Critics raising concerns about President Donald Trump's potential cognitive decline have failed to contextualize it in a significant way, a political analyst argued Wednesday.
To truly understand the danger of a Trump in mental decline, David Pakman argued, Americans must pair it alongside another diagnosis the president frequently receives from his critics: his “extraordinary narcissism and egomania.”
“Put these things together — the cognitive elements and the narcissism, egomania — in a president of the United States, and you have a much bigger problem,” Pakman said in a video posted on “The David Pakman Show” YouTube page.
While Pakman emphasized to viewers that he was not diagnosing Trump, he pointed to the MAGA leader’s repeated claims that perfect scores on a cognitive screening test known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment prove his intelligence.
“Even Donald Trump framing a dementia screening as an IQ test is the dynamic that I am talking about here,” Pakman said. The screening tool tests possible cognitive impairment, not intelligence, Pakman pointed out.
He questioned whether anyone surrounding Trump could comfortably tell the president that he misunderstood information or remembered something incorrectly.
“The presidency is one of the worst possible jobs for someone who cannot tolerate being told that he is wrong,” Pakman added.
“If confusion produces a mistake, narcissism makes acknowledging that mistake intolerable psychologically,” he continued. “And that creates this insanely dangerous feedback loop.”
Pakman called the combination a “nightmare scenario” that the country is currently in.
“A president that is increasingly unable to process information, but he is still just as confident that he’s the smartest person in the room,” he concluded.