What would happen if the President of the United States went stark-raving mad?   

That is the premise of the 1965 novel, Night at Camp David, by Fletcher Knebel.     

At the time of its release, its plot was considered so over-the-top as to be worthy of science fiction:

Iowa Democratic Senator Jim MacVeagh is summoned to Camp David, the Presidential retreat, by President Mark Hollenbach. MacVeagh is expected to become Hollenbach’s next Vice President. But he becomes alarmed that Hollenbach is clearly suffering from intense paranoia. 

Hollenbach wants to develop a closer relationship between the United States and Russia—while cutting ties with American allies in Europe. Moreover, he believes the American news media are conspiring against him with his political enemies.

Only one person possesses evidence that Hollenbach is losing his grip on sanity—his mistress, Rita.  Desperate to retain his power, Hollenbach orders the FBI to investigate both MacVeagh and Rita.

So why was a 53-year-old novel re-released in 2018? The answer lay in two words: Donald Trump.

In a November 30, 2018 review of Night at Camp David, Tom McCarthy, national affairs correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, wrote:  

“The current president has seen crowds where none exist, deployed troops to answer no threat, attacked national institutions – the military, the justice department, the judiciary, the vote, the rule of law, the press – tried to prosecute his political enemies, elevated bigots, oppressed minorities, praised despots while insulting global allies and wreaked diplomatic havoc from North Korea to Canada.

“He stays up half the night watching TV and tweeting about it, then wakes up early to tweet some more, in what must be the most remarkable public diary of insecurity, petty vindictiveness, duplicity and scattershot focus by a major head of state in history.”

And the nightmare isn’t over.

Among the outrages Trump has committed since returning to power on January 20:

• Pardoned about 1,500 of his followers who violently tried to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election in the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Move than 250 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting police.
• Withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). 
• Withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
• Ordered the dismissal of 5,000 FBI agents who investigated his incitement of the January 6 riot and his illegal hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
• Declared “a national emergency” targeting migrants—legal and illegal.
• Tried to cancel birthright citizenship—enshrined within the United States Constitution— for U.S.-born children.
• Demanded a military parade for his 79th birthday, poorly disguised as a salute to the 250th anniversary of the United States Army.
• Fired without cause the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• Angrily fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a weak jobs report, triggering fears about his extortionate tariff policy.

Donald Trump

• Demanded that the media refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and banned the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to do so.
• Ordered the closure of all Federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility offices.
• Fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.
• Demanded that Canada become the 51st state and aggressively raised tariffs on Canadian goods.
• Aggressively stated that he wanted the United States to acquire Greenland, its longtime ally.
• Issued executive orders revoking the security clearance of Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs’ “crime”: Preventing  lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms from swaying the 2020 Presidential election to Trump.
• Threatened Harvard University with the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding, claiming that 2023 student protests about Gaza violated the civil rights of Jewish students.
• Accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar for his personal use, a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?

One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist. 

John D. Gartner

Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.

During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”

Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:

• anti-social behavior
• sadism
• aggressiveness
• paranoia
• grandiosity. 

“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” says Gartner, who admits he has not personally examined Trump.  

More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.  

For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his first term as President to his fanatically Right-wing audience.