Donald Trump is ripping up the presidential rulebook and behaving like a “coked-up” partygoer, according to a top neuropsychologist. Ian Robertson, emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin, wrote in The Irish Times that power has made the 78-year-old act like he’s full of drugs on a late-night bender. “What we’re seeing in Trump is the impact of power on the human brain,” Robertson wrote in the op-ed. “It acts like cocaine, and in high doses makes people feel elated, super-confident and aggressive—like coked-up late-night revellers on Dublin’s Dame Street throwing the punches at strangers just because they can.” The neuropsychologist’s comments come as Trump has spoken repeatedly about taking over Gaza and turning it into a real estate hotspot and taunted Denmark with pledges to take over Greenland. Robertson said that power increases testosterone, which in turn boosts dopamine—“just like cocaine.” He added: “This fuels an aggressive, feel-good state of mind, particularly in dominant, amoral personalities such as Trump’s. It also creates a restless, hyperactive state of mind which, when combined with a feeling of omnipotence, fosters the delusions that you can snap your fingers and sort every problem.”
Read it at The Irish Times
