“Is Donald Trump a TV Addict?” a Politico Magazine headline asked this week, walking readers through a serious attempt at diagnosing the president with a clinical addiction to television.
I’ll agree that Trump’s fixation on television news programs is distracting and occasionally bizarre; I’ll even agree that is warrants our attention. But attempts to land on a clinical diagnosis that could help explain his habits are counterproductive.
The Politico article actually enlisted the services of three different experts in mental health to explore whether Trump is addicted to TV. Here’s a sampling:
[Seth Norrholm, an associate professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine] believes Trump’s current television obsession confirms for Trump his sense of his own importance, while constantly and maddeningly going off Trump’s preferred script. Narcissists often try to avoid reality, Norrholm says, which is generally full of ego injury, and when they can’t protect themselves—as perhaps when they are hate-watching cable news—”they get depression and paranoia.”
Norrholm does not know Donald Trump, neither does David M. Reiss, who told Politico he thinks Trump watches television for “emotional arousal.”
In an April article in the Huffington Post that analyzed whether the president is suffering from dementia, Norrholm himself conceded, “At this point, it is impossible for outside mental health experts to pinpoint a specific diagnosis or to single out a main root cause for the President’s mental lapses…”
Agreed.
“So, does Trump’s television watching rise to the level of addiction?” the Politico report goes on to ask, before determining the time he dedicates to watching television appears to be normal. “The hours he spends are not out of sync with the rest of America. Nielsen says adults on average watch more than four hours a day of television, and people over age 65 watch more than seven.”
Granted, Trump’s the president of the United States and should be focused on issues of greater import than “Morning Joe”. That’s the argument with which Politico could have dealt.
It’s fun and interesting for journalists to explore different questions, but with public faith in the institution at a dangerous low, why continue to provide detractors with the ammunition they need to destroy it?
The point about Trump’s bizarre obsession with television is fair. But it would be taken more seriously if delivered without psychological evaluations generated by people who don’t even know him. Steered by reflexive dislike of Trump, media observers keep taking their coverage just over the line and distracting from otherwise valid points.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
