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**OCTOBER 9, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

Trump, Enhanced

****

Trump is taking a cocktail of drugs that includes the powerful steroid
dexamethasone. According to the Mayo Clinic, common side effects of
dexamethasone include paranoia and grandiosity. The drug's own warning
label cautions about "psychic derangements," mood swings, insomnia, and
"frank psychotic manifestations."

This, of course, is Trump's baseline clinical condition. If there is
any man on the planet who did not need mind-bending drugs, it is Donald
Trump.

One of the effects of dexamethasone is to produce bursts of energy,
euphoria, and a sense of invulnerability. In the past day, Trump has
clinically demonstrated the impact of steroids enhancing his usual
lunacy, disordered thinking, and moment-to-moment self-contradiction.

"I'm back because I'm a perfect physical specimen and I'm
extremely young," Trump said. But in a video directed to seniors, he
confided that he is actually old:

"To my favorite people in the world, the seniors," he said in the video
. "I'm
a senior. I know you don't know that. Nobody knows that. Maybe you
don't have to tell them. But I'm a senior."

Who knew?

Trump, demonstrating textbook paranoia, also blasted his own Cabinet,
even the slavish toady Attorney General Bill Barr, for insufficiently
fervent loyalty.

What's next? After he returned to the White House, Trump stood on a
balcony, Mussolini style. Let's see whether he thinks he can fly.

Steroid use can also produce emotional crashes. The question is not
whether Trump will crash, but how.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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