Conservative lawyer George Conway questioned Donald Trump's mental health on Thursday following the former president's deluge of social media posts about writer E. Jean Carroll, who previously won a sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against him. "Can anyone explain to me exactly why we’ve never had a serious national discussion about Donald Trump’s mental health?" Conway asked on X, formerly Twitter, in response to a social media post saying the former president had made 47 posts about Carroll by around 9 p.m. eastern Thursday night. "Trump’s criminality, his authoritarianism, and his malignant narcissism and psychopathy inextricably intertwine," Conway wrote.
Trump captioned more than two dozen of the posts with the same message, The Messenger reports. "Except for a Fraudulent Case against me, I had no idea who E. Jean Carroll was," the text read. "She called her African American Husband an 'ape,' and named her Cat 'Vagina.' Look at her Tweets, Stories, and the CNN Interview about her. The Judge on the Case is another Highly Partisan Clinton-Appointed Friend. He should have recused himself long ago!" In those posts, Trump added different screenshots of Carroll's social media posts or videos intended to undermine her credibility.
Trump's Truth Social spree came a day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected his bid to delay the trial of a second defamation lawsuit Carroll brought against him, which is slated to begin in two weeks. Conway participated in a conversation about Trump's mental health in 2020, informally, and without any professional expertise, diagnosing Trump with narcissistic personality disorder. Allen Frances, a psychiatrist who helped create the 1978 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, disputed that notion. "Confusing Trump’s behavior with mental illness unfairly stigmatizes those who are truly mentally ill, underestimates his considerable cunning, and misdirects our efforts at future harm reduction," Frances wrote in 2017.
