Kevin McDermott, editorial writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, asked this question. And he wondered what kind of people cheer for him and believe his steady stream of boasts, cruel taunts, and lies.

Open it for the many links.

He writes:

It was always just a matter of time before Donald Trump stood in front of an audience of his bellowing fans and mocked an alleged sexual assault survivor.

It’s always been the kind of man he is.

“ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ‘Upstairs? Downstairs? Where was it?’ ” Trump said to a Mississippi crowd last week, mimicking Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, sexually assaulted her while they were in high school.

“ ‘I don’t know. But I had one beer,’ ” said Trump, to howls. “ ‘That’s the only thing I remember.’ ”

In fact, sexual assault allegations are often full of holes, the details driven out by trauma. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened 36 years ago.

What’s certain is that a private citizen telling her story shouldn’t have to endure being called a liar by the president of the United States. Even Kavanaugh’s more serious defenders understood that baseline of decency.

But Trump didn’t. Because there is something wrong with this man.

Not that it was surprising. This is a man who has denigrated the service of a tortured prisoner of war; whose grotesque, flailing impersonation of a disabled reporter would have been shocking coming from a sixth-grader; who trashed the parents of a dead young soldier; mocked the physical appearance of a female primary opponent; and put Nazis and anti-Nazis on the same moral plane after Charlottesville.

Normal adults don’t act like this. Not even politicians.

Especially not politicians, in fact. Not because they’re more conscience-driven than the rest of us (please) but because they usually know enough to tamp down whatever antisocial impulses they might have.

But not Trump. It’s striking how often, how predictably, his outbursts of cruelty hurt him politically. You could almost hear foreheads banging on West Wing desks when Trump launched his attack on Ford, complicating the 11th-hour push to confirm Kavanaugh.

Some believe Trump’s cruelty is a tool he wields for political ends. I don’t. It’s been too counterproductive for him. I think the truth is worse: Once he’s in front of some hooting red-hatted crowd, he just can’t help himself. His cruelty isn’t calculated; it’s a genuine, uncontrollable impulse that he’ll embrace even to his own detriment. Because there’s something wrong with the man.

Trump likes to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s mantra was, “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.” Trump is malice personified, a man who cheats his own charities. Lincoln annoyed his generals with frequent clemency for condemned deserters. Trump has proposed killing drug dealers not accused of murder, teenagers falsely accused of rape and the children of terrorists.

This man isn’t in the same ethical galaxy as Lincoln. There is something wrong with this man.

It’s not just that Trump is less empathetic than a normal president. He’s less empathetic than a normal person. Think about the people in your life: How many of them delight in deliberate cruelty toward those less powerful? How many of them love punching down?

Is our president a clinical sociopath? That legitimate question has prompted serious debate among psychiatrists. But early on, many assumed the presidency would normalize him. No one imagined the extent to which he would abnormalize the presidency.

Trump’s psychosis has become policy. His administration has admitted (between denials) that the large-scale separation of migrant families at the Texas border was meant as a deterrent — that they psychologically tortured children, including babies, as a warning to other migrants to stay away. Trump himself has said (in contradiction to administration legal arguments) that the travel ban on certain Middle Eastern countries was about cracking down on an entire religion. Ponder the last century’s global precedent for that.

The State Department last week announced it is yanking the visas of unmarried same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, based on the Supreme Court’s 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage. Get married if you want to stay here together, says the administration — knowing full well that’s illegal in some of their home countries. There are reasonable legal arguments for the new State Department policy, but given the demonstrated impulses of this administration, would anyone really discount the possibility that the primary motivation here is cruelty?

Trump is just one man, but what’s wrong with him isn’t confined to him. He has unleashed and empowered others like himself. His mockery of Ford in Mississippi last week drew shouts of “Lock her up!” — the phrase Trump’s fans usually reserve for the woman who beat him by 2.8 million votes in 2016.

So now they’re moving on to alleged sexual assault victims. Who’s next, I wonder?

That’s the scariest part. After Trump is gone from the scene, the loyalists he has energized will still be here. And there’s something wrong with these people.

Kevin McDermott is a member of the Post-Dispatch Editorial Board.

Kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com

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