I have a mental illness. As multiple MAGA supporters have pointed out to me, I suffer from a crippling case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), and I need help. 

I suppose my rehabilitation needs to start by accepting that Donald J. Trump is an exceptional human being and a great American hero who has always had this country’s integrity and its best interests in his mind, starting with his unselfish sacrifice to fight in the Vietnam War. Sadly, some bone spurs prevented him from humping on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but it didn’t stop him from deriding those who actually fought in the war, such as the late-Senator John McCain.

Damn. My TDS seems to be kicking in already. That video footage of Trump calling McCain a “loser” and “not a hero”—after Senator McCain spent five and a half years in a POW camp and refused his release before his fellow soldiers—it never really happened. I’m deranged.    

Donald J. Trump was the real hero of the Vietnam War, right?

And I need to understand that Donald Trump was not a failed businessman whose companies collapsed in Atlantic City in the late-80s. He was never an opportunist looking to make a buck on any hustle that could net a buck, and he never stiffed the contractors and the blue-collar workers that he promised to pay. That was never the case. 

Again, my TDS is messing with my sense of reality.

And Trump was never a registered Democrat, either. That must also be my TDS acting up. Man, these goddamn facts are confusing me. And January 6 was a peaceful protest by some really great American patriots, right? No police officers were killed on that day. Those narratives were created by CNN, right?

My TDS has baffled me to the point where I don’t understand anything correctly. So these pictures of President Trump and the pedofile sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are not real. And, if I’m getting this straight, Epstein—who was being held for multiple felonies involving rape, child abuse and sex traffiking—didn’t know Trump, and Trump never knew him. 

Nor did Trump know Epstein’s cohort Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a prison sentence for trafficking…nobody? Right?

And Trump never bragged about groping women. Right? And he is not a convicted felon, nor has he ever been accused of criminal sexual activities, and he was never found liable by a jury of his peers for sexual abuse. That’s my TDS flaring up.  As Orwell wrote: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

I’m clearly terrible at following directions.

While I have my doubts that any list of Epstein’s clients actually exist—a man as amoral and repugnant as Jeffrey Epstein likely didn’t have a written list of his clients—my TDS keeps telling me that a man photographed with Epstein many, many times may have known him. And if that person has nothing to hide, they probably wouldn’t have a problem with airing out the guilty parties that likely include Crooked Hillary’s husband. 

But these questions must all be a result of my TDS. What the hell am I thinking? His MAGA supporters must have so much the evidence to refute my libelous sources. Why am I even bothering to source everything in this column? It’s all false.  

If only I could kick aside these pesky facts, these things that I observe with my own senses and label as objective reality; if only I could find a way to morally ignore the atrocities that this administration continues to exact on other human beings—including the creation of concentration camps in own country; if only I could find a way to push aside the fact that our president is a felon and a sexual predator, and that a party of sycophants and white nationalists have pledged their allegiance to him over the Constitution, I could probably find a way to cure my TDS.

Or maybe I need a pill that will prevent me from seeing reality. I guess all of us—more than 50 percent of the country—need to have our heads examined. We’re just not seeing things correctly. It’s TDS that is keeping American from being great. It’s TDS that is holding us back.  

Reach Nate Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com.