JANUARY 2, 2026 – I don’t relish embarking on another anti-Trump bender, but I need a boost of self-generated heat: today’s ski venture (followed by the daily chop-the-ice-off-our-front-steps routine) left me with a mild case of frost-nip. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I’m rather “done with Trump.” Although he’s still an unruly bull rampaging inside the proverbial china shop, I think that soon enough . . . strike that; not soon enough but in due course . . . he will prove to be a spent force. My prediction is that forces and matters beyond his control will conspire with his diminished capacity and sooner, rather than later, undermine his power and authority. When the results of next November’s election pour in, the Republican Party will finally see the light—exactly one day late and far more than a dollar short.
Meanwhile, however, I find amusement in Trump’s recent blather about his “perfect health.” I can actually relate to some of it; the bruising, for example, that he attributes to his daily aspirin intake. I’m on the same dosage: 325mg via four 81mg tablets swallowed at one time. This is a preventative measure to counteract blood-clotting, a common side effect of the “magic potion” drug I take every day for 21 days, followed by a “week off” (to allow my neutrophils, WBC and platelets to rebound). (I call the “week off” my “out of jail” week.) The side effect of the aspirin, which is a blood-thinner, is easy bruising; if I accidentally whack my hand against a doorframe, an hour later I’d be under immense scrutiny if by some quirk of fate, I faced a bevy of reporters in the Oval Office.
But my similarity to Trump ends with the aspirin and the consequent bruising. On other fronts, we’re radically different. For example, I don’t eat French fries or Big Macs or even Mini Macs, and I don’t have a big gut pushing out the waist of my golf pants. I don’t drink Coke, either, and I don’t have swollen ankles or doze off in meetings, let alone cabinet meetings. Also, I don’t text my staff members at two in the morning. In fact, I don’t text anyone at two in the morning. Finally, I should add that at some point in my life, I’ve told a joke—however poorly. Reportedly, Trump has never (ever) told a joke . . . and that’s no joke.
Oops. I forgot another distinction between Trump and me: he claims to be in perfect health, whereas I make no such assertion. In the first place, even at 71-1/2, eight years Trump’s junior, I know better. Second, to make such an audacious claim at Trump’s age and from his dietary perspective is to taunt the Fates, and the Fates do not like to be taunted.
Trump’s glib explanation of his “perfect health” is to attribute it to “very good genetics.” Contrary to nearly everything else about what the man says, there might be a kernel of truth in this statement, if “perfect health” translates to “longevity.” After all, ol’ Fred “Pain-in-the-Rump” Trump lived to be old—93—and Ma Trump lived a none-too-shabby 88 years. On the other hand, I’ve heard it on good authority (my oldest sister, who’s read more books than my wife, who’s been in the book business for 20 years, has ever sold), that to estimate a person’s longevity with reasonable accuracy, you take the average of the age (at DOD) of the person’s parents and both sets of grandparents. In Trump’s case, this works out to be 70[1], which means he’s almost a decade into “borrowed time,” though granted, this result is skewed by an outlier—Trump’s paternal grandfather, who kicked the bucket at just 49. But if we’re in bounds of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” as if the truth ever mattered in Trump’s world, the “genetics argument” must take into account the fact that one of Donald’s brothers died of a heart attack at the unripe age of 42 and another died of a stroke at a relatively youngish 71. I don’t know if French fries were a factor in either case.
The genetics factor is certainly a valid point, but it begs an obvious question: genetically speaking (then), to whom can we attribute Trump’s extreme personality disorder(s)?
For starters, this assumes that his personality is, in fact, disordered to extreme. I say he does, though in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m no medical doctor, psychiatrist, or psychologist—certified, amateur, armchair or otherwise. BUT, I’ve circulated among fellow human beings—lots of them—for over seven decades. Among all these people, I’ve encountered the whacky and the whacko. In fact, in my early days of lawyering, I did a stint in the local county attorney’s office handling civil commitments of individuals who (allegedly) “posed a threat of bodily harm to themselves or others.” And then there was “UB,” my “crazy uncle in the attic” who was just as crazy in other parts of the house and out in public[2]. Plus, I worked inside two large corporate law firms—plenty of “case studies” going on there. (As it is said, res ipsa loquitur.) Finally, I worked inside two large nationwide banking institutions, and believe you me, no one can navigate inside such a regime and not see “the entire spectrum” when it comes to personality disorders, even if the navigator is wearing a tightly knotted blindfold.
Based on this background, I’ve developed a “feel,” a “sense,” an “ability to detect” enough about people to know generally what region of the “spectrum” any particular individual inhabits. This is a critical if not essential skill for most us in every aspect of our lives. In boarding a plane, for example; meeting with your surgeon-to-be; letting the plumber into your house to repair a leaky pipe; hiring the kid down the street to mow your lawn; recruiting someone to manage your sales organization; or voting for a candidate for the board of a company in which a chunk of your 401(k) is invested . . . you want to know that the pilot, the surgeon, the plumber, the kid, the job applicant, the board candidate isn’t a trash-talking, facts-be-damned, you-and-your safety and interests be damned whack-job who’s so full of himself there isn’t enough space in outer space to accommodate his obsession with self-aggrandizement.
When it comes to the “79-year-old sitting president in a state of ‘perfect health,’” I’m quite confident that I’ve placed him accurately on the “spectrum.” Again, not being a professional schooled in the art and science of medicine or psychology, or for that matter, criminology, I hesitate to deploy terms such as “sociopathy,” “pathological” or “narcissist,” let alone, the worst of the worst (thanks to Erich Fromm), “malignant narcissism.” Nevertheless, I have ample confidence in placing the current president in what I call the “Bad News” zone of the spectrum.
So, again, from a “genetics” perspective, the question begged is this: beyond what we know about the dad, to what set of “very good genetics” in the ancestral chain can we attribute the traits that make Donald J. Trump such bad news?
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Parents: Father: 93; Mother: 88; Paternal Grandfather: 49; Paternal Grandmother: 86; Maternal Grandfather: 88; Maternal Grandmother: 96.
[2] UB’s slide into “crazy” went steroidal when he reached Trump’s current age. He lived to be 93.
