Is Trump mentally ill?

There comes a moment when an uncomfortable question stops being provocative and becomes necessary. In light of Donald Trump’s latest statements and actions, asking whether the President of the United States is mentally fit is not an insult: it is a civic duty. An act of collective responsibility, when power no longer shows any visible restraints.

In just over a year in office, Trump has accumulated a sequence of decisions that, taken individually, would already be extremely serious. Taken together, they tell us something more: an erratic, vindictive, narcissistic exercise of power - and above all, a dangerous one. A few examples follow.

He has cut off vital humanitarian aid without any remorse, affecting millions of people. One concrete example: global HIV/AIDS programs historically supported by the United States, worth tens of billions of dollars over multiple years. Even “partial” cuts or freezes translate into interruptions of life-saving therapies. Global health literature is clear: suspensions on this scale lead to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths within a few years, due to viral rebound and new infections. And we are talking about sums that are negligible within the U.S. federal budget: a few billion dollars - the equivalent of a handful of days of domestic military spending (the U.S. defense budget exceeds $900 billion per year), or of a single major weapons program. In other words: human lives sacrificed to save pocket change in a defense budget that surpasses a trillion dollars annually. This is not austerity. It is cynicism.

He has then publicly humiliated foreign leaders - such as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa - live on television, only to reverse himself and flip diplomatic positions within hours or days. Threats, sudden praise, new threats. A foreign policy reduced to impulses, whims, and personal resentments.

But the real point of no return was the frontal attack on the international system. Trump decided to sanction judges of the International Criminal Court for doing their job: investigating international crimes - an unprecedented act among liberal democracies. Among those recently targeted are Georgian judge Gocha Lordkipanidze and Mongolia’s Erdenebalsuren Damdin. Asset freezes, restrictions such as the inability to open bank accounts across much of the world, personal intimidation. The message could not be clearer: anyone who applies the law against American interests will be punished. It is the same logic used against Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, who has been politically attacked for documenting and denouncing crimes committed in Gaza by Israel and supported by the United States. Same pattern, same punishment: telling the truth becomes a hostile act. The paradox is almost grotesque. That multilateral system - courts (even if the United States never joined the ICC in particular), conventions, rules - was built by the United States itself after 1945 to prevent the return of the law of the strongest. Today it is being dismantled by those who once created it.

Then there is the most revealing aspect, often dismissed as folklore but in fact politically central: the cult of gifts and compliments. Trump demands personal praise, public deference, theatrical recognition. The symbolic case is the luxury jet received from Qatar - a Boeing 747 worth hundreds of millions of dollars - accepted as if it were normal for a head of state to receive such “gifts.”

The dynamic is always the same: those who flatter him are rewarded, those who do not are punished. A craving for attention and validation that resembles that of a pre-adolescent more than the sobriety required of someone leading a nuclear superpower.

At this point alone, speaking of eccentric behavior - if not bordering on insanity - was already legitimate.

Venezuela and the claim of global jurisdiction

With the military operation in Venezuela, the question became urgent. On Saturday, U.S. forces conducted raids on Venezuelan territory, kidnapping Nicolás Maduro without any UN authorization and without approval from the U.S. Congress. The operation caused the deaths of dozens of Venezuelan civilians and soldiers during the raids.

The administration then had the audacity to deny that this was an invasion, describing it instead as a mere law-enforcement operation - as if Washington were a planetary police force, entitled to enter any country armed, kill, capture, and then even claim moral superiority.

This logic is not new. It disturbingly resembles Hong Kong’s National Security Law, imposed by Communist China in 2020 to crush the last wave of pro-democracy protests. A vague, repressive, extraterritorial law designed to criminalize dissent wherever it appears. I myself was investigated under that framework for organizing peaceful protests for 52 consecutive weeks, in dozens of cities, under the banner “Fridays for Freedom.” The principle is identical: power decides, law adapts.

Immense military power in the wrong hands

I am not a psychologist, and I do not make diagnoses. But the facts are these: Trump controls the most powerful military apparatus in human history. The United States possesses around 5,000 nuclear warheads out of roughly 12,000 worldwide. It maintains more than 800 overseas military installations or bases (depending on official definitions) and tens of thousands of troops permanently deployed outside its borders.

And this person, within the span of 48 hours, threatens Cuba, Iran, democracies like Colombia, and even allies such as Denmark, speaking openly about occupations, interventions, and “necessary actions.” Phrases like “we’ll take it, one way or another” or “we’ll hit them hard” are not jokes: they signal a conception of power detached from any restraint.

History is full of precedents of unstable leaders - paranoid, megalomaniacal, isolated within sycophantic inner circles - who dragged entire peoples into disaster: Hitler in the final years of the Reich, Stalin during the great purges, or African dictators like Idi Amin and Bokassa. Each time, the price was paid by millions of innocents. The point is not armchair psychiatry. It is understanding that personal instability, when combined with unlimited power, becomes a global threat.

What to do now

In the United States, all that remains is to hope that the opposition wakes up from its torpor, returns to filling the streets as it did during mobilizations like the “No Kings Day,” and that Congress remembers it exists, initiating impeachment proceedings against someone who has just brought the country to the brink of open war in Latin America and close to the dissolution of NATO.

As citizens from around the world, our task is different but no less important: to oppose - in the streets and within institutions - any attempt by our governments to blindly follow an unstable leadership. As an Italian, I want to share a historical precedent that we should remember more often: the crisis of Sigonella. In 1985, the Italian government ordered its military forces to surround U.S. special forces to prevent the forced transfer of a prisoner from an Italian airstrip, affirming in practice that on Italian soil it is national sovereignty and international law that apply - not the law of the strongest. I’m sure plenty of more examples of such behaviour exists worldwide.

But this is not enough. Faced with Trump’s manias and the broader imperialist drift — American, Russian, Chinese — the need for a global anti-imperialist movement becomes increasingly evident: one capable of defending the dignity of all peoples and stopping a slide that is pushing us, step by step, toward a third world war. I’m in. Are you?

---

My name is Andrea Venzon. I am a political activist, and I write to help build an independent political space, free from the blackmail of great powers and from resignation. If you like what you read, subscribe. And if you can, become a paying supporter: it’s what allows me to keep writing, analyzing, and taking positions without masters.

Versione in Italiano qui