These folks sorta see it . . . 

The media has been slow to this story, likely because of the very difficultly outlined on our home-page: it just sounds like so much name-calling.

But in substance, they do see the symptoms.  Here are some examples (starting from the right):

From an editorial by center-right pundit David Brooks:

"Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, he’s spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes."

The conservative radio host Charlie Sykes has repeatedly referred to Trump as “tone deaf.”

"It's a joke. Trump off message and tone deaf for using it right now. Should be on best behavior. U'd think?"

Similarly, Sykes commented on what he referred to as Trump’s “obsession” with trying to deny he lost the popular vote:

"We have a president who is deeply engaged with some of these conspiracy theories. So I'm not sure that there's a strategy here. It's more like an obsession that they cannot stop."

That one is worth stopping to comment upon.  When we look at this in light of the diagnosis, we see that it is an obsession; Trump’s psychopathy causes him to obsess on this idea of the three million voters, because their existence is a blow to his psyche.  And what a blow!  That is a big number.  It drives home the fact that he is in office because of the happenstance of the electoral college, not because he won a popularity contest.  And of course, it de-legitimizes him; it puts an asterisk on his “win.”  It’s like winning the gold medal at the Olympics, but everyone believes you were blood-doping.  

Interesting note there: everyone more or less agrees that Lance Armstrong is a narcissist, but many have also picked up on the fact he is probably a psychopath.  

The left, not surprisingly, has been more comfortable using clinical terms.

From an editorial by Michael Nutter, former mayor of Philadelphia:

“We see all of these purposely hurtful, distracting and egomaniacal tactics for what they are -- publicly available literature would indicate that you may apparently be displaying signs of malignant narcissism and narcissistic leadership.”

Paul Krugman tweeted that he has a mental illness:

 An American first: a president who was obviously mentally ill the moment he took office. Thanks, Comey            

Subsequently (in less flip fashion) he noted:

"The story seems, like so much that's happened lately, to have started with President Trump's insecure ego: People were making fun of him because Mexico will not, as he promised during the campaign, pay for that useless wall along the border. So his spokesman, Sean Spicer, went out and declared that a border tax on Mexican products would, in fact, pay for the wall. So there!"

This one, too:

"Donald Trump will break most of his campaign promises. Which promises will he keep?  The answer, I suspect, has more to do with psychology than it does with strategy."

Exactly.  That’s why we need to recognize this.  

And the identification of the symptoms (unfortunately still in the absence of the diagnosis) goes on.  For example:

The Washington Post has referred to Trump’s “Accute sensitivity to criticism:”  
    
"The broader power struggles within the Trump operation have touched everything from the new administration’s communications shop to the expansive role of the president’s son-in-law to the formation of Trump’s political organization. At the center, as always, is Trump himself, whose ascent to the White House seems to have only heightened his acute sensitivity to criticism."

There are two folks who really identified all this for what it really is.  We’ll start from the right:

Glenn Beck (who, let’s be clear, is an opportunistic shit, but isn’t stupid) nailed it (though he used the term “sociopath”).  During a talk with Charlie Rose:

"Have you seen him during the last year and a half truly feel for someone that couldn’t help him? Truly connect on a human level," Beck told PBS host Charlie Rose, who asked the commentator for an indication that Trump could be a sociopath.

“[A] sociopath is somebody who doesn’t really see the human experience in anyone else, and I haven’t see that in him. I haven’t seen him deeply affected by the human condition in an individual."

And David Plouffe (from the left) really nailed it, with the right terminology (i.e., by name) as well as identification of symptomology, in a conversation with Chuck Todd.  Unfortunately, Todd slammed the door on him, ostensibly because of a sort of principled stance about not diagnosing folks you haven’t met.  Of course, this brings us back to the problem we’ve been talking about all along: the media is so afraid of being accused of name calling, and so wrapped up with “fairness” that they are unwilling to call this for what it is.  Anyway, here is Plouffe.

It's apparent that the media is onto this, if skirting the edges around it, whether knowingly or not.

It's time to call it what it is, folks.  All-y All-y in free.