Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
So you think the media has treated Donald Trump unfairly. Let’s look at the record.
• “By any measure, Donald Trump is unfit to be president” — editorial, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 2016.
• “Obama says Trump ‘unfit’ for presidency” — CNN White House Producer Kevin Liptak, August 2016.
• “Trump is unfit to be president. He’s an affront to integrity and decency everywhere” — editorial, Baltimore Sun, October 2016.
• “Roughly half of the population has voted for somebody who by almost any measure is unfit to serve as president” — David Victor, University of California-San Diego quoted in Scientific American, Nov. 9.
• “Donald Trump’s first week as president has made it all too clear: Yes, he is as crazy as everyone feared” — Rosa Brooks, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 30.
• He has uttered blatant lies and never retracted them, and that is a sign of a serious mental disturbance” — Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, quoted in The Washington Post, May 2017.
• “He’s not only unfit to be president. In my book, his lack of leadership, his lack of empathy, his lack of courage — he’s unfit to be human” — news commentator Ana Navarro last month on CNN.
But Trump is not the first Republican president or candidate to be maligned.
George W. Bush was an idiot who barely squeaked through college with a low C average, Mitt Romney was an evil money grubber, John McCain was loved by the press as a maverick until he ran for president, George H.W. Bush had never seen a checkout scanner, Ronald Reagan was an amiable dunce, and Jerry Ford couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
One has to go back to 1964 before you find that “Fact” magazine polled psychiatrists about American Sen. Barry Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president. The report said 1,189 psychiatrists said Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president.
This resulted in the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule, which states, “it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public statements.”
In spite of the Goldwater Rule, a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers have formed the group, “Duty to Warn.” Its members believe they “have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental illness.”
Trump does not drink or smoke and he has never done drugs. I guess that would make psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers think he’s peculiar.
Rube Render is the Curry County Republican chairman. Contact him at: