The chattering class loves a good diagnosis. When Ty Cobb or any former White House counsel steps in front of a microphone to question Donald Trump’s "mental fitness," the media treats it like a peer-reviewed breakthrough. They frame it as a courageous act of whistleblowing from the inner sanctum. They are wrong. It is actually the ultimate admission of professional failure wrapped in a cheap psychological cloak.
Stop asking if a president is "insane." It is the wrong question, it uses the wrong metrics, and it ignores how power actually functions in the West Wing. When a lawyer starts playing amateur psychiatrist, they aren't revealing the President’s mind; they are revealing their own inability to manage the chaos of high-level governance.
The Legalistic Delusion of Stability
The "lazy consensus" suggests that a White House should run like a Fortune 500 board meeting—orderly, predictable, and bound by a shared respect for "the process." When a principal like Trump disrupts that process, the legal mind recoils. Lawyers are trained in precedent. They crave the safety of the guardrails. When those guardrails are ignored, the lawyer doesn’t see a different leadership style; they see a breakdown of reality.
Labeling a president "unfit" or "insane" is a defense mechanism for the establishment. It’s much easier to pathologize dissent than it is to admit that the old rules of political engagement are dead. If the President is "crazy," the lawyer’s failure to control him isn't their fault—it’s a medical inevitability.
I have watched advisors in high-stakes environments burn out because they mistook a principal’s high risk tolerance for a clinical disorder. In the C-suite and the Oval Office, "fitness" is a subjective tool used by those who feel their influence slipping.
The Goldwater Rule and the Death of Expertise
We need to address the clinical malpractice occurring in the public square. The Goldwater Rule—the ethical principle that psychiatrists should not provide professional opinions on public figures they have not personally examined—exists for a reason. Yet, lawyers with zero medical training now feel empowered to issue "fitness" reports to cable news anchors.
Let’s get precise about the terminology. "Mental fitness" in a constitutional sense (the 25th Amendment) isn't about whether a president says things that make a Yale Law graduate wince. It is about the inability to discharge the powers and duties of the office.
- Scenario A: A president forgets the names of his cabinet members and wanders out of briefings. (Actual fitness concern).
- Scenario B: A president ignores his lawyer’s advice because he wants to execute a populist agenda that the lawyer finds distasteful or legally risky. (Policy dispute).
The media-industrial complex has spent years conflating Scenario B with Scenario A. By calling political volatility "insanity," we cheapen actual mental health struggles and provide a smokescreen for administrative incompetence.
The Professionalism Paradox
The most "fit" presidents in history were often the most calculated liars or the most rigid adherents to failing systems. Was it "sane" to escalate the Vietnam War based on the flawed logic of the "Best and the Brightest"? The lawyers and advisors then were impeccably "sane," and they led the country into a meat grinder.
The obsession with Trump’s "fitness" is a distraction from the reality of his efficacy. You can hate the policy, but calling the man "insane" ignores the cold, hard logic of his political movement. It’s a movement built on the destruction of the very norms the lawyers are trying to protect. Of course they think he’s crazy; he’s trying to fire them.
The Hidden Cost of the "Unfit" Narrative
The danger of the "unfit" narrative isn't that it hurts Trump’s feelings. The danger is that it creates a permission structure for the unelected bureaucracy to ignore the elected leader.
When a White House lawyer suggests the President is "clearly insane," they are signaling to the Deep State—the career civil servants at State, Defense, and Justice—that they are the true moral authorities. This is a quiet coup by adjective. It replaces the democratic mandate with a medicalized veto.
If we allow "mental fitness" to become a catch-all for "behavior I find erratic," we hand the keys of the country to the people who write the HR manuals.
Stop Hunting for the 25th Amendment
People often ask: "Why won't the Cabinet just invoke the 25th Amendment if he's so bad?"
Because they know what the lawyers won't admit: Trump’s behavior isn't a bug; it’s the primary feature of his political brand. His base didn't vote for a man to sit quietly and listen to a White House Counsel explain the finer points of executive privilege. They voted for a wrecking ball.
You don't diagnose a wrecking ball for hitting a building.
The 25th Amendment is a high bar for a reason. It requires a total collapse of function, not a disagreement over decorum. By lowering the bar to include "being difficult to manage," the legal establishment is playing a dangerous game that will eventually be used against their own preferred candidates.
The Credibility Gap
The lawyers speaking out now—the Cobbs, the Hintons, the SIPs—are often the ones who were most eager to take the job for the prestige. They entered the West Wing thinking they could "tame" the beast. When the beast refused to be tamed, they turned to the "insanity" plea to save their own reputations in the D.C. cocktail circuit.
"I didn't fail to provide sound legal counsel," they tell their peers at the Met Club. "He was just too crazy to listen."
It’s a pathetic exit interview.
If you want to critique the presidency, do it on the merits. Critique the trade wars. Critique the judicial appointments. Critique the foreign policy shifts. But stop using the language of the psych ward to cover up the fact that you lost an argument in the West Wing.
The American public is smarter than the lawyers give them credit for. They see the "insane" label for what it is: the last gasp of a dying establishment that no longer knows how to win a debate on the merits.
Stop looking for a medical exit ramp from a political reality. There is no doctor coming to save the "process." There is only the ballot box and the brutal, "sane" reality of power. If you can't handle the heat of a chaotic principal, stay out of the White House. And for God’s sake, stop pretending your JD is an MD.
