For months, the Conway family’s drama had played out in aggressively public fashion. There was George Conway, the attorney and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, launching daily Twitter barbs at President Trump; Kellyanne Conway, the president’s fiercely loyal counselor, defending his increasingly unhinged behavior; and in the middle of it all Claudia Conway, the couple’s teenage daughter, creating TikTok videos about how hellish all the sniping between her parents (and Trump) has been.
Then, on Aug. 23, Kellyanne announced she was leaving the Trump White House to focus on her family, while George said he was taking a step back from The Lincoln Project to do the same. The news came on the heels of Claudia accusing both her parents of abusive behavior via social media.
Prior to all this turmoil—that the more cynical among us could see as a reality-TV post-Trump exit strategy—George Conway shepherded and featured in #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump, a documentary wherein some of the world’s leading mental health professionals and acquaintances of Trump offer their opinions on his mental state.
WATCH IT HERE:
“The important thing to recognize about behavioral disorders is that they can be diagnosed through observation alone,” the film’s director Dan Partland tells The Daily Beast. “There is no need to probe the depths of someone’s soul to determine if they meet the criteria for a behavioral disorder. The DSM is written in plain English and can be easily understood by lay-people.”
In #Unfit, psychiatrists, psychologists and George Conway determine that Trump is suffering from “narcissistic personality disorder.” And in one scene that was left on the cutting-room floor, Conway reads aloud the definition of narcissistic personality disorder from the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, in order to see how many boxes Trump ticks off.
“I have here the DSM-5,” says Conway, before reading the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity and fantasy or behavior, need for admiration, and lack of empathy as indicated by five or more of the following.”
“Is interpersonally exploitative. Ask the contractors in Atlantic City. Ask the women he sexually abused or assaulted,” offers Conway.
He flips to another indicator: Often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her. “I mean, he’s completely obsessed with [John] McCain, to this day,” says Conway. “He keeps attacking McCain because he’s jealous that McCain is so lionized.”
#Unfit doesn’t just examine Trump’s psyche but also the psychology of those that voted for him, and the societal factors that allow people to blindly follow someone with narcissistic personality disorder.
“Trump’s behavior has been on display for the entire world for almost five years now,” says Partland. “Read the diagnostic criteria and judge for yourself which you think apply. When met, the criteria tend to be accurate predictors of future behavior. Someone with narcissistic personality disorder is prone to a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. One can only guess at the number of scandals and crises that could have been averted and lives saved if we had understood in 2015 how truly disordered his behavior was.”
