Hate Trump all you want — sticking a disease label on him is gross wishful thinking

Over the closing stretch of the midterm campaign, President Donald Trump, who is 80, launched a 32-day blitz and at one point was scheduled for rallies in seven states in seven days. Whatever one thinks of what he says on those stages, the schedule itself is a data point. It sits awkwardly beside a story many Americans have been told for a decade: that he is mentally unbalanced, and lately that he is too frail to last.Let me say plainly what this essay is not. It is not an endorsement of Trump, his policies or his politics, and readers who oppose him will find no argument here asking them to stop. My quarrel is with a habit of mind: deciding what we wish were true about a person we dislike, then announcing it as fact. Whether it is done for political gain or simply because it feels good, it is poor science and poor ethics, and it would be just as wrong aimed at anyone else. I spent my career in medical diagnostics, where a product either passed quality control or failed it. Opinions about a batch counted for nothing; measurements counted for everything. When a colleague and I redesigned a process that lifted a product’s pass rate from 40% to 100%, nobody asked how we felt about the old method. They asked for the numbers. That discipline is what this question needs.A prediction that failed In 2017, 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, warning of dangers up to nuclear annihilation. None had examined him. A prediction is worth something because it can fail, and this one has had nearly six years of Trump in the White House, nuclear codes in hand, to come true. The catastrophe never arrived. Many Americans regard the war with Iran as a grave mistake. That is an argument about policy, and policy is a different thing from pathology.When a hypothesis keeps failing its tests, a scientist revises it. Here the claim simply changed shape, from “unstable” in the first term to “declining” in the second, and now to whispers that he may not survive his term. In a laboratory, we would call that moving the goalposts.What the evidence shows At his May 2026 Walter Reed exam, his physician reported a perfect 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and judged him fully fit for the office. His disclosed ailments, such as chronic venous insufficiency, are common past 70. Within weeks, he held a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing and flew straight to the Group of Seven from his 80th birthday celebration. As for the survival rumors, the Social Security life table gives an average 80-year-old man about an 87% chance of living to the end of this term.The other side Critics have their exhibits: a statement from 36 physicians entered into the Congressional Record, a clip of him with eyes closed at the July Fourth fireworks, polls in which most Americans doubted his mental fitness. A clip is an anecdote, though, and a poll measures perception. Doctors who never examined the patient are offering opinions. None of it is a measurement.A habit without a party No side owns this habit. In 1964, 1,189 psychiatrists declared Barry Goldwater unfit, which is why psychiatry later adopted the Goldwater rule against diagnosis from a distance. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump and his allies questioned Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s health and stamina on similarly thin grounds. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.Cart before the horse Too many commentators begin with the verdict and then hunt for clips to support it. That is putting the cart before the horse, and in my field it would get a paper rejected. The diagnosis came before the examination.OPINION: TUCKER CARLSON WAS MY FAVORITE ANCHOR. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?The cost reaches beyond one politician. Calling an opponent “mentally sick” as an insult stigmatizes millions of Americans who live with real mental illness, and crying wolf about a leader’s health leaves the public deaf when a genuine concern arises.Oppose Trump with every argument you have. Disliking him is fair game. Sticking a disease label on him, or on anyone, without evidence is not. Judge health by evidence, and leave wishful thinking out of it.Meda Parameswara Reddy is director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking. A former research and development executive in medical diagnostics with 30 U.S. patents and research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, he has written nearly 100 articles on economics, science, politics, health, and philosophy for RealClearMarkets, RealClearScience, RealClearDefense, the Washington Examiner, SpaceNews, the Fulcrum, the Humanist, and American Thinker. He serves on the editorial board of South Asia Monitor and hosts its show, SAM Dialogues with Dr. M. P. Reddy.