The University Of Pennsylvania's Dirty Little Secret: Donald Trump's Wharton Degree

Graduation Day (May 20) 1968: Donald J Trump poses with his father shortly before or after receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Fiannce and Commerce. He has said that day was "the beginning" of his transformation from just another rich kid to the bold-faced real estate mogul and Lothario he would become:
a.k.a.
The Donald J Trump

-by Charles Krause

HIS TWEETS TELL THE TALE

The University's silence is "a disgrace"

As my 50th college reunion approaches, this weekend, I will return to Philadelphia ashamed, saddened and angry that my Alma mater has chosen to remain silent in the face of what's become painfully obvious: the University of Pennsylvania failed to educate its most famous alumnus, Donald J Trump, Wharton '68.

Simply put, what the world has seen since the day he became President is a Penn grad with a 6th grade vocabulary; less than a passing acquaintance with proper English grammar and spelling; no apparent interest in, or knowledge of, history, literature, the arts, science or, most dangerously, Constitutional law. (Had he taken Dr. Henry Abraham's Constitutional Law course, things might have been different. But he probably wouldn't have passed.)

Without any doubt, Donald Trump's degree from the Wharton School is a disgrace to the University; an insult to Penn alumni, especially those of us who graduated in the 60's and early 70s; and one of the alternative facts Candidate Trump used, shamelessly, to persuade those who voted for him that he was qualified to be President.

One explanation for Our Leader's having both the educational level of a high school drop-out and an undergraduate degree from what is supposed to be one of the world's great universities, is that, 50 years ago, the University of Pennsylvania was a diploma mill, willing to admit, and grant degrees to, anyone who could pay tuition.

It just so happens I was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn's student newspaper, in 1968, the year young Donnie Trump, as he was known then, received his under-graduate degree from Penn's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. Believe me when I tell you, the explanation that Penn was a diploma mill with the standards of a second-rate community college, is simply not true.

There is another explanation, however, that I asked the University's current president, Amy Gutmann, to investigate in a letter I sent her this past January. That she never acknowledged receipt of my letter, much less ordered the investigation I suggested, coupled with Michael Cohen's testimony about the threatening letters he was ordered to send to Fordham and Penn, strongly suggests to me that what I asked Gutmann to investigate, is true.

And if it is true, then the University's official silence about The Donald's relationship to the University-- a policy Gutmann adopted soon after he announced he was running for President in 2015-- suggests she is engaged in covering up a scandal that Trump himself was worried might derail his candidacy had it become known during the primaries, when he used his Wharton degree as a prop to prove he was the brilliant genius he claimed to be.

by Nancy Ohanian

His fixer, Michael Cohen, knew better. He thought the way he used his "academic credentials" proved something else. "When I say con man, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores," Cohen said when he testified before Congress.

Fordham, where The Donald spent his freshman and sophomore years, before transferring to Wharton in 1966 for his junior and senior years, at least confirmed receipt of Cohen's letter.

Penn would not.

"Sorry, but we do not comment on students' records," the University's spokesman told The Daily Pennsylvanian, when its editor tried to confirm that Penn had also received Cohen's threatening letter. What the DP got, instead, was a near-perfect nonresponse response (used most often in Washington when an agency spokesperson is forced to respond to questions about a front page story in The Timesor The Post that he/she knows is so explosive that even a "no comment" could resultin getting his or her principal not only fired, but indicted).

Cohen obviously thought-- or knew-- his bosses' grades and test scores would not support Candidate Trump's claim that he is brilliant and a genius-- the reason Cohen seemed to think he had been ordered to write the letters.

But what if it was something much worse, something that would reveal the way Donald Trump had used money all his life to buy what he wanted-- or, to get rid of what stood in his way?

What if his grades at Fordham were so bad-- and his test scores so low-- that if they, like his tax returns, were made public, eyebrows would be raised and questions would be asked: "How did The Donald ever get accepted to Wharton with grades and board scores like that?"

And what if, omg, what if it turned out that somebody had to bribe somebody to get him in? Even Jeb Bush might have roused himself long enough to make something out of that, especially if the University correctly decided it would have to withdraw his precious degree because it wouldn't be fair to Penn's thousands of other undergrad alums if bribing admis-sions officers were recognized as one perfectly acceptable and customary way students were admitted to Penn during the years Donnie Trump was there.

THE BAD: Pillage Practice by Jim Boden

What I asked Gutmann to do was quite simple: compare Trump's grades from his freshman and sophomore years at Fordham, and his board scores, with those of the other applicants who wished to transfer to Wharton as juniors in 1966. If his measured up, case closed. If they didn't, then what I had been told 40 years ago, would bear further investigation.

And what that was, was this: that Donald Trump's older brother, Freddy, who graduated from Lehigh, paid someone he knew in the admissions office at Penn to admit his young Donnie Trump into Wharton, despite his failing grades at Fordham and low board scores-- the very same grades ands board scores he was worried about 50 years later.

The other half of the rumor has been, for years, that The Donald spent very little time in class and paid other students to take his exams, which would account for the degree he received in 1968 without his having learned much of anything during his two years at Penn.

After the tough guy role he played firing people week after week on NBC, which we now know was a con job because he apparently hates to fire the crooks he's hired to run the government, it should come as no surprise that he managed to con the University into giving him a degree he didn't earn honestly. It should also come as no surprise he's not very good in his current role as President, playing on the world stage to sophisticated audiences who can tell the difference between a pro and an amateur.

What is surprising, and deeply troubling, is President Gutmann's disinterest in defending the rest of the University's alumni, whose degrees are degraded as long as the world assumes that the educational achievement of hte University's most famous alumnus is no different than ours.

Or, put another way, that ours is as poor as his.

The letter I wrote to her is below.

I'll leave it to those who care to read it to decide if Penn's dirty little secret should be exposed.

by Tim Atseff from the series, Seven Deadly Sins: Trump's Dystopian Hepatology

Dear President Gutmann,

I write to you now as a member of the Class of 1969, former University Trustee, former editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian and former member of the Benjamin Franklin Society. Over the past two years, I have waited in vain for the University to defend the integrity of the degree which I, and my classmates, earned just a year after Donald Trump (W ’68) graduated from Wharton without the basic language skills and knowledge of science, history, literature and the arts one would expect of a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

Sadly, the degree my classmates and I were once so proud of, and that we are being urged to return to campus to celebrate in May, 50 years after receiving it, has, for me, at least, become an embarrassment. Every day, it is further degraded by the President’s tweets and interviews; poor grammar; inability to spell; sixth grade vocabulary; lack of intellectual curiosity; disrespect for fact-based research and information; and policy choices which reflect obvious ignorance of our Constitution and American history.

While it would be unfair to hold the current academic leaders and Trustees of the University responsible for the failures of past administrations, the University’s silence, in response to the President’s repeated use of his Wharton degree as proof of his intelligence and educational achievement, has done nothing to dispel the impression that, in the 1960s, the University’s standards were so low it was possible to graduate from the Wharton School with no apparent knowledge of business law or ethics and from the University of Pennsylvania having learned nothing at all.

I believe it was my dear friend, the late Claudia Cohen, who first told me the rumors about Mr. Trump’s older brother having “arranged” Donald Trump’s transfer into the Wharton School’s undergraduate program---after flunking out of Fordham. Our conversation would have taken place in the spring of 1979, when Claudia’s training at the Daily Pennsylvanian had taken her to Page Six at the New York Post and mine had brought me to New York to collect an Overseas Press Club award for my reporting from Jonestown, where I was shot and wounded the previous November while on assignment for the Washington Post.

Donald Trump graduated the year I was editor-in-chief of the DP. Yet, I never knew, or knew of, him. Nor did many other undergraduates I’ve talked to since, apparently because he didn’t spend much time in Philadelphia. By 1979, however, he was a bold-faced name in New York, someone Claudia would have known. I remember, we laughed; it seemed so inconsequential. I mean, who could have imagined Donald Trump would become President of the United States?

If the rumors are true, however, they’re no longer inconsequential or a laughing matter.

His admission to an Ivy League school, one he may have been unqualified to attend, might well have contributed to his apparent belief that the norms and laws of the country don’t apply to him. The circumstances of his admission might also help explain how he managed to get into and out of Penn without anything to show for it except his degree and perhaps some of the finance and accounting tricks he would later use to make money when his companies went bankrupt.

I believe it is incumbent upon the University to undertake a thorough forensic investigation of Donald Trump’s admission to the University, with special reference to the transcript of his two years at Fordham and his SAT scores, to determine whether he was academically qualified to transfer into the Wharton undergraduate program; and his undergraduate record to determine whether any evidence exists of another rumor, that he paid other students to write his papers and take his exams.

Even if the latter cannot be conclusively proven half a century later, his Fordham transcript and SAT scores should be enough to determine if he was eligible for admission to the University in the first place-- and whether his degree should be invalidated, if he was not.

When the University revoked Steve Wynn’s honorary degree, you issued a statement which said, in part, “As a university, we have always been, and will always continue to be, looked to by our alumni and neighbors, our faculty, and most of all by our students, for moral leadership. We must not-- we cannot-- fail to provide it,” you said.

by Jim Boden

I think many alumni applauded your no-nonsense approach to the allegations made against Mr. Wynn, then a University Trustee, but wonder why similar behavior by Mr. Trump hasn’t resulted in a similar response by the University. Yes, we know Mr. Trump is President of the United States. And would argue, all the more reason for the University to demonstrate its moral leadership.

And finally, I wish to register my disappointment at the 50th Reunion program recently sent to members of the Class of ’69. It is devoid of relevant intellectual content.

Quite frankly, if the University does nothing else, I believe it should offer the Class of ’69 morally and intellectually defensible and relevant seminars that would include Constitutional scholars, historians and others from the University capable of continuing our education about the rights and duties of U.S. citizenship and the crisis of governance we face as a result of our fellow alum’s presidency.

If the University is unable to provide a Reunion program relevant to our lives today, it would be unfortunate-- but I think entirely appropriate-- if some of us were to organize a parallel set of Reunion seminars and social activities-- or boycott the Reunion altogether. If nothing else, our response would demonstrate that at least some of us learned something as a result of the excellent education most of us received while we were at Penn.

I look forward to your response. I should add that I shall consider this letter a private correspondence for a month. At that time, absent a substantive reply, I shall feel free to release the letter publicly, hoping to initiate a discussion I feel is necessary and long overdue. Most sincerely,


Charles A Krause
Founder and board chair
The Center For Contemporary Political Art, Washington DC

Silence is not the answer

for the Trustees and President of
the University of Pennsylvania
or for its alumni.

The Trustees and President can't pretend
Donald Trump doesn't exist,
airbrushing him out of the University's history
the way Walter Annenberg at one time
airbrushed Gaylord Harnwell out of
the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There may have been reasons
to remain silent and neutral during the primaries
and general election campaign in 2016.
But our whole system of government
is now at risk
and the University cannot,
and should not,
forsake its lineage by remaining
silent as his prejudice, narcicism and ignorance
(for which the University is at least partly responsible)
destroy the fabric that made this
country vibrant and strong.

I actually thought the letter I sent
Amy Gutmann
offered an honorable
way out for the University.
If Donald Trump should
never have been admitted, then the
University can legitimately
take back is degree
and cut its ties to him,
and his ties to the University.

Not even those of us who were
at Penn when Donald Trump was a student,
can be held accountable
for the mistakes that were made
50 years ago.

But we can and will be
held accountable
for what we do now.
If the University that begat Donald Trump
doesn't disassociate itself from Donald Trump,
then we, the alumni,
need to register our disapproval
and take action.

For the Class of '69,
our 50th reunion
may be a good time and place to start.

THE UGLY: Sin #1 by Tim Atseff

2018 In Review: Donald J. Trump, The (Con) Jobs President! The Whole World Is Watching, Part 11/The End.

by Noah

We're going to win so much you're going to be sick and tired of winning.
- Donald Jackass Trump
Billings, Montana, May 2016

Yup. So much winning! 62,000,000 voters bought the con from America's #1 Con Artist. Perhaps, they didn't realize that, in republican lingo, winning means you lose, emphasis you. So, yeah, in that sense, I guess a lot of people are getting sick and tired of "winning" republican style.

First it was his lies at the Carrier plant in Indiana, more recently, it was Ford Motors, now it's GM.

At the same time, he's telling his gullible cult that steel plants are opening all over the country. He might as well tell them that distant towns are paving their streets with Trump-provided gold or that, due to an agreement he's made with planet Zontar of the 9th dimension, aliens are providing new technology that will provide "millions and millions" of new jobs. Of course, his audiences would lap such idiocy right up. Believe me. As long as none of those jobs go to black or brown people.

In both the FORD and GM cases, the main reason for plant closings centers around the rising costs of parts from China caused by Señor Trumpanzees imposing of tariffs on the parts. The effects of the Trump-imposed tariffs are textbook. They can be no accident. Saying Trump was just stupid is highly implausible and almost offers him an out or an excuse.

In the case of the GM plant closings, a 12,000 figure mentioned for people earmarked for unemployment by Trumpanzee's tariff policies and his Republican Tax Scam rose, in just a few days, to 15,000, and, that doesn't include all of the ancillary metal, plastics, and electrical jobs that will be lost in other factories. Why that's enough for the whole White House staff to get out their "I Don't Really Care, Do You?" jackets and parade en masse down Pennsylvania Avenue all the way to their Republican friends in the Capitol Building in celebration. The Trump presidency truly is the bizarro presidency, one in which that which is bad is viewed as success. Kinda like his promise to drain the swamp. That’s where the obvious fact of Trump being a total sadist comes in. It also means that anyone who still supports him is a masochist. Those in power who continue to enable him are accomplices, at best.

Remember when Trump and his army of psychotics led by McConnell and Ryan claimed that Tax Scam 2018 would lead to corporations adding jobs? Even after the corporations themselves famously publicly admitted that it wouldn’t?



For years, Republicans talked about the need to lower the corporate tax rate in order to stimulate job creation. However, thanks to the Trump/Ryan Tax Scam, GM and other large corporations had their tax rates cut by 40% and instead, predictably to everyone but republican voters, the corporations like GM have just bought back stock, moved even more jobs overseas or across the border, given raises to top executives, pocketed the windfall and done nothing to stimulate job growth. As an example, so far this year, GM has received $157 million in tax cuts and used $100 million of that to buy back the corporation’s stock in order to benefit its top executives and biggest shareholders while screwing their workers.

You're going to see General Motors, they're coming back. A lot of companies are coming back. It's a good feeling. That's a really good feeling.
- Trumpanzee, February 13, 2018 at the White House.

Let me tell you folks in Ohio and in this area. Don't sell your house. Don't sell your house. We're gonna fill up those factories or rip them down and build brand new ones. That's what's gonna happen.
- The biggest asshole in the world. July 2017 in Youngstown, Ohio

Trump promised that factories would be filled up or torn down and replaced by new ones. And those 62,000,000 actually believed him. (Oh? Ok, that's an exaggeration. So many of them voted in support of the typical Republican racism and misogyny instead.) But again, the opposite was the truth. When Trump speaks, does he have a third little tiny hand behind his back with the fingers crossed?

When Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and the entire rest of their party passed their tax scam for the 1% and their corporate benefactors, they knowingly lied and said the benefits of the tax cuts would “trickle down” to average Americans, even thought the “trickle down voodoo economics” of the Reagan years never bore fruit for average Americans. Republicans even went as far in their psychotic lying to say that every working family would receive a $4,000 pay raise in their checks. To top that lie off, Trump promised a new, instant middle class tax cut just as soon as the midterm elections were over. Again, Trump supporters bought the con. And let’s not forget Trump, after reluctantly actually going to visit some of our troops, lied to them that he had given them a 10% raise.

To date, only 4.4% of American workers have received any kind of raise or bonus related to the tax cuts that corporations received in the tax scam.

Republicans love to talk about things like recovery aid for disasters, natural or man-made, being “paid for” by offsets of cuts to be made elsewhere. In this case, the man-made disaster of the tax scam is an exploding deficit soaring into the trillions; enough to end the United States of America. But, that’s OK with Trump, Ryan, McConnell and their army of perps and dirtbags. Trump and his army went into this with their own ideas of off-sets in mind. They want to pay for the corporate welfare money they handed out to their benefactors by stealing from us by cutting our Social Security and Medicare. It’s all the equivalent of a nasty cat sadistically playing with its prey before it finally kills it.

Sadism is everything with Trump. Anyone who ever thought, even for an instant, that Trump was going to pursue policies that would result in jobs or help Americans or America is a fool of astronomical proportions. Such people are the ultimate example of people voting against themselves. In his whole life Trump has never done anything for anyone else but Trump. Sure, you can point to the CEOs and the 1% and say he’s helping them but all he’s doing with that is building an army of rich protectors. That is The Wall that Trump is actually building.

In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country... America's economy is booming like never before.

So said President Donald J. Trump in front of the United Nations General Assembly back in September of this year. His claim was greeted by laughter. I was reminded of the time a man threw his shoes at Dubya. I wished that the entire General Assembly had pelted him with their shoes, and rotten tomatoes. The paramedics would have had to quickly sedate him and carry him off with his legs bound and his arms in a straitjacket the way he belongs. We would have never seen him again, although putting an Internet Trump-Cam in his padded cell for 24 hour viewing would be appropriate, especially if the public could buy chances to address him from home through a speaker system in his cell.

Trump has truly "accomplished more than almost any administration." To be fair to Trump, you can take out the almost. The problem is whom has he accomplished it for. Himself and his psychotic hate for mankind? His army of CEOs, bankers and the worst of the 1%? His friends in China? Putin? By the time you read this, the number of Trump days listed on the list of the Top 20 worst single-day stock market drops in history will have grown to a dozen or more. Yes, "the American economy is booming..." It's booming like a 200 megaton A-bomb. Are you tired of all this winning? Well, keep in mind that if a president says something that triggers a market drop once, it might be an accident. Twice may be cause for suspicion, but Trump tweets, says or does something to sabotage the United States economy every day now. Also, keep in mind that he once said a low market isn't the worst thing because it's a great time to buy things below their true value and make a profit later. Now there’s a man with a plan, a sadistic plan that not only makes him rich but hurts as many Americans as possible.

At some point, even the most naive among us should realize (not that they will) that Trump's sinking of the economy can only be deliberate. No one, even a complete idiot, gets it wrong every damn time. If Trump is innocent of deliberately tanking the economy that would require breaking new ground in human behavior. Trump is an extreme sadist. For whatever reasons that goe back to the day he was born, he is out to get all mankind and he has been emboldened by the results of his mayhem so far in life. Media people, bank vermin, his voters, his CEOs, and the rest of the Trump-supporting community may try to tell us that he's just stupid or a buffoon, but he's gotten as far as he has on the strength of being a marketing savant. People who are good at marketing a person's name and brand (including themselves), to the top are just as good at tearing something, anything, down and ripping it to shreds when their insecurities and dellusions rule them. It's still marketing moves. In Trump’s case, it’s the moves of a despot, a perfect storm of betrayal if not outright treason. And, yet, no one in a position of power or authority wants to point it out and call it what it is. They love that status quo.

Trump's shutdown rhetoric, appointment of a FOX "News" bimbo as U.N. ambassador, the removal of Gen. Mattis, the appointment of Betsy DeVos, the Tax Scam, his KKK approach to voting rights, his removal of environmental protections and regulations, his attacking the FED, his raising the stature of Kim Jong-un in the world, his catering to every whim of Putin and attacks on NATO, the mishandling Syria, his war on women, his war on healthcare for veterans and all Americans, his personal use of his charity’s funds even when they are meant to aid children with cancer, his xenophobia, his general virulent racism, shutting down research for a cure for AIDS, Children dying in cages, withdrawing from the Paris agreement on Climate Change... all of these things can only be done with one end result in mind, the tarnishing of America's image so badly that confidence in America and its economy crashes to the ground. Doing one or two of these things can be chalked up to a difference in political thought. All of them? That is being an American-hating, even humanity-hating mental case, and a Manchurian President. Regardless of which it is, and regardless of the fact that he appears to be all three, the result is the same and that result is getting worse by the day as those who could do something about it emulate Nero and fiddle away the country.

Is Gaslighting The Country Into A State Of Dread An "Accomplishment?"

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that registered voters say Kavanaugh’s confirmation makes them more apt to support Democratic rather than Republican candidates by a 6-point margin, 33-27 percent. Overall, confirming Kavanaugh was a net loss for the GOP. And a majority of voters thing Congress should do a real investigation of him next year. Ted Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee was the first to call for such an investigation and now Jerry Nadler, the likely next chairman of the committee, has promised an investigation into sexual misconduct and perjury allegations against Kavanaugh if the Democrats take control of the House in the midterm elections.

Another poll, also released yesterday, this one by Harvard for Politico got into motivation driving voters, more proof that this wave is not a Blue Wave but an anti-Red (or anti-Trump) Wave. "Fear and anger over the GOP’s health policies are driving a majority of Democratic voters to the polls in an effort to flip control of the House and put the brakes on the Trump administration’s agenda... More than half of Democrats likely to vote in House races rank health care as “extremely important” in determining their vote." Republicans are more driven by their own paranoias about terrorism and guns.

“The parties are incredibly polarized in what they are voting on,” said Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor of health policy and political analysis, who designed the poll. “Health care is not really a major issue for Republicans. But it’s an overwhelming issue for Democrats.”

Beyond health care, Democrats list education, the Supreme Court and climate change among their top concerns heading into the November elections.

...More than two-thirds of Republicans say they’re somewhat motivated to vote in November to show support for President Donald Trump. Among Democrats, the president is playing an even bigger role in priming turnout: 72 percent say they’re voting in part to oppose his administration. ...For Democrats, the midterms are about protecting Obamacare and its benefits, and preventing the Trump administration from pursuing its own health care agenda. Republicans, reflecting Trump’s protectionist leanings, care deeply about issues like preserving gun rights and immigration restrictions.

Yesterday New York Magazine carried an essay by Andrew Sullivan on the dangers of Trump's accomplishments. "Trump’s record as a force of destruction is profound," he wrote, "whether it be the sabotage of Obamacare, the devastation of democratic norms, or the rattling of NATO. But as the months tick by, there’s a decent case that Trump’s proactive accomplishments are beginning to add up as well: a huge tax cut, two Supreme Court justices, wholesale deregulation, renegotiation of NAFTA, isolation of Iran, and a broader reboot of bilateral nationalism on the world stage. But I’m not talking merely about policy-- he has also shifted the entire polity more decisively toward the authoritarian style of government. In this respect, yes, the Trump administration has indeed accomplished much more than many of us want to believe."

But there's another essay from yesterday that's a must read, this one by John Harris and Sarah Zimmerman for Politico, Trump May Not Be Crazy, But The Rest Of Us Are Getting There Fast. Sullivan overlooked that accomplishment. "Psychologists' couches are filling up as Americans seek relief from Trump Anxiety Disorder." Her wrote about couples have problems because "the agitated state of American politics was causing strain in their marriage... Trump excites hot feelings in many quarters has cooled them considerably in bedrooms... During normal times, therapists say, their sessions deal with familiar themes: relationships, self-esteem, everyday coping. Current events don’t usually invade. But numerous counselors said Trump and his convulsive effect on America’s national conversation is giving politics a prominence on the psychologist’s couch not seen since the months after 9/11-- another moment in which events were frightening in a way that had widespread emotional consequences."

The American Psychiatric Association in a May survey found that 39 percent of people said their anxiety level had risen over the previous year-- and 56 percent were either “extremely anxious” or “somewhat anxious about “the impact of politics on daily life.” A 2017 study found two-thirds of Americans’ see the nation’s future as a “very or somewhat significant source of stress.”

These findings suggest the political-media community has things backwards when it comes to Trump and mental health.

For two years or more, commentators have been cross-referencing observations of presidential behavior with the official APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s definition of narcissistic personality disorder. Journalists have compared contemporary video of Trump with interviews from the 1980s for signs of possible cognitive decline. And even some people on his own team, according to books and news reports, have been reading up on the process of presidential removal under the 25th Amendment of the Constitution-- fueled by suspicions that the president’s allegedly erratic and undeniably precedent-shattering approach to the Oval Office may prove eventually to be a case of non compos mentis.

A more plausible interpretation, in the view of some psychological experts, is that Trump has been cultivating, adapting and prospering from his distinctive brand of provocation, brinkmanship, and self-drama for the past 72 years. What we’re seeing is merely the president’s own definition of normal. It is only the audience who finds the performance disorienting. In other words: He’s not crazy, but the rest of us are getting there fast.

...A study from the market research firm Galileo also found that, in the first 100 days after Trump’s election, 40 percent of people said they “can no longer have open and honest conversations with some friends or family members.” Nearly a quarter of respondents said their political views have hurt their personal relationships.

“Authority figures represent the parent, [so] President Trump seats in the seat of parent for all Americans,” said Baum-Baicker. “So now, my ‘father figure’ is a bully, is an authoritarian who doesn’t believe in studying and doing homework... [Rather than reassurance] he creates uncertainty.”

Even Trump supporters are not insulated from this modern age of anxiety.

...Nearly every interview with psychologists returned to the theme of “gaslighting”-- the ability of manipulative people to make those around them question their mental grip.

Trump daily goes to war on behalf of his own factual universe, with what conservative commentator George F. Will this week called “breezy indifference to reality.”

Examples include false boasts on the size of his inauguration crowd; his denunciation of unfavorable stories as “fake news”; the assertion that an investigation into his campaign which has already produced multiple criminal convictions is “a hoax.” Some people can’t just roll their eyes at obvious bullshit-- they experience an assault on truth at a more profound psychic level.

“Gaslighting is essentially a tactic used by abusive personalities to make the abused person feel as though they’re not experiencing reality, or that it’s made up or false,” said Dominic Sisti, a behavioral health care expert at the University of Pennsylvania who penned an article with Baum-Baicker on Trump’s effect on stress. “The only reality one can trust is one that is defined by the abuser. Trump does this on a daily basis-- he lies, uses ambiguities, demonizes the press. It’s a macroscopic version of an abusive relationship.”

When people are frightened by erratic behavior and worry what’s coming next in any arena of life, said Panning, that creates an extraordinary amount of anxiety and often a feeling of dread.”

...[T]herapists say today’s political conditions are ripe to send people of all partisan, ideological and cultural stripes to the emotional edge.

“Human beings hate two things,” said Michael Dulchin, a New York psychiatrist who has seen Trump anxiety in his practice. One is “to look to the future and think you don’t have enough energy to succeed and live up to your expectations. The other is to not be able to predict the environment.”

Put these together, he said, and the psychological result is virtually inevitable: “Anxiety and depression.”