'Public humiliation' from losing the 2020 election drove Trump into 'delusional' rage: expert

07 December 2023

Former President Donald Trump's latest remarks about governing as a dictator "on day one" of a potential second term in the White House could be a product of being publicly humiliated on the global stage according to a psychological expert.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega interviewed numerous experts for a recent article delving into Trump's increasingly grandiose and jaw-dropping statements, including former Trump biographers, professors and political strategists. Dr. Mark Goulston, whom DeVega described as a "prominent psychiatrist and former FBI hostage negotiation trainer," theorized that the former president may in fact be suffering from "narcissistic rage" stemming from the "utter public humiliation" of losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

"[T]he greater the sense of humiliation, the greater the rage. And if not winning the 2020 election wasn't humiliating enough, the thought of losing to Joe Biden may have been so much of a public humiliation as to push Trump over into a delusional state of mind," Dr. Goulston said. "If that is so, it is not enough to just claim the election was stolen, but he may now be seeking to expunge it from the record and history books. Trump's latest rants are consistent with this."

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Goulston pointed to Medical News Today's (MNT) definition of "narcissistic rage" to explain his argument, which describes the condition as "an intense and explosive emotional reaction observable in individuals with NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder)."

"Unlike ordinary anger, which arises from typical triggers, narcissistic rage may occur in response to perceived threats to the narcissist’s inflated self-image and grandiose sense of self, This overwhelming anger may present suddenly and aggressively, seemingly out of proportion to the triggering event," MNT's definition reads. "Narcissistic rage stems from a deep-seated fear of exposure as inadequate or not living up to an ideal self-image that the individual projects."

DeVega's article explored the former president's invoking of religious themes in his 2024 run for the White House, and the experts who weighed in focused their comments on that topic. In that spirit, Dr. Goulston wrote that it may be a productive exercise to ask members of Trump's base "if they can remember anyone from their high school or college days who in the face of utter public humiliation went off the deep end with destructive behavior."

Click here to read DeVega's full article on Salon.

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