On Friday, a New York Times headline prompted one figure from President Donald Trump’s orbit to declare that the chief executive is a “sociopath” who is not “capable of grief.”
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This is according to attorney George Conway, a Democratic congressional candidate who was formerly married to Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway. He was responding to a Times headline that read, “How a Grieving Trump Decided to Back Graham’s Sister for Senate,” in which it was asserted that the president was “uncharacteristically emotional about the death of his friend,” recently departed Senator Lindsey Graham. Conway, however, wasn’t buying it.
“Truly absurd headline,” Conway posted. “And most importantly, grossly factually inaccurate. Beyond any reasonable doubt, Trump is a sociopath; he does not grieve, nor is he capable of grief. Even if journalists are too timid to report that truth, they should not report the contrary as truth.”
Accusations that Trump has some form of severe “anti-social personality disorder” have been frequent over the course of his political career. While such assertions were once limited primarily to suggestions of extreme narcissism, in recent months, many have argued that Trump may be afflicted with a more dangerous disorder.
In March, for example, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that Trump is a “psychopath” “in the clinical sense, asserting that Trump “doesn’t appear to recognize that other people exist. That other people have feelings. That their concerns ought to be considered. [He is] someone who has no awareness of the existence of other minds.” Then last week, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich claimed Trump is a sociopath “who will stop at nothing to get the results he wants.” The very same day, bestselling Trump biographer Seth Abramson wrote, “However it came to pass — childhood trauma, genetics, dementia — this U.S. president is now functionally a psychopath. He lives in his own reality. He converses only with himself. All America is now downstream from a madman who’s not listening to anyone or anything but his own madness.”
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There have been many such claims as of late. And what’s more, Conway isn’t alone in suggesting the inaccuracy of the Times’ headline.
Producer and Emmy Award-winner Mark Concannon asked of the Times, “Why do you continue to parrot this Trump pressroom garbage? He wasn’t ‘grieving’ about Lindsey Graham. He just knows his sister will be as big a sycophant as her brother was and do anything he tells her to do. That’s why he endorsed her. Full stop.”
Others have argued that the headline is outright nonsense. As National security analyst Marcy Wheeler noted, “If you were struck by the description of Trump the sociopath making a decision (to appoint Lindsey’s sister, which decision Gov McMaster had already made) [because] of something NYT called ‘grief,’ the passage on the left precedes the passage on the right in the story.” In other words, the Times’ own story admits that Trump wasn’t acting out of some “emotional” state, but out of shrewd political calculation.
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