give him one of the two points. We are
asked next to assess whether the patient accepts responsibility for
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their own actions. Again, you cannot give more than two
points in any category. Both of my favorite examples here
involve interviews with The Washington Post, remember the one Washington Post.
On May twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, Trump was caught having
not yet donated the money from the purported veterans fundraiser
he staged as counter programming to the January Republican debate
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that he bailed out of. The Post quoted his remarks
at the fundraiser, which was televised nationally. We just cracked
six million dollars, right, six million? Trump replied to them,
I didn't say six. The somewhat startled Post staffer said
it was on tape. Play it for me, Trump replied,
because I'd like to hear it, The Post reported. Trump
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then manipulated the conversation to another topic, precluding the playing
of the video. Eleven days later, the tape of him
speaking in his own voice, but pretending to be his
spokesman John Miller, was revealed when during a phone interview,
a Post reporter brought up that proof, the John Miller tape.
Trump simply hung up the phone. Two more points next,
(34:05):
there's a question here about wedding vows, lots of marriages,
short ones. This depends on numerical definitions. Despite the falling
of religious barriers against divorce and the rise of the prenup,
the mean is still around just one point two to
one point three marriages per American and the number of
men who marry more than once is only about fifteen percent.
(34:27):
But Trump's marriage is still total only three and their
lengths fourteen six and now nearly twenty one years are
hardly in the annulled within thirty two hours range I
mentioned earlier. So no points here. Okay, once we again
we swing, We swing back to youth. Was the guy
(34:49):
or gal ever a juvenile delinquent? Now not every student
at Trump's high priced alma mater, New York Military Academy NIMA,
as we used to call it when I was in
high school and our teams played theirs, was automatically the
son of rich p parents who had been afforded the
choice not offered their less affluent fellowed troubled kids military
(35:10):
school or reform school. That would be a cliche, but
the one on the record, first hand assessment we have
of Trump as child cuts through cliches and reputations. Quote.
He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,
said Donald Trump's father, explaining why he had to pull
him out of a traditional prep school in their native
(35:32):
Queens and ship him away to Nima. There are plenty
of classmates at that military boarding school who paint a
picture of a kid always throwing hands. On June twenty third,
twenty sixteen, the Washington Post profiled Trump as Nima inmate quote,
struck with a broomstick during a fight. He tried to
push a fellow cadet out the second floor window, only
(35:56):
to be thwarted when two other students intervened. The paper
also quoted one of his pre NEMA teachers, quote, he
would sit with his arms folded with this look on
his face. I use the word surly, almost daring you
to say one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him.
(36:17):
The Post quotes a younger neighbor named Dennis Burnham once
when she left Dennis in a playpen in a backyard
adjoining the Trump's property. Martha Burnham returned to find Donald
throwing rocks at her son. She saw Donald standing at
the fence, Dennis Burnham said, using the playpen for target practice.
(36:38):
This is the sort of stuff that would make a
true bully flinch. Plus, we have the boast from little
Donnie Trump at about seven, blackening the eye of an adult.
Do we have records of the police being called? No,
nor does the category heading ask for them. And that
applies to the next question too. Has there been revocation
(36:59):
of conditional release? The what now of conditional release? Now,
don't be worried if this confuses you, Your confusion only
means you are not a parole officer. This is legal
dingo for getting your parole revoked or your probation converted
into jail time because you were just caught doing that
illegal thing that had gotten you in trouble in the
(37:20):
first place. It is very specifically a criminal record issue.
It's tempting based on what's happened since he left office
the first time to give him a point here, But
I'm going to do it because that's not what the
record says at the moment. We'll revisit this in twenty
twenty nine, if there is a twenty twenty nine. Finally,
(37:45):
is there true criminality and is it multifaceted? Not just
the same crime over and over again as in the
previous question, but lots of different kinds of crimes. The
psychological professional and I got into a big debate about
this one. She argued that criminal is not necessarily meantal
literally here that if you scammed charities, stole money from
(38:09):
grandmothers via a phony university, and directed about twenty percent
of yourr own campaigns, monthly spending towards companies you own,
and the reimbursement for travel by your kids, it all qualified.
My point was that the word criminal was used, not dishonest,
not unethical, not nefarious, capital ce criminal and the purp
(38:32):
walk or multimillion dollar fine in restitution, which that implies,
not that that couldn't have been the end result from
Trump you and then came, you know, is presidency and
stealing all those you know, espionage kind of document stuffs
(38:54):
and the Egene Carol case and the other Egen Carol
case and January sixth and all the convictions, and and
this just proves take heart, young man, no matter how
old you are, you still can get crazier. Give him
the two points for a final score of thirty three.
(39:17):
So there you have it. Trump peters out towards the end. There,
but with thirty points being the marker at which professionals
could present a diagnosis of psychopathy your psychopath, the implications
are clear. Our Trumper's new clothes media rightly sees the
latest Trump event, whatever it is this time, as one
(39:39):
of the most unbelievable developments in American political history. But
the simple mechanics of following, reporting, and writing the proverbial
new high in low every single day means that they
could be missing one overriding truth about the mental health
of the most remarkable presidential candidate ever. In short, our
(39:59):
amateurs exercise with the very professional hair psychopathy checklist suggests
that if you were betting on it, you'd probably want
to bet that Donald Trump couldn't pass a sanity test.
Open book. Now, having slogged through this inventory of the
(40:21):
citizen Kane storage unit of bizarre presidential candidate conduct, go
look at social media because in the time it has
taken you to listen to this podcast. Even if, as
Congresswoman Dean says, the President is unwell, He's probably just
done something new to raise his score, hasn't he. I've
(41:03):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil, our
musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister
Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust.
(41:24):
The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The test is copyrighted by the people from the Test.
The article some of that's mine, some of that belongs
to Benny Fair. Whatever they want ten dollars, I'll send
(41:45):
them ten dollars. Everything else was, as always my fault.
That's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty six
of America held hostage just two hundred and seventeen days
until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame
brain term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein, or the pavement on his hand, or a
stuck escalator, or the psychopathy test or tail and all,
(42:08):
or the President is unwell. The next schedule countdown is
Monday till then. I'm Keith Lraman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alreman is a production
(42:38):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
we all live through this, The subject that will surprise
historians the most is for how long it was clear
this man was mentally incoonfident and nobody did anything about it. Ordinarily,
(00:26):
I would say my conscience was clear about this because
I first brought it up in June of twenty sixteen
on the Chelsea Handler Show on Netflix. Yes there was one,
look it up. Then the next month Vanity Fair published
a piece I did called could Trump Pass a Sanity Test?
And we made a video of it. Apparently I didn't
(00:47):
talk loud enough on the Chelsea Handler Show, or the
article wasn't long enough, or we didn't make enough videos.
I'm going to tank the could Trump pass a Sanity Test?
Article and read it again now virtually unchanged with a
few notes, because it's all still true, only way worse.
(01:07):
But it was all there when this article came out
one hundred and eleven months ago. One hundred and eleven
Could Trump pass a Sanity Test? July twenty first, twoenty
sixteen Short answer, probably not. First several important caveats. There
(01:35):
is little worse and nothing cheesier than questioning the psychological
stability of a public figure, especially a candidate for president,
even in this case, except that in his year of campaigning,
Donald Trump has called Lindsey Graham a nut job, Glen
Beck a real nut job, and Bernie Sanders a wacko.
(01:55):
Trump has insisted Ben Carson's got pathological disease, and asked
about Barack Obama is our president insane? He called Ted
Cruz unstable, unhinged, a little bit of a maniac, and
crazy or very dishonest. He also called the entire CNBC
channel crazy. He called Megan Kelly crazy at least six times.
(02:19):
Respectful reticence about aspersions and cliches and mental health questions
in a time in which mocking was seemingly slowly maturing
into concern. That died a long time ago in this
presidential cycle of twenty sixteen, and it died at Donald
Trump's hands. Moreover, if the question is asked seriously and
(02:40):
not gratuitously, just the examination might explain how Trump has
seemingly survived dozens of moments that might each have been
campaign enders for almost anybody else. Why have we not
asked if a given presidential candidate might be disqualified from
office due to psychological reasons, because we not only can't
(03:01):
see this forest for the trees, but each time we try,
there are even more trees blocking our view. In the
twenty four hour news cycle, each successive John Yerke's Iceland
moment is not registered cumulatively. It merely supplants the one
from last week or yesterday this morning. This could also
(03:24):
explain Trump's seeming imperviousness to his own mind bending campaign.
Surely it must be exhausting to attack the Pope February
eighteenth attack President Clinton, May eighteenth, attack, John McCain July eighteenth,
attack Mexicans June sixteenth, attack Muslims December eighth attack. Candidates
(03:45):
who use a teleprompter, May twenty sixth, just before you
give a speech using a teleprompter, May twenty sixth. It's
got to be exhausting unless, as the old joke goes,
no pain no gain, also no brain, no pain anyway.
(04:06):
The actual sanity test I found for this article is called,
by delicious coincidence, the hair Psychopathy Checklist Revised, introduced by
a Canadian criminal psychologist named Robert D. Hare in nineteen
eighty and that's Hare. It's still in use. In some quarters,
though with ever more diffuse and specific mental health diagnoses.
(04:29):
It is not without its critics, however, as a practicing
therapist who walked me through it agreed, it serves as
a kind of triage device to separate the injured from
the tripping from the psychopathic. And about that word, we
seem to have completely muddled up sociopath and psychopath. Sociopath
(04:52):
think Ted Kaczynski, the unibomber, living out there and his
shack in the woods, feeling nothing for other humans and
unable to interact with them, literally mailing it in psychopath
think Ted Bundy feeling nothing for other humans, but having
long ago learned how to expertly mimic relationships by being
(05:16):
whatever he needed to be to whomever he needed to use,
killing at least thirty women serving as his own counsel,
and cross examining a female witness, proposing marriage to her
while she was on the stand, and getting her to
say yes. For each of the twenty items on the
(05:36):
hair psychopathy checklist, you're supposed to assign the subject a zero,
one point or two. The highest and most dangerous score
is thus forty. In the United States, the accepted minimum
score for possible psychopathy meaning you might be nuts is thirty.
(05:56):
So those are the rules. Let's play the freud. The
test begins with an assessment of charm that is superficial,
forced charm, faked charm? May I dare say this Trump charm?
I had interviewed Donald Trump as long ago as nineteen
(06:18):
eighty three, and I always thought he was a horse's ass.
But after running into him when we both worked at NBC,
and then in the lobby of one of his apartment
buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter
a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co worker and in essence landlord.
(06:39):
In one role, he described himself as an anti Bush
pro Obama Liberal. In the other, he urged me to
contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the
building in which I lived. And then he got on
the campaign stage, and boom, he was America's newest Mussolinium personator.
For a long while, I was flummixed as to which
(07:02):
of these truly mutually ex exclusive personalities was the act.
Then I was reminded that it didn't really matter, which
that having multiple personalities should by itself preclude one from
having access to multiple nuclear warheads. I was explaining this
(07:22):
on Bill Maher's show in November twenty fifteen when mar
suddenly got so g whiz that I almost didn't recognize him.
Me too, he exclaimed boyishly. Mar cynical to such a
degree that it makes me seem as earnestly faithful as
a pope, said he had just been as convinced as
(07:42):
I was, and thus just as stunned by this hydra
of Trumpian personas he'd always been nice to me. I
can easily imagine myself being taken in by a con
artist like Donald Trump. I mean, Trump wrote me a
fan letter once. But mar mar who called me a
(08:04):
corporate allowed in nineteen seventy eight, when I had to
that point earned about two hundred dollars from all the
corporations in the world combined. He fooled Bill Maher. So
if you're giving out points about fake charm, Trump gets
both of them. The next topic was an excessive sense
of self worth. No kidding, I feel like a supermodel,
(08:28):
he said on June eighteenth, twenty sixteen, in Phoenix, except
like times ten, it's true, I'm a supermodel. I'm on
the cover of these magazines. I'm on the cover of
the biggest magazines. This was stated by the first Umpealoopa
American to run for national office. He is bright orange.
(08:50):
He is an old man, affecting a hair color and
style that would have been rejected by the eighties synth
pop group A flock of seagulls. I served with supermodels.
I knew supermodels. Supermodels were friends of mine. Donald, You're
no supermodel. But that is two more points for you.
(09:15):
The test moves on to ask if the subject can't
mentally sit still, must he always try to make things
happen good, bad, or otherwise? Not easily bored but almost
impossible to focus? Acknowledging that a lot of us get
a point or two here, I certainly do not. All
of those job changes of mine were their fault. Let
me first quote the introduction from Trump's think like a
(09:36):
billionaire quote, don't take vacations. What's the point? Have a
short attention span? Most successful people have very short attention spans.
It has a lot to do with imagination. Here are
some of the wide ranging businesses Trump's short attention span
has dragged him and the world into real estate, vitamins, rentals, books, condos,
(09:59):
trucolate bars, golf courses, pro football, beauty pageants, stakes, board
game television hosting, bottled water, universities, men's wear, professional wrestling, mortgages, airlines, fragrances, coffee, restaurants,
energy drinks, vodka, search, engines your analysis, and of course,
bicycle racing. Bicycle racing the Tour de Trump in which
(10:21):
I noted at the time, contestants raced three hundred laps
around his ego. As a twenty twenty five aside. Can
we add crypto and flags and bibles and merch and
twenty sixteen hats and twenty twenty hats and twenty twenty
eight hats and twenty thirty two hats and mugshot merch
(10:42):
and influenced pedling and two more points? The test now
gets heavy. Is there lying involved? Again? To June eighteenth,
twenty sixteen, at the Woodlands in Texas after the horrible
Pulse Club shooting. Quote. If some of those wonderful people
(11:05):
had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or
right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch
comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people
in that room happen to have it and goes boom.
You know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful site, folks,
that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight. June twenty
two days later on Twitter, when I said that if
within the Orlando club you had some people with guns,
(11:26):
I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees. Can
I stop here or should I walk you through the
hot and cold running lies? Alternating with the admissions of
the Times in the nineties, he pretended to be his
own spokesman, John Miller and John barn Or say virtually
(11:47):
every other thing he said since this article came out
nine years ago. Another two points on your scoreboard, please.
The test then asks if the patient is manipulative or
cons people you think I'll add today from the of
twenty twenty five, who should we ask to write the
guest essay on this question? Here? Mike Pence, maybe Trump's
(12:12):
own daughter Ivanka. I'm giving another two points here. Next
we remove to the absence of any sense of guilt
or regret, ask about his faith. At the Family Leadership
Summit in Ames, Iowa by the moderator Frank Lunce in
July twenty fifteen, Trump said people are so shocked when
(12:36):
they find out I am Protestant, I am Presbyterian, and
I go to church and I love God and I
love my church. Lunce then followed up with the softball
of literally biblical proportions. Whether Trump has ever asked God
for forgiveness for his own actions quote, I'm not sure
(12:56):
I have. I just go on and try to do
a better job from there. I don't think so. I
think if I do something wrong, I think I just
try and make it right. I don't bring God into
that picture. I don't. Trump then explained that Holy Communion
sufficed quote when I drink my little wine, which is
(13:17):
about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker,
I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness,
and I do that as often as possible because I
feel cleansed. I think in terms of let's go on
and let's make it right, unquote the art of the deal. Indeed,
(13:37):
Trump picked up this thread with Jake Tapper in January
twenty sixteen. Again the subject was religion. Quote. I like
to be good. I don't like to have to ask
for forgiveness. Tapper then asked about arrival, presumed to be
Ted Cruz, who was conducting field research into the efficacy
of questioning Trump's religious convictions. Quote, he shouldn't be doing that,
(13:57):
very unethical. Within a few weeks, Trump attacked Cruise's religious
convictions on February twelve, health In fact, He's tweeted, how
can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies
so much and is so dishonest. Not a week after that,
Pope Francis answered a question about Trump's overall tone quote,
(14:18):
A person who thinks only about building walls wherever they
may be and not building bridges is not Christian. Within hours,
Trump slammed the Pope fantasized about an ISIS attack on
the Vatican that only he Trump could stop and concluded
this remarkable circle of illogic by writing, for a religious
leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. This is
(14:41):
right after he questioned a person's faith, after he twice
admitted that his faith included the option to not ask
forgiveness and not quote bring God into that picture, and
just four months before he'd go back to this well
and question Hillary Clinton's faith again. That's two more solid points.
(15:01):
The next item had to be explained to me thoroughly
from my analyst friend. It's the psychological jargon term shallow affect.
In some it's tone deafness when it comes to explaining
relationships between people. For instance, if somebody got up on
stage for the sake of argument, we'll say it's Billy
(15:23):
Joel at Madison Square Garden, and that person insulted you
by sarcastically dedicating to you his song the Entertainer as
a way of saying you weren't a leader or a politician,
but merely an entertainer. You might take umbrage or at
least recognize the insult, not if you are suffering from
(15:44):
shallow effect. Thank you, Billy Joel, Trump tweeted on May
twenty seven, twenty sixteen. Many friends just told me you
gave me a very kind shout out at MSG. Appreciated
love your music. Another example of shallow affect would be
a kind of approach to how people influence each other's
(16:06):
lives that could be diagrammed as event B follows event A.
Therefore event A caused event B. If say, a prominent
athlete ignored you or in some other tangential way, interacted
with you before failing or being injured. You might think
in passing that you would somehow jinxt him, especially if
(16:28):
you were still nine or ten years old, but you
probably wouldn't publicly claim it, not unless you're suffering from
shallow affect. Quote Derek Jeter had a great career until
three days ago. Trump tweeted on October fifteenth, twenty twelve,
after the baseball player shattered his ankle during a game
when he sold his apartment at Trump World Tower. I
(16:50):
told him not to sell karma. The answer this chain
letter or many ankles will be broken theme was not
some early passing expression of the now familiar syndrome we
might describe as TWT tweeting, while Trump five days later
quote Derek Jeter broke ankle one day after he sold
(17:12):
his apartment in Trump World Tower, and just to finish
this off. Another aspect to shallow affect would be an
unwillingness to acknowledge reliance on others. On March sixteenth, twenty sixteen,
Trump was asked about which foreign policy consultancy was speaking to.
I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a
(17:32):
very good brain, he said, apparently seriously. I know what
I'm doing, and I listen to a lot of people.
I talk to a lot of people, and at the
appropriate time, I'll tell you who the people are. But
my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good
instinct for this stuff. As an aside, is the narrator
anywhere to know he's off his break. On June twenty fourth,
(17:58):
twenty sixteen, in Scotland, Trump again described his dream consultant,
saying he spoke to quote foreign the advisors all the time,
but the advice has to come from me. The advice
has to come from me. The effect is shallow. The
points score is not like that last statement. There's two
(18:19):
of them. Then it's onto lack of empathy. How much
lack of empathy can you have? June twelfth, twenty sixteen,
hours after the last shots had been fired at the
Pulse Club in Orlando, quote, appreciate the congrats for being
right on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats. I
want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart. As a reminder,
(18:44):
you cannot give fifteen hundred points for just one item
on the hair psychopathy checklist, even if that total is
seemingly deserved. Just just two more here, then there's a
lifestyle question. Does the subject of your exam live his
life as you know a parasite. This does not mean,
as I originally thought, living materially off mom and dad
(19:07):
or others, although that can be a minor component, especially
if dad gave you a million dollar loan circle nineteen
seventy and you get nine million more from a bank
on the promise of your inheritance, and ultimately you got
about forty million on your father's death, and you considered
all that just a small start in life. No, it
has more to do with taking credit for the work
(19:29):
of others, to the degree of erasing all record of
their contributions and slapping your name on their efforts, often
in transactions in which you are literally renting the use
of your name as a brand and nothing else, you know,
like Trump Pallace, the Tour, to Trump, Trump Steaks, Trump
(19:50):
taj Mahal, Donald Trump, the Fragrance, and of course Castle
TRUMPU law. And just as in court, a wife cannot
be forced to give evidence of parasitic lifestyle against her husband,
despite Millennia Trump's Conventions speech fiasco in twenty sixteen, unless
her husband wrote or stole that for her. Remember that
where her speech sounded suspiciously like Michelle Obama's. Again just
(20:13):
two points. The mid point two point question asks if
the subject had poor behavioral controls, Well, what's your definition
of poor? As a twenty twenty five aside, I'd like
to note the next sentence was written by me in
twenty sixteen. Well, he had poor behavioral controls, but everybody
(20:36):
agrees he's going to dial it all back this time
right after he pivots pivots towards dialing it back. Right
Judge Gonzalo Curiel, right, Don King, Joel Austin, Ben Roethlisberger,
Pete Rose, or anybody else who Trump claimed had endorsed
him when they had not, Or the Hispanic ABC reporter
(20:58):
he called a sleeze, or the losing Republican presidential hopefuls
he mocked in a video the day after he insisted
he was going to unite the Republican Party. So we
are at the halfway mark of this twenty sixteen exam,
and the article I wrote, could Trump pass a sanity
test two points per topic? Thirty or thirty five points
(21:19):
is real trouble. So far, he's been graded for possible
twenty points, and he has twenty points the rest of it.
The next topic is promiscuous sexual behavior. Oh, that's next.
This is countdown back with the second half of the
(21:47):
July twenty sixteen Vanity Fair article I wrote, Can Trump
pass a sanity Test? Where with the help of a therapist,
I tried to score how nuts he was even then
from afar All this in light of Congresswoman Dean's pithy
and quick observation the President is unwell and Governor Pritzker's
(22:09):
invocation of invoking the twenty fifth Amendment to remove him
from office because there's something really wrong with him. Now,
to remind you, you're supposed to give the patient no
points one point or two point per topic. That's it,
no variations. So far we've done half of the topics.
(22:29):
Ten of them, he's gotten twenty points. That's not the
flex that he would think it would be if you
told him to resume with the test. Is the individual
sexually promiscuous? Ahem. When I was a young radio sportscaster,
I was given the great opportunity to interview by telephone
a famous athlete who had just been suspended from his
(22:51):
sport because he had gone to work for a casino
the athlete now deceased, but will still use a pseudonym.
We'll call him Jimmy Smith was expecting my call. This
as near as I can remember, it was the transcript
of the start of that call, ring, ring voice sounding
kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress
(23:13):
from Gone with the Wind. Mister Smith's residence. Me uh hi.
Milton Richmond from UPI gave me mister Smith's number and
said he would be willing to give me a brief interview.
May I may I speak with him? Please? Voice sounding
kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress
(23:34):
from Gone with the Wind. Who's calling please me? My
name is Keith Olderman from UPI Radio. Jimmy Smith. This
is Jimmy. As silly as the story of the whole
fake Trump spokesman was. Of course he has invisible friends.
(23:54):
Of course they're pr flax. Lost in the laughter were
three important details. Firstly, as my conversation with Jimmy Smith
and his imaginary house keeper suggests, people do do this,
but secondly, when they do it, they usually try to
disguise their own voice. Thirdly, rarely do they assume other
(24:16):
identities in order to provide the second component to what
we categorize as promiscuity, besides multiple partners boasting about it.
Nineteen ninety one, John Miller to sue carswell than of
people as of twenty and fifteen with Vanity Fair, for
whom I wrote this article. Quote, He's meaning Trump, somebody
(24:41):
that has a lot of options, and frankly, he gets
called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book.
In terms of women, I mean they call, they just call.
He's living with Marla and he's got three other girlfriends.
Unquote Trump in his own voice, pretending to be somebody
else talking about Trump and the women he betted. That'll
(25:02):
be two more points. Next. The test asks if there
were conduct problems early in the subject's life. When I
was a kid, probably four or five, I twice hit
a friend of mine in the back of the head
with a metal toy. I remember shock, blood, no stitches,
(25:23):
and then a series of family meetings. We talked, the folks,
got some professional advice. They got me into organized sports
and exercise, and I quickly realized that just because I
was frustrated with somebody that was not a good reason
to hit them regardless. When I had my analyst friend
run the hair psychopathy checklist on me, I insisted she
(25:46):
give me a point on this because hitting a kid
in the back of the head with a toy fire
engine and later a magnet was at minimum an indicator
of the potential for early behavior problems. So if you're
given me a point for this, how many points would
you give a child who attacked one of his own teachers.
(26:08):
Quote I actually gave a teacher a black eye, Trump
wrote in the Art of the Deal in nineteen eighty seven,
barely concealing his retroactively. He placed the time of the
assault as the second grade, likely making him seven years old.
Quote I punched my music teacher because I didn't think
he knew anything about music, and I almost got expelled.
(26:32):
What kind of kid punches an adult in the face?
I mean, we hear about punching up, but think back
to being that age seven. The one universal I can
recall was that no seven year old ever dreamt of
(26:54):
trying to physically take on an adult, for the simple
and unavoidable reason that virtually any adult was several times
your own weight. If you pick the wrong one, they
might do more than just defend themselves. Even knocking an
adult down could be an exercise in self destruction if
he fell on you. The most reality challenged of all
(27:17):
of my young classmates the kid who ran headfirst into
the side of a moving school bus for reasons that
still remain unclear ten presidents later. He would never have
hit an adult. There is a second version of the
same story from a Trump biographer. He did indeed give
the teacher a black eye, but not with a punch.
(27:38):
He threw an eraser at him and hit him just right,
because that's way better. Regardless, the version Trump tells is
of the four foot tall edition of himself punching what
was at least a five foot tall adult in the eye,
hard enough to give the man a shiner. The only
(28:01):
argument against calling this early behavior problems is that the
first word implies that it stopped at some point two
more points. The tests you will have noticed bounces around
a bit from topic to topic. From early behavior, we
switch back to long term goals. Does the patient lack them?
(28:23):
So far? Mister Trump is theoretically aced our exam, but
reality now invades our idyllic scene. There could be a
thousand things psychologically wrong with the process by which Trump
ends up with a low score on this one. In
the big picture, you would never have thought Mussolini was
less crazy just because he left Italy for Switzerland in
nineteen oh two in part to avoid military service, and
(28:47):
exactly twenty years later Mussolini became head of the Italian
state and often dressed up in his military uniform. But
tests are tests, there are rules here. And if you say,
this guy Trump so lacks realistic long term goals that
he thinks he can become president and he winds up
president twice, the long term goals turned out to be
(29:11):
not that unrealistic. Huh. As I look back at this
article from twenty twenty five, I desperately want to give
Trump a point on this one here, because once again
he boasts about having the very thing that psychology says
is a warning sign. Except you know, he was right
he became president. In the preface to Think Like a Billionaire,
(29:36):
Trump quotes the author Richard Konniff quote, almost all successful
alpha personalities display a single minded determination to impose their
vision on the world and irrational belief in unreasonable goals,
bordering sometimes on lunacy and it worked for him, So
(30:00):
on this one, Trump, you'll get nothing and you'll like it.
He could have twenty six points, he only has twenty four.
Next is the patient impulsive? In March twenty sixteen, writing
in Psychology Today, doctor Glenn Geher offered a different definition
of impulsiveness. It's not necessarily the same as rashness or
its positive twin quick thinking. True impulsiveness usually leaves fingerprints
(30:23):
of edgy, though not automatically pernicious behavior. Rather, it makes
one do these things in the wrong place, at the
wrong time, Mike, As doctor Geher was analyzing discussing the
size of your penis during a presidential debate, he didn't
(30:45):
include the other examples where the context turns that behavior
or that language from borderline to impulsive. You might appropriately
bring up that topic in bed, or at a bar,
or even at your tailor's. But it's like saying a
female presidential candidate had been schlonged in a primary, criticizing
(31:05):
the face of one of your female rivals during a speech,
like crudely referring to a network television figures menstruation while
on a rival television network. Back to two points out
of two. Here down the stretch we come. This is
another seemingly easy item that is actually difficult to nail
(31:26):
to the wall. What is irresponsibility? Not crediting John McCain's
heroism because he got captured when you yourself avoided the
military draft and service four maybe five times? Is irresponsibility
shown by taking a position on guns in nightclubs that's
so extreme that the president and legislative director of the
(31:47):
National Goddamned Rifle Association condemned. It is irresponsibility, at least
to the millions of lost souls who actually thought you'd
make a great American president rather than merely the last
American president. Is irresponsibility to even make a joke if
it was a joke that if you were offered five
billion dollars to drop out quote, I guess we'd have
(32:08):
to think about it. Is the word more applicable or
less applicable if it comes out the next day that
during May your campaign spent more than twice as much
at business as you own than it did on payroll.
The problem with this heading is that so much of
what fits vaguely into irresponsibility, promiscuity, bankruptcy, punching out your
(32:32):
teacher fits like jigsaw pieces into the other categories in
this test. That doesn't mean the examples are ineligible, just imprecise,
but it does mean we have to score conservatively. So
let's give him one of the two points. We are
asked next to assess whether the patient accepts responsibility for
(32:52):
their own actions. Again, you cannot give more than two
points in any category. Both of my favorite examples here
involve interviews with The Washington Post, remember the one Washington Post.
On May twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, Trump was caught having
not yet donated the money from the purported veterans fundraiser
he staged as counter programming to the January Republican debate
(33:17):
that he bailed out of. The Post quoted his remarks
at the fundraiser, which was televised nationally. We just cracked
six million dollars, right, six million? Trump replied to them,
I didn't say six. The somewhat startled Post staffer said
it was on tape. Play it for me, Trump replied,
because I'd like to hear it, The Post reported. Trump
(33:39):
then manipulated the conversation to another topic, precluding the playing
of the video. Eleven days later, the tape of him
speaking in his own voice, but pretending to be his
spokesman John Miller, was revealed when during a phone interview,
a Post reporter brought up that proof, the John Miller tape.
Trump simply hung up the phone. Two more points next,
(34:05):
there's a question here about wedding vows, lots of marriages,
short ones. This depends on numerical definitions. Despite the falling
of religious barriers against divorce and the rise of the prenup,
the mean is still around just one point two to
one point three marriages per American and the number of
men who marry more than once is only about fifteen percent.
(34:27):
But Trump's marriage is still total only three and their
lengths fourteen six and now nearly twenty one years are
hardly in the annulled within thirty two hours range I
mentioned earlier. So no points here. Okay, once we again
we swing, We swing back to youth. Was the guy
(34:49):
or gal ever a juvenile delinquent? Now not every student
at Trump's high priced alma mater, New York Military Academy NIMA,
as we used to call it when I was in
high school and our teams played theirs, was automatically the
son of rich p parents who had been afforded the
choice not offered their less affluent fellowed troubled kids military
(35:10):
school or reform school. That would be a cliche, but
the one on the record, first hand assessment we have
of Trump as child cuts through cliches and reputations. Quote.
He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,
said Donald Trump's father, explaining why he had to pull
him out of a traditional prep school in their native
(35:32):
Queens and ship him away to Nima. There are plenty
of classmates at that military boarding school who paint a
picture of a kid always throwing hands. On June twenty third,
twenty sixteen, the Washington Post profiled Trump as Nima inmate quote,
struck with a broomstick during a fight. He tried to
push a fellow cadet out the second floor window, only
(35:56):
to be thwarted when two other students intervened. The paper
also quoted one of his pre NEMA teachers, quote, he
would sit with his arms folded with this look on
his face. I use the word surly, almost daring you
to say one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him.
(36:17):
The Post quotes a younger neighbor named Dennis Burnham once
when she left Dennis in a playpen in a backyard
adjoining the Trump's property. Martha Burnham returned to find Donald
throwing rocks at her son. She saw Donald standing at
the fence, Dennis Burnham said, using the playpen for target practice.
(36:38):
This is the sort of stuff that would make a
true bully flinch. Plus, we have the boast from little
Donnie Trump at about seven, blackening the eye of an adult.
Do we have records of the police being called? No,
nor does the category heading ask for them. And that
applies to the next question too. Has there been revocation
(36:59):
of conditional release? The what now of conditional release? Now,
don't be worried if this confuses you, Your confusion only
means you are not a parole officer. This is legal
dingo for getting your parole revoked or your probation converted
into jail time because you were just caught doing that
illegal thing that had gotten you in trouble in the
(37:20):
first place. It is very specifically a criminal record issue.
It's tempting based on what's happened since he left office
the first time to give him a point here, But
I'm going to do it because that's not what the
record says at the moment. We'll revisit this in twenty
twenty nine, if there is a twenty twenty nine. Finally,
(37:45):
is there true criminality and is it multifaceted? Not just
the same crime over and over again as in the
previous question, but lots of different kinds of crimes. The
psychological professional and I got into a big debate about
this one. She argued that criminal is not necessarily meantal
literally here that if you scammed charities, stole money from
(38:09):
grandmothers via a phony university, and directed about twenty percent
of yourr own campaigns, monthly spending towards companies you own,
and the reimbursement for travel by your kids, it all qualified.
My point was that the word criminal was used, not dishonest,
not unethical, not nefarious, capital ce criminal and the purp
(38:32):
walk or multimillion dollar fine in restitution, which that implies,
not that that couldn't have been the end result from
Trump you and then came, you know, is presidency and
stealing all those you know, espionage kind of document stuffs
(38:54):
and the Egene Carol case and the other Egen Carol
case and January sixth and all the convictions, and and
this just proves take heart, young man, no matter how
old you are, you still can get crazier. Give him
the two points for a final score of thirty three.
(39:17):
So there you have it. Trump peters out towards the end. There,
but with thirty points being the marker at which professionals
could present a diagnosis of psychopathy your psychopath, the implications
are clear. Our Trumper's new clothes media rightly sees the
latest Trump event, whatever it is this time, as one
(39:39):
of the most unbelievable developments in American political history. But
the simple mechanics of following, reporting, and writing the proverbial
new high in low every single day means that they
could be missing one overriding truth about the mental health
of the most remarkable presidential candidate ever. In short, our
(39:59):
amateurs exercise with the very professional hair psychopathy checklist suggests
that if you were betting on it, you'd probably want
to bet that Donald Trump couldn't pass a sanity test.
Open book. Now, having slogged through this inventory of the
(40:21):
citizen Kane storage unit of bizarre presidential candidate conduct, go
look at social media because in the time it has
taken you to listen to this podcast. Even if, as
Congresswoman Dean says, the President is unwell, He's probably just
done something new to raise his score, hasn't he. I've
(41:03):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil, our
musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister
Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust.
(41:24):
The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The test is copyrighted by the people from the Test.
The article some of that's mine, some of that belongs
to Benny Fair. Whatever they want ten dollars, I'll send
(41:45):
them ten dollars. Everything else was, as always my fault.
That's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty six
of America held hostage just two hundred and seventeen days
until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame
brain term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and
Jeffrey Epstein, or the pavement on his hand, or a
stuck escalator, or the psychopathy test or tail and all,
(42:08):
or the President is unwell. The next schedule countdown is
Monday till then. I'm Keith Lraman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alreman is a production
(42:38):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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