George Conway’s Epic Impeachment Op-Ed: Congress Must Consider Trump’s ‘Behavioral and Psychological Characteristics’

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George Conway — husband to White House Senior Advisor Kellyanne Conway — is a frequent and vocal critic of her boss President Donald Trump. On Thursday, however, he took his critique to a new level when The Atlantic published what can fairly be called a massive essay pronouncing  Trump “unfit for office” and backing the impeachment effort against the president.

In his piece — clocking in at more than 11,000 words — Conway argues that Trump’s “narcissism,” “sociopathy” and has other mental deficiencies, all render him incapable of fulfilling his presidential duties. He argues that Trump’s behavior goes beyond rejecting the usual rules of politics, but instead, establishes the president as an “erratic,” “pathological” figure who directly contradicts what the country’s founders had in mind when the Constitution was drafted.

Quoting Bob Dylan, Conway writes “You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don’t need to be a mental health professional to see that something’s very seriously off with Trump.”

While Conway goes through the piece without mentioning his wife once, he does make a certain insinuation about her position by saying Trump is “incapable of consistently telling the truth” and “those who work closely with him, and who aren’t in denial, must deal with Trump’s lying about serious matters virtually every day.”

He then aims to back up this point by invoking all the reporting on the reasons why Trump’s legal team refused to let him speak directly to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, because “Trump would ‘lie his ass off.'”

Conway goes on to make the case that Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), insisting that the question of Trump’s fitness “doesn’t require mental-health expertise, nor does it really require a diagnosis.” To this point, Conway lists many of Trump’s most controversial moments and explains how they meet the various symptoms of NPD and antisocial personality disorder.

From the piece.

“In a way, Trump’s sociopathic tendencies are simply an extension of his extreme narcissism. Take the pathological lying. Extreme narcissists aren’t necessarily pathological liars, but they can be, and when they are, the lying supports the narcissism. As Lance Dodes has put it, “People like Donald Trump who have severe narcissistic disturbances can’t tolerate being criticized, so the more they are challenged in this essential way, the more out of control they become.” In particular, “They change reality to suit themselves in their own mind.” Although Trump “lies because of his sociopathic tendencies,” telling falsehoods to fool others, Dodes argues, he also lies to himself, to protect himself from narcissistic injury.”

Now that Trump is facing impeachment over the Ukraine scandal, Conway is calling the process a “practical mechanism for addressing the fact that Trump’s narcissism and sociopathy render him unable to comply with the obligations of his office.” He also describes impeachment as a means for Congress to pass judgment on the president’s performance before deciding on whether or not to take action to remove the occupant from office.

“Now that the House of Representatives has embarked on an impeachment inquiry, one of the most important judgments it must make is whether any identified breaches of duty are likely to be repeated. And if a Senate trial comes to pass, that issue would become central as well to the decision to remove the president from office. That’s when Trump’s behavioral and psychological characteristics should—must—come into play. From the evidence, it appears that he simply can’t stop himself from putting his own interests above the nation’s. Any serious impeachment proceedings should consider not only the evidence and the substance of all impeachable offenses, but also the psychological factors that may be relevant to the motivations underlying those offenses. Congress should make extensive use of experts—psychologists and psychiatrists. Is Trump so narcissistic that he can’t help but use his office for his own personal ends? Is he so sociopathic that he can’t be trusted to follow, let alone faithfully execute, the law?

Congress should consider all this because that’s what the question of impeachment demands.”

Read the entire essay at The Atlantic.