The Truth About Donald Trump's Mental State: A Story from Someone Who's Known the President for a Long Time
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is one of the most renowned experts specializing in the psychology of leadership. He has known Donald Trump for decades and shared with the magazine Time his opinion on the mental state of the 47th President of the United States.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, born in 1954 in Philadelphia, graduated from Harvard, and is now a professor of management practice and associate dean for leadership studies at Yale University's School of Management. There, he also founded and directs the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a gathering place for top executives from major companies.
His primary specialization is the psychology of leadership. He studies how decisions are made at the top, how companies survive crises, and how leadership changes. Sonnenfeld has published over 100 scientific papers and written several books on leadership and management.
On the subject: Trump threatens Chicago's mayor and Illinois governor with jail; they call him a 'nutcase' and a 'threat to democracy'
Sonnenfeld has advised thousands of corporate executives and served as an informal adviser to several US presidents, both Democrats and Republicans.
His influence extends far beyond the university. Sonnenfeld is frequently quoted in leading American and international media, and he writes columns and appears on television programs commenting on business, politics, and management.
In recent years, he has become particularly prominent in public policy. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the professor exerted pressure on international companies to withdraw from the Russian market and compiled the so-called Yale List of companies continuing to operate in Russia.
As for his views on Trump, they are formed on the basis of personal experience: Sonnenfeld has known Trump for decades.
We give him the floor.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called Americans ranging from Republican lawmakers to journalists "stupid" and even "traitors."
This behavior caused many to question his mental state and also label him as “unbalanced” and “crazy.”
It's not hard to understand where these questions about Trump's mental health stem from. His abrupt, sometimes chaotic actions and sudden about-faces are truly alarming. For example, on social media, he posts aggressive and divisive conspiracy theories, spreads false accusations, and insults opponents. Some former allies and political opponents even claim he is experiencing noticeable cognitive and emotional deterioration.
However, as a longtime critic of his leadership and someone who has known him for over thirty years, I maintain that he is no crazier today than he ever was. Trump's penchant for exaggeration, self-promotion, and distortion is a long-standing and well-known trait.
This has been written about before, in Tim O'Brien's Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald, in Maggie Haberman's The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, and in David C. Johnston's The Making of Donald Trump.
Almost ten years ago, in a book edited by psychiatrist Bandy Lee, "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," 27 mental health professionals questioned his suitability for the highest office. They believed he exhibited signs of narcissism, sociopathic tendencies, and an obsession with the difficult legacy of his abusive father.
I've known Donald Trump for decades—longer than many members of his first and second administrations. Even in the mid-1990s, he seemed almost cartoonishly out of touch with reality to me. Back then, I visited Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, which Trump purchased in 1985, with Steve Forbes and his publisher, Jeff Cunningham.
This 20-acre estate, featuring a 126-room, 6,000-square-foot Gilded Age mansion, was built a century ago by cereal heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post. It seemed the perfect location for an elite resort. But back then, Trump's plans for Mar-a-Lago seemed far-fetched to me. I was certain it would suffer the same fate as his bankrupt casinos, airlines, and other failed ventures. I was wrong.
Since then, I've learned to take his antics seriously. That's why, in 2004, I warned: Trump had tapped into an important, yet underappreciated, aspect of the American character that would ultimately propel him into the presidential race. Jeff Zucker, then head of NBC Universal, sent me episodes of his show, The Apprentice, the day before they aired so I could write a review—both of the show itself and his leadership style.
Episode after episode, I was troubled by his treatment of women. I challenged the very idea that a leader's success should be built on the ability of participants to fire members of their own team. But my warnings fell on deaf ears.
Moreover, some found Trump's style quite acceptable and even refreshing. "What Sonnenfeld and many others fail to notice is that Trump's leadership style—narcissistic and autocratic as it may appear—is perceived by audiences as more acceptable than the corporate machinations that have taken center stage in recent years," wrote Frank Rich.
After a tense season, Trump and I reconciled when he changed the concept of The Apprentice and switched to a format featuring former celebrities who were not considered role models. This is how The Celebrity Apprentice was born.
In 2005, I invited Trump to the CEO Summit at Yale, which I founded and chair. A dozen top business leaders warned him that if he attended, they would walk out. He did, and they did walk out. Many of them still lead their companies, but they no longer make such protests. While only a handful of business leaders supported his candidacy in 2015, 2020, and 2024, their dissent is much quieter today.
In the spring of 2015, Trump called me frequently, considering running. I tried to talk him out of it.
“Yes, Melania also said that I should run,” he replied, that is, he took the opposite position.
I was a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, as he knew, and as he had been before. I told him he was unlikely to get more than 20% of the vote and that his campaign would fall apart like Ross Perot's. And again, I was wrong—I underestimated him.
When Trump launched his campaign, he accompanied it with a torrent of racist insults and attacks on people like John McCain. His aide, Hope Hicks, called me, trying to tone down his outbursts of feigned rage—to no avail.
Sometimes, more for relaxation, I was invited to dinners in Connecticut, at the home of Trump's future economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. Wealthy Republican Party donors gathered there. During one discussion in August 2015, everyone was asked to name the party's future nominee.
Guests mentioned Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and others. I pointed out that they were missing the obvious: Donald Trump. Laughter erupted. Kellyanne Conway, then working on Cruz's campaign, called me naive and insisted that Trump wouldn't get even 2% of the Republican women's vote. Everyone agreed that the party would unite around a "Dump Trump" strategy. I warned them they were mistaken.
I consider Trump a fickle, vain, and self-promotion-obsessed lover of external glitz. He became famous not only for his controversial career in the New York real estate market, with its string of bankruptcies, but also for offering the masses a unique concept of "class"—a simple, uncompromising formula for success that seemed accessible to everyone. He acted deliberately then—and, in my opinion, he still does now.
He has repeatedly and deliberately appealed to populist anger. In September 2015, he told me that he had considered moving to the left of Bernie Sanders, but realized that moving to the right was faster.
As I write in "Trump's Ten Commandments," he continually employs the same unconventional, destructive tactics. His greed, desire for grandeur, divisiveness, and constant agenda-shifting are nothing new.
Yes, many feel a sudden jolt when Trump suddenly declares looming national security threats related to Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran, even though there are no signs of immediate danger. But this isn't madness. It's a deliberate attempt to shift the public debate from domestic issues where his position is weak to issues more convenient for him.
Likewise, his "divide and conquer" tactics have effectively suppressed dissent within the Republican Party. Unlike other national leaders who seek to unite the country in moments of tragedy, Trump uses such situations to create divisions and assign blame. This isn't a loss of reason—it's a working strategy.
And when he threatens to destroy the millennia-old Persian civilization to push his opponent into negotiations, that's not evidence of a mental disorder either. It's his usual style: to begin negotiations with threats.
It seems he fears only one thing more than losing money: the stability of his ego and reputation. His desire to brand everything—from yachts to ballrooms to legislative proposals—outpaces even the most egocentric leaders of the past, but this is not a new trait.
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Donald Trump is unpopular in many parts of the country and is often the subject of ridicule around the world. But in many ways, he is no different from other extraordinary figures who strive for fame and immortality. In "The Hero's Farewell," I wrote that such aspirations are common among those who aspire to become folk heroes across cultures and eras. Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias," which describes the fallen head of a narcissistic pharaoh, buried in the sands of time, reminds us of the futility of such ambitions. Therefore, I believe that Trump's dangerous, lifelong "megalomania" is not a sign of madness. It is a persistent and recurring pattern of behavior.
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