Trump won’t be gloating any more about his supposed mental health once he reads what Seth Abramson has to say about his health report.
The White House has been gloating this week in the wake of the release of a clean bill of health.
NBC News reported that:
Trump is in good physical and cognitive health following his first medical examination as president, Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician, told reporters Tuesday, noting that the president earned perfect marks on a cognitive test that he himself had requested.
Jackson assessed that Trump’s overall health was “excellent” and that he has “a lot of energy and a lot of stamina,” but added that he would benefit from a better diet and an exercise regimen. The president is “more enthusiastic about the diet part than the exercise part,” his physician allowed.
Questions regarding Trump’s mental health have plagued the billionaire long before he took office and have continued throughout his first year in office.
As Newsweek reported earlier this week:
Most Americans think questioning Donald Trump’s mental fitness to serve as president is important and legitimate, an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll released Friday showed… According to the poll, 88 percent of Democrats think it’s important to consider the presidents mental fitness to serve, while 54 percent of Independents and just 19 percent of Republicans agree. The poll was conducted online through SurveyMonkey from January 10-11 and was taken by 1,412 adults. The margin of error was +/- 3.5 percent.
Talk radio host, political commentator, author, and former chair of the California Democratic Party Bill Press wrote of his concerns for The Hill earlier this month, writing:
Whatever you think of the Trump presidency, you must admit they’ll have to rewrite the history books when it’s over. We’ve had many kinds of presidents, but we’ve never had one like this before. We’ve never had a president so widely suspected of being mentally unstable, if not mentally ill.
Questions about Donald Trump’s mental capacity dominate the Capitol. A leading psychiatrist tells congressional Democrats that Trump’s mental health is “unraveling.” Two dozen Democrats introduced legislation requiring that the president be examined and removed from office if deemed unfit by a commission of physicians and psychiatrists. Republican staffers bone up on the 25th Amendment, while CNN headlines: “Is It Wrong to Question Trump’s Mental Fitness for Office?”
With all this in mind, the release of the results of Trump’s evaluation at first appeared to be cause for celebration for Trump and his administration. However, as Seth Abramson observed on Twitter – there may be cause for alarm for Trump & Co.
“Good news—today a military doctor effectively ruled Donald J. Trump competent to stand trial. While he didn’t receive a full psychiatric evaluation, the screening he did have—and his performance on it—would make it very hard for him to ever claim to be incompetent to stand trial,” Abramson began, adding: “There are certain complex psychiatric conditions that can impair the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and these conditions were not specifically tested for, but a perfect score on a cognitive screening strongly suggests normative long-term cognitive functioning.”
2/ There are certain complex psychiatric conditions that can impair the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and these conditions were not specifically tested for, but a perfect score on a cognitive screening strongly suggests normative long-term cognitive functioning.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 16, 2018
For those unfamiliar with Abramson’s credentials, his online bio reads in part:
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Seth worked for eight years as a criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator and is now a tenure-track professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at University of New Hampshire. His teaching areas include digital journalism, post-internet cultural theory, post-internet writing, and legal advocacy (legal writing, case method, and trial advocacy).
Trained as a criminal investigator at Georgetown University (1996) and then the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute (2000-2001), Seth is a member in good standing of both the New Hampshire Bar and the Federal Bar for the District of New Hampshire. He’s worked for three public defenders—two state and one federal—representing over 2,000 criminal defendants over that time in cases ranging from juvenile delinquency to first-degree murder. He first testified in federal court as a defense investigator at the age of 19; represented his first homicide client at the age of 22 as a Rule 33 attorney for the Boston Trial Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services; and won his first first-degree murder trial at 29. Between 2001 and 2007, he was a staff attorney for the Nashua Trial Unit of the New Hampshire Public Defender.
His official bio goes on to note that:
Seth is regularly interviewed about politics and higher education by domestic and International media. Recent interviews include the BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, ABC Radio, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Magazine, and The New England Review of Books. Seth’s essays have also been widely cited, including discussions on CNBC, PBS, FNC, BET, and NPR, as well as in Politico, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy, Slate, and Pitchfork.
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