Could Donald Trump be on the autism spectrum?

Post Reply New Topic

(stolen from the "Pumpkin Person" IQ Blog)

At first glance the idea of Trump being on the autistic spectrum is prima facie absurd. For autistics have impaired social cognition and Trump is one of the most accomplished politicians of our time (despite no political experience, he defeated a platoon of Republicans and the Clinton machine to become President of the United States).
But then Lion of the Blogosphere claimed autism might be in Trump’s family. Well that’s strange I thought. We’d expect a nerdy billionaire like Bill Gates to have an autistic relative, not an alpha-male one like Trump.
In science, it’s such novel and unexpected facts, when fully explored that lead to new understanding. The new understanding might be that autism has nothing to with nerdiness as Lion also had once noted:

I am rejecting an idea I previously had, and which seems common on the internet, that nerdiness is a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, or that all nerds have that syndrome. The reason why there is a lot of overlap between nerds and Aspies is because they are both social outcasts, and as social outcasts they both fail to learn the correct behaviors of the popular kids, but the reasons for why they become social outcasts differ. Boys who have a combination of high neuroticism, introversion, small/weak/bad athletic skills, and ugly appearance, are at risk for being excluded from the popular kids groups, and thus become nerds. Unlike Aspies who are often completely antisocial and become interested in weird things like train schedules, nerdy boys are social with other nerds and they have shared nerdy interests like science-fiction television shows and video games. To further confuse things, Aspies often fall into their orbit because the nerdy clique is more welcoming of a weird Aspie than the popular kids clique. And nerds can appear to be anti-social because they are often shy, but it’s not the same cause as Aspie anti-socialness.

Instead of being nerds, Lion noted that autistics lack mimicking instincts.:

Humans are born with a natural instinct to copy the behavior of other humans, and to seek approval of people with higher status in the social group. For people born with autism, this instinct is missing or lacking. For this reason, true autistics fail to learn how to speak because as I’ve previously pointed out, languages are learned by mimicking rather than by reasoning, and learning by mimicking doesn’t happen when a child is born without the instinct to copy his parents.
Partial autistics, in other words those who have Asperger’s Syndrome, do enough mimicking to learn how to talk, but they don’t acquire the fully expressive language abilities of normal children, and they also don’t acquire the correct social behaviors, facial expressions, etc, because those are also learned by mimicking. Lacking the natural copycat instincts of normal children, they usually become social outcasts because they fail to copy the behaviors of the other children and become part of the group. They also tend to pick up odd interests because they lack the copycat instinct of normal children who choose their interests based on what other children like, or what their parents convince them to like.

Aha I thought! This perfectly explains Trump. He lacks the mimicking instincts to copy the virtue signaling of other elites and thus speaks freely about banning Muslims and other immigrants and brags openly about his wealth. His ridiculous hair, trophy wife, orange spray tan, gold plated decorating, and KFC eating shows he lacks the instinct to copy other members of his social class and thus relates better to working class whites than he does other billionares.
As Lion noted, full autistics are so lacking in mimicking that they never learn to speak. Partial autistics (i.e. aspies) do enough mimicking to speak (often at advanced level), but not enough to be political. Perhaps Trump is a partial aspie, so he does enough mimicking to be political, but not enough to fit in with the fine-dining high social class in-which he was born. By failing to mimic the class in-which he was born, the white working class worship him as the one billionaire who is one of them and who will fight for working class interests. By behaving the way most working class whites would if they had billions of dollars (gold plated home, trophy wife) Trump becomes a God-like figure in their eyes...

One of Donald Trump's uncles was an MIT Professor, his father was a single-minded businessman with zero social skills...and much as I hate to add this, think of Barron

I think it's possible that a lot of NTs can display partial autistic traits...like if you think of it as a spectrum, they won't actually be on the spectrum (won't get a diagnosis), but are mainly NTs or hybrid neurodiverse/NTs. I definitely see Trump as less on the spectrum than e.g. myself, but maybe more than some other people I know. Then again, is it possible that many celebrities can seem more autistic, precisely because they're so elevated from the rest of society, and thus really have no clue about what it's like to be an ordinary person? I could see that being a kind of autism in and of itself. Also considering his background, being born into wealth and so forth, he's less likely to mimic others because he sees himself as better than they are...

Most likely Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This is one of the personality disorders that are not co-morbid with ASD.

Last edited by Jiheisho on 10 Sep 2020, 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Also possibly antisocial personality disorder...?

From ICD-10
"It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:
Callous unconcern for the feelings of others;
Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations;
Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them;
Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence;
Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment;
Marked readiness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society."

Well he's got more than 3...he's got all of them.

I highly doubt it. A large part of how he got where he is was based off of his ability to lie and manipulate people, and to present himself as being more capable than he was. Most people who are truly on the spectrum do not have that capability. His MIT professor uncle I don’t know about, but both Trump and his father seem to show traits that are more in line with Narcissistic Personality Disorder than ASD. This is well outlined in his niece’s book.

Toxic Narcissism

No. I will just go along with what his niece says who is a psychologist.

Last edited by Feyokien on 10 Sep 2020, 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.: Profanity

Lion on the Blogosphere? not a reliable source to say the least.

Lion is dead wrong about aspies being antisocial. Being antisocial does not equate to having poor social skills. Aspies probably often shy away from socializing out of fear more failure. Not the same. Lion loses credibility right there.

The Donald understood the motivations of voters in 2016 better than practically all the experts. That is pretty good people reading skills to me.

What about Barron? A few very late night videos when he was 10 where he was fidgety makes him autistic? It made him a 10-year-old way past his bedtime with strange people and blinding lights shining in his eyes.

!	Feyokien wrote:
	Reminder: this is GAD, not PPR. Disagreeing is fine, but offensive language and over the top responses will be moderated.

Gawd, no!
Seriously, no.

I doubt it. He's just a rich man who wants power. It doesn't mean he's autistic.

You can develop or be born with any personality disorder + ASD

I am guessing Narcissistic Personality disorder.

The information on co-morbid conditions suggests that not all personality disorders are co-morbid with ASD. Or if they are, they are rare. I am not aware of a case of ASD + NPD in any study I have read. This would make sense as NPD requires the abilities that are deficit in ASD.