U.S. President Donald Trump in Orly, France, June 17, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Psychologist Mary Trump often argues that her uncle, President Donald Trump — for all his bluster — is deeply insecure and needs constant validation. New York Times opinion writers Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni examine those "titanic insecurities" in a Q&A-style discussion, arguing that Trump's troubled state of mind is the source of the many bad decisions he is making.
Bruni lamented, "Trump doesn't have ideas. He has only his instincts, — base ones — and his insecurities, which are titanic." And the conservative Stephens interjected, "Except his titanic insecurities never seem to sink him, only the rest of us."
Stephens told Bruni, "Trump never pays the price he should. He makes sure of that. He's so shameless and emphatic — no, operatic — in his insistence that total failure is nonpareil triumph that most of his supporters question and then dismiss any serious stirrings of disappointment they feel. Gullibility is so much easier than skepticism, and it keeps you tucked comfily in your tribe. Trump also benefits from our thoroughly polluted information ecosystem: His loyalists dwell in a kingdom of propaganda to which you, me and this exchange of ours aren't granted access."
Trump, Stephens and Bruni warned, is pushing a range of terrible policies, from tariffs to alienating longtime U.S. allies. And they believe that his troubled state of mind is playing a prominent role in his decisions.
Both of them are highly critical of Trump's ceasefire agreement with Iran, which Bruni described as "less a deal than a debacle."
Stephens told Bruni, "I supported the war from the outset and thought the cause was necessary and just. But facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said. And the central fact of our time is that we are led — I am using that verb in the loosest sense — by a man whose idea of courage is bullying, whose idea of honor is knavery, whose idea of loyalty is convenience, whose idea of patriotism is self-idolization, and whose idea of principle is anything that suits his need and his pleasure. Now excuse me while I throw up…. If this deal is as bad as I fear it is — marking an ignominious defeat in the Middle East — will it hurt Trump politically the way that Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan hurt him? Or might Americans shrug and move on, especially if the price of oil continues to fall and the markets continue to rise?"
The conservative New York Times columnist added, "In other words, will Trump pay no political price for his foreign policy fecklessness?"