U.S. President Donald Trump reacts during a meeting with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 17, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
Since Trump first took office a decade ago, many experts have described him in clinically pathological terms, perhaps most notably expressed by a 2016 Harvard paper on Narcissism in U.S. Policy — ResearchGate’s most cited article of the year — which argued that the president’s behavior represented the apex of the problem of psychopathy and narcissism in American politics. Now with the first year of Trump’s second term in the rear view mirror, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie has raised the issue again.
“Lately I feel like we’ve gotten more examples of what I might describe as the president’s psychopathy, and I mean that in the clinical sense, not simply as the pejorative,” said Bouie, explaining 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.”
As an example of this, Bouie cited a recent press conference featuring the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in which an almost giddy Trump revealed the news that Congressman Neal Dunn (R-FL) had received a terminal cancer diagnosis and “would be dead by June.” When a visibly embarrassed Johnson noted that the information wasn’t public yet, there was an audible gasp in the room.
“I was actually kind of shocked by this,” said Bouie. “I’m not shocked by all too much in American politics these days, but I was kind of shocked by this.”
As a further example, Bouie pointed to the recent missile strike on a girls’ school in Iran, in which 168 people were killed — mostly children. When asked about it, Trump was “just not really even engaging with the humanitarian cost,” and tried to deny American involvement in the incident, even though there is video footage showing the strike was done using a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile.
“The president shows none of the humanitarian concern, none of even the lip service we expect from presidents about the people who we kill in our wars,” said Bouie. “Trump in his bloodthirstiness and his callousness and his indifference to other people doesn’t open up that avenue. He doesn’t care.”
As Bouie pointed out, “There is a view out there that this is somehow refreshing that there is a president who dispenses with the pretense. But what happens when you dispense with the pretense isn’t a moment of clarity where things all of the sudden become apparent to everyone. What you get is just open license for psychopathy. You get open license for total contempt of other human beings. That will very much be the cultural and political legacy of Donald Trump.”
Bouie then dismissed a prominent lawyer and Trump supporter's assertion that he thinks the president does worry about civilian casualties.
“Our political and economic elites are in denial about who this guy is, who they supported to put in office,” said Bouie. “Quite a few people think that there is Trump the act and then Trump the guy, and that Trump the act is who we see on camera, and that Trump the guy is a somewhat responsible political leader."
"But that’s not true," Bouie continued. "There is only Trump the act. Or rather, Trump the act and Trump the guy are the same guy: a narcissistic, callow, ignorant, self-absorbed monster of a human being whose only real drive is ego satisfaction and who will sacrifice anything and anyone to obtain it. That is the president, and that is the person who holds quite literally hundreds of millions of lives in his hands.”
