ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a comparison of Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016; it was Trump who became the gift that kept on giving to the media and psychobiographers alike. Trump provided a new dilemma as the presidential psychobiographer with a strong desire to avoid pathologizing subjects. In the discussion of Trump, two factors were at work, making it more difficult to avoid psychological terminology. First and foremost, psychological terms were becoming so much more commonplace in the vocabulary of ordinary Americans. Second, Trump said so many things and then disclaimed them, sometimes in the same sentence, that it seems strange to be avoiding pathologizing when he’s wildly using projection all over the place. In the White House when Reagan was shot, Vice President George H.W. Bush demonstrated the ability to temporarily take over for President Reagan while convincing everyone of his loyalty to the man who had been his political rival.
