In the previous issue (see Issue #317) I discussed the notion of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Opponents of Donald Trump consider the notion of TDS to be an unwarranted smear. I actually believe it to be a real phenomenon, an example of mass hysteria on an unprecedented scale. I’ve pointed out many times that the masses who loathe Mr. Trump today with unbridled fury did not feel such apoplectic rage towards the man at any time prior to June 16, 2015. Why do I single out that date? Because that is the date he announced his intent to run for office. Prior to that date, he was seen as a somewhat entertaining billionaire businessman, a real estate tycoon, and an interesting and colorful character on the TV show The Apprentice.

I don’t think most people understand the depth of depravity people sink to when they suffer from TDS. To help educate my readers, I offer 25 random examples of TDS so that you can come to grips with what TDS does to people who suffer from it. You may be forgiven for assuming this is parody that I am making up out of whole cloth. But these 25 examples are not fictional in any way. These are real examples of what happens to human beings who suffer from TDS. Fasten your seatbelts. (For those short on time, you can skip the details of the 25 examples listed below and just read the Summary at the bottom of this article).

1. Professor Mark Bird was a sociology professor who taught at the College of Southern Nevada. On August 28, 2018, Professor Bird was so filled with rage at the fact that Donald Trump was President, that he pulled out a gun and shot himself – deliberately! This was his unique way of protesting Donald Trump. He did this on the campus. Shooting himself in the arm just outside a campus bathroom, Professor Bird was at least courteous enough to have taped a $100 bill to the bathroom wall with a note that read, “For the janitor” – presumably to clean up the mess Professor Bird would have made after he shot himself. Professor Bird was arrested. Charges included carrying a concealed weapon witho,ut a permit, discharging a gun within a prohibited structure, possessing a dangerous weapon on school property, and though not confirmed, possibly also impersonating an intelligent human being. Trump Derangement Syndrome at its finest.
2. What would you buy for $750,000? A home in the suburbs? A restaurant? A Lamborghini Urus? A high-profile feminist attorney, Lisa Bloom, incentivized two women by offering to pay them cash if they would publicly accuse Donald Trump of sexual harassment. Neither woman had ever met Donald Trump. How much was she offering these women to come forward and make such accusations? $750,000 in one case. In the other case, Ms. Bloom said she would pay off the woman’s mortgage. Bloom, who was funded an additional $500,000 by Susie Tompkins Buell, the founder of Esprit Clothing and a major donor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, couldn’t find any women to make such accusations. Even after one potential woman said she would accuse Trump if she was paid $2,000,000, she ended up backing out. Bloom also received another $200,000 from a Clinton operative named David Brock. What did Bloom do with that money? She pocketed it.
3. Trump Derangement Syndrome is so all-encompassing that it extends well beyond The Donald and includes his wife, his children, and probably his landscaper and pool maintenance man. Thus, when “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee performed her monologue on May 31st, 2018, she referred to First Daughter Ivanka Trump as a “feckless [female body part that begins with the letter ‘c’].” This is what is considered normal, appropriate, and courageous on the Left.
4. Again, this hatred for Donald Trump doesn’t stop with Donald Trump, but extends to family members. Thus, on June 25, 2019, a female employee who worked at Chicago’s Aviary cocktail bar and had been designated an “MVP Employee” noticed Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, at the bar. What did this MVP Employee do? She walked over to him and spat in his face. Eric Trump decided not to press charges – so who is showing tolerance and decency? Oh, and the woman, to our knowledge, was never fired, but was merely put on a brief leave of absence.
5. Occasionally, we get a rash comment from Hollywood icons of the past who don’t seem to care much how they are seen by others. Peter Fonda (who starred in the 1969 movie Easy Rider) is one of those. He would die in 2019 of lung cancer, but in 2018 he was able to proffer that, given the opportunity, he would like to “rip [12-year-old] Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.” Lovely. What kind of a man says such things?
6. TDS causes people to attack anyone even associated with Donald Trump. Thus, on June 22, 2018, Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, was enjoying dinner at a Virginia restaurant called The Red Hen. Co-owner Stephanie Wilkerson, a Leftist, upon learning of the presence of her distinguished guest, walked over to the Press Secretary and ordered her to leave the restaurant immediately, saying: “. . . the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold.” Did Ms. Wilkerson explain what those standards were? Yes, it turns out, she did: “honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.” OK, this is rich! Stephanie Wilkerson, co-owner of The Red Hen, believes in upholding compassion, and her idea of compassion is to interrupt the meal of one of her guests, the White House Press Secretary no less, and order her out of the restaurant. That’s what Ms. Wilkerson believes is compassionate. Was Ms. Wilkerson, in retrospect, ashamed of what she did? Not at all. She boasted that she would do it again in a heartbeat. After all, she’s compassionate.
7. Jeff Good of Boynton Beach, Florida, had placed a Trump flag in his yard on July 4, 2018. While he was watching fireworks from his driveway, a man who hated President Trump drove by, saw the Trump flag, shouted expletives at Mr. Good, and ordered him to remove the flag. When Mr. Good refused to do so, the Trump-hater exited his car and beat up Jeff Good, punching him in the face. When Good tried to fight back, he got his arm stuck in the car as the driver drove away, dragging Good for about 30 feet, sustaining quite a few injuries.
8. When President Donald Trump made some comments on July 16, 2018 during a Joint Press Conference with Vladimir Putin held in Helsinki, former CIA Director John Brennan claimed such comments were “nothing short of treasonous.” Brennan also claimed that Trump was “wholly in the pocket of Putin” – more of the Russia-collusion hoax. CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria, expanded on that, claiming “treasonous” may not be strong enough. Oh? Mr. Zakaria, what would you call it then? A crime against humanity? Such thoughts on the Left are not mere aberrations. In fact, the Huffington Post published a piece in June 2017 by one Jason Fuller who opined, “Trump must be prosecuted [he may have misspelled his intended word – persecuted] – if convicted in a court of law – executed.” Charming.
9. There are times I am sorely tempted to bestow a prize to the Leftist that is the most outrageous, the most out of touch, and the most outlandish. GQ magazine correspondent Julia Ioffe would certainly be a strong contender for such a prize. The woman is a real piece of work, a deeply troubled soul, often inarticulate and tongue-tied (which is actually a blessing for her because when she does open her mouth and utter a coherent sentence, it usually gets her into real trouble). Back in 2016, while working for Politico, she tweeted this outrage: “Either Trump is f*cking his daughter or he’s shirking nepotism laws. Which is worse?” Gee, I wonder, which is worse? In any event, Politico, thankfully, fired her for her over-the-top vitriol. Two years later, in October 2018, she was on a panel led by Jake Tapper at CNN. During that panel discussion, Ms. Ioffe said this: President Trump “has radicalized so many more people than ISIS ever did.” Oh? President Trump has radicalized more people than ISIS, the Islamicist killing machine that regularly beheads people? Trump causes thousands upon thousands of American citizens to go out and chop off people’s heads? Did the Left-wing media ever cover such mass atrocities? No? While many would insist Ms. Ioffe be given a gag order for her nincompoopery, I disagree. We should honor her first amendment rights to make a fool of herself. Let her keep talking.
10. Joe Scarborough piled on with a piece he wrote in the Washington Post on the eve the September 11th, 2018: “The question for voters this fall is whether their country will move beyond this troubled chapter in history or whether they will continue supporting a politician who has done more damage to the dream of America than any foreign adversary ever could.” For Scarborough, the “troubled chapter in history” is not 9/11 where radicalized Islamicists murdered almost 3,000 innocent Americans, destroyed infrastructure, and mangled our economy in the billions of dollars, but is the Presidency of Donald Trump which had curbed illegal immigration, made great inroads with American-Israeli relations, tamed down much Middle East hostility towards Israel, and massively improved our economy.
11. Mocking not only Donald Trump himself, but anyone even remotely associated with him, Marc Caputo, writing for Politico, mocked Trump supporters with this insult: “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.” He called these American citizens “Garbage people.”
12. The very dignified and erudite Reza Aslan of CNN said that President Trump is a “piece of sh*t.”
13. The New York Times published a short story written by a British novelist named Zoë Sharp whose fantasy piece involved Trump’s own Secret Service agents enabling a Russian to assassinate President Trump.
14. MSNBC analyst Malcom Nance sent out a tweet in April 2017 that indicated he would nominate a Trump property in Turkey at the next target for an ISIS bombing: “This is my nominee for the first ISIS suicide bombing of a Trump property.” Of course, because he’s a coward as well as reckless, he quickly deleted his foolish tweet.
15. We go to New Jersey, where Flemington Mayor Betsy Driver posted on Facebook the notion that Trump’s supporters were “religious zealots” who wished to “enact the Christian version of Sharia law.” Really? She wasn’t done. She went on to write: “If you voted for the orange monster with COVID, go f*ck yourself. If you plan on voting for him again, unfriend me and go f*ck yourself again.” Such charming language, coming from the Left-wing mayor of Flemington.
16. English Professor Jeff Klinzman of Kirkwood Community College over in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Professor Klinzman posted on Facebook on July 27, 2019 that he would like to bash President Trump’s head in with a baseball bat.
17. The effect Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential victory had on people was astonishing. Chelsea Handler claimed she had to go see a shrink, so traumatized was she. . . and, she claimed that she got addicted to marijuana use due to his victory, claiming she never felt “so unhinged” any time prior to that. I appreciate her candor.
18. On October 2, 2020, City Pages, a newspaper based out of Minnesota, published a piece following the news that both President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, had contracted Covid-19. The headline read as follows: “Let’s laugh at all these very good ‘Trump has COVID’ tweets.” Emily Cassel, the Editor-in-chief, wrote as follows: “So President Trump and the First Lady have COVID. Man, anyone else just in a really, inexplicably good mood this morning?” Cassel went on to highlight various other tweets mocking the president, including this one: “I think I speak for everyone when I say that it would be insanely funny if he died of the coronavirus.” This is the civility of some among the Left. Would this editor-in-chief find it funny if Obama had contracted Coronavirus as President? Would any conservative wish him death if he had? Poor taste and a lack of class is rampant among Leftists.
19. In Mid-April 2019, A CBS spin-off of The Good Wife, The Good Fight, tweeted an image from one of its episodes that shows a list of “target words” in various columns. In the first column, the first three words were as follows: “Assassinate,” “President”, “Trump.” Of course, CBS claims it was all an innocent mistake taken out of context. Does anyone believe that?
20. Many people who suffer from TDS actually do wish death on Donald Trump, and are not shy about saying so, hiding behind what they imagine is a comedy routine. Such was the case with one Shane Gillis, a Saturday Night Live alum who was fired in September 2019 when it was discovered he was a racist. Within a week of his being ousted from SNL, he was back in full-form doing what he believes is comedy. Here is what he said, speaking out of both sides of his mouth:   “I don’t want you to think I’m too pro-Trump. I will say this: of all the presidents I’ve been alive for, Trump would definitely be the funniest one to see get shot. Like, without a doubt, that’d be funny. I’m not asking for that; I don’t want that to happen, but it would be funny to see. He’d be on stage talking sh*t, the shooter would be coming at him, and he’d be like, “Sit down.” He’d definitely make a funny noise when he got hit. It would be funny.”
21. Not only killing President Trump is fantasized about among the Left, but Vice President Mike Pence was not spared such vile thoughts. In September 2019, an unnamed Cuthbertson High School teacher (in Waxhaw, North Carolina) told her students that Vice President Pence “should be shot in the head.
22. On April 5, 2020, a thoroughly unhinged Democratic state representative from Ohio, Tavia Galonski, announced on Twitter that she “can’t take it anymore” – she had reached her wits end, and said she was going to The Hague and make a referral against President Trump to be charged by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity.” This had something to do with President Trump promoting a drug that had not yet been conclusively proven to effectively treat Covid-19. The drug was hydroxychloroquine, which many users have sworn was effective. Perhaps Rep. Galonski is unaware that the International Criminal Court at The Hague handles crimes such as mass murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, and “other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious bodily or mental injury.” Not sure promoting an untested drug in an effort to provide protection from Covid-19 qualifies. But it’s a free country; I’m sure the international court at The Hague will give Rep. Galonski’s shrill complaint the attention it deserves.
23. Some people behave in ways that are highly surprising. For example, who would have imagined that a married couple with small children, and both parents are doctors, would steal something – in front of their children. Normally, one would not predict such a thing could happen. But when Donald Trump is involved, all bets are off. With Donald Trump, seemingly normal people – doctors with young children – will succumb to the siren call of Trump Derangement Syndrome and be swept into the deep waters of hatred and irrationality. That is exactly what took place on April 7, 2020, when Dr. Geoffrey Michael Fraiche, age 41, and his wife, Dr. Laura Ann Webb-Fraiche, age 38, noticed a Trump flag planted in the front yard of one of their neighbors. They actually went to the trouble of going home and getting a ladder before returning to successfully pull the flag down, so I guess they really hated that flag and the man it represents. One of their children told them not to commit their crime, saying “You’re gonna go to jail.” But Trump Derangement Syndrome is stronger than the pleas of a child, and stronger than common sense or decency. The couple was arrested, charged with trespassing and larceny among other crimes, and placed in the county jail.
24. And besides, all Trump voters are racist anyway. After all, staff writer Jemele Hill of The Atlantic said so. On July 19, 2020, Hill tweeted with unequivocal dogmatism: “If you vote for Donald Trump, you are a racist. You have no wiggle room.” Given that Hill, who is black, admitted her own mother voted for Trump, does that mean Hill believes her own black mother is a racist against blacks?
25. Trump Derangement Syndrome causes people who suffer from it to behave like wild, tightly-wound zombies – part chimpanzee on cocaine and part Tasmanian Devil on steroids mixed with adrenalin. Such was the case in Washington DC on August 27, 2020 – the night President Trump delivered his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination during the Republican National Convention. Protestors became unhinged mobs. In fact, U.S. Senator Rand Paul, R-KY, and his wife were leaving the White House right after the President’s speech, when a rabid mob of over 100 people surrounded the Pauls and tried to kill them. Police formed a wall around the couple and rushed them back to their hotel for safety while the animals in human guise shoved officers and tried to get their hands on the Pauls, shouting “No justice, no peace!” Rand Paul and his wife barely escaped with their lives.

Summary
Thus, these 25 examples, which could be expanded to several thousand examples, demonstrate that Trump Derangement Syndrome is an apt name for this mental malady, because it literally turns otherwise normal people into deranged lunatics. We see from this random list that Trump Derangement Syndrome is manifested in many ways, including:

• a college professor who deliberately shot himself
• a lawyer who offered $750,000 bribes to women who would falsely claim Trump sexually assaulted them
• a comedian calling Trump’s daughter the “c-word”
• and another spitting in his son’s face
• with yet another wishing to place Trump’s youngest son in a cage of pedophiles
• chasing Trump’s Press Secretary out of a restaurant
• beating up a Trump supporter due to his having a Trump sign in his own yard
• claiming Trump is guilty of treason and deserves to be executed
• claiming Trump may be engaging in incest with his own daughter
• claiming Trump causes more damage than the 9/11 terrorist attacks did
• mocking all Trump supporters as toothless, illiterate country bumpkins
• claiming that Trump is human excrement
• claiming that it would be funny if Trump should be assassinated
• claiming that it would be funny if Trump and his wife died of Covid-19
• claiming that Islamic terrorists should bomb one of Trump’s hotels
• claiming that any who vote for Trump should go “f*ck” themselves
• claiming that Trump’s VP should be shot in the head
• claiming that Trump is guilty of war crimes and needs to be tried at The Hague
• claiming that Trump voters are, by definition, racist against black people
• claiming that Trump is so bad a Republican Senator and his wife should be subjected to mob violence with the intent to kill them both
• and the claim of at least one professor that he fantasizes bashing Trump’s head in with a baseball bat

I haven’t even described the many stories illustrating the crazed lunacy at the mere presence of a MAGA Hat (as if the notion of “Making America Great Again” is considered sacrilegious).

TDS is a psychotic phenomenon that will likely be studied by mental health professionals far into the future.

And that, my friends, is the latest elephant in the room.