“[Donald] Trump is a sociopath. A sadist. A con artist. A racist. A misogynist. A sexist in general. And I think it is a problem,” offers Justin Frank, one of the world’s top psychiatrists.
Frank, the former chief resident at Cambridge Hospital, is the author of 2018’s Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (and earlier Bush on the Couch and Obama on the Couch). He’s also one of several esteemed psychiatrists and psychologists interviewed in #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump, with these medical experts reaching the conclusion that Trump is a “malignant narcissist” and a danger to American democracy.
But the most moving testimony in #Unfit comes courtesy of George Conway, the attorney, Lincoln Project co-founder, and husband of Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, whose footage was filmed prior to the Conways’ announcement Sunday night that she would be leaving the Trump White House and he would be departing the Lincoln Project to focus on their family. (Their 15-year-old daughter, Claudia, has also been a very vocal opponent of Trump on Twitter and TikTok, and on Saturday announced plans to emancipate from her parents.)
“I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and I almost took a job myself to run the civil division in the Department of Justice,” says Conway. “Donald Trump wasn’t my first choice among the Republican nominees, but I was hopeful that he would calm down and get better as time went on.”
He adds, “The problem was, once he got into the supreme position of power, he lost some of his incentive to be disciplined. And I’m thinking at this point in time: What’s wrong with him? Donald Trump is like a practical joke that got out of hand.”
Indeed, Conway was considered for the role of U.S. solicitor general before he was up for assistant attorney general in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice—only to withdraw from consideration owing to what he saw as Trump’s erratic behavior. He’s since become one of the more vocal anti-Trump Republicans—both on Twitter and via the Lincoln Project, a group of #NeverTrump GOPers who create viral content to both get under the president’s skin and urge voters to make the right choice in 2020.
Later on in #Unfit, Conway—whose mother was a scientist from the Philippines and whose children with Conway are a quarter Filipino—told a personal story about why he feels Trump is unfit for the presidency.
“My mother came from the Philippines… came to the United States in the 1950s,” says Conway. “I just think of myself as an American, and I just assume people aren’t racist. And I tend to forget, well, some people are. And that’s sort of the lesson with Trump, is I just gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
The moment that really crossed the line for Conway came in July of last year, when Trump—via Twitter—told four Democratic congresswomen (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley) to go back to their countries, even though only one of these women was born outside the United States. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough,” Trump tweeted.
“What he said about those members of Congress brought back that memory of, wow, there really are people like that here,” offers Conway. “I was with my mother when I was a teenager in a parking lot in Massachusetts, and somebody said to her, ‘Go back to your country,’” he continues, before wiping away tears. “Sorry. And I found that to be… it really came home to me: This man is a racist, he is evil.”
“He’s a racist. Beyond any question.”
#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump opens on Aug. 28 in virtual cinemas and will be available Sept. 1 on digital platforms
