Psychiatrist Dr. Keith Albow on President Trump’s Sanity: Trump is Stone Cold Sane-Authorship Confirmed!
Summary of eRumor:
A letter by Dr. Keith Albow said President Trump is “stone cold sane” and that “there’s a genius in the Oval Office” in response to critics who have questioned the president’s mental fitness.
The Truth:
Dr. Keith Albow wrote a column in February 2017 that concluded President Trump is “stone cold sane” and that, based on his business empire, Trump is a genius.
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, and in the opening months of Trump’s presidency, however, Dr. Keith Albow has not made his support for Trump — and his opposition to Hillary Clinton — a secret. It should also be noted that Albow has routinely disclosed that he’s never personally evaluated the president in an in-person examination.
The commentary written by Dr. Keith Albow on President appeared at Fox News in February 2017 under the headline, “Relax, Trump is Stone Cold Sane.” After acknowledging that he has never personally examined Trump, Albow wrote:
Donald Trump is stone cold sane.
When a man acquires billions of dollars through complex real estate transactions, invests in many countries, goes on to phenomenal success in television and turns his name into a worldwide brand, it is very unlikely that he is mentally unstable.
When the same man obviously enjoys the love and respect of his children and his wife, who seem to rely on him for support and guidance, it is extraordinarily unlikely that he is mentally unstable.
When the same man walks into the political arena and deftly defeats 16 Republican opponents and then the Democratic heir-apparent to a two-term president’s administration, the odds of that man being mentally unstable become vanishingly thin.
Dr. Keith Albow also pointed the stock market rally after President Trump’s inauguration as evidence that the president was sane because the market doesn’t like uncertainty and investors “can take the measure of a man pretty darn well.” Albow’s column was widely circulated via forwarded emails and in social media posts. Many times the commentary was described as a letter by Dr. Keith Albow on Trump, but it was actually an op-ed published by Fox News.
Dr. Keith Albow also spoke about President Trump’s mental stability during the campaign. Albow said on Fox News, via a transcript and video posted at the left-wing media watchdog Media Matters for America website, that Trump had demonstrated great restraint when the size of his hands became a topic of discussion during a debate:
“Well, sure, it’s something that every candidate probably does, probably should do. Psychology’s a very powerful tool to unearth what does get under people’s skin, if you will. But listen, with Donald Trump, kind of what you see is what you get. I have to say, when the small hands issue was raised during the debate, this supposedly got the Clinton campaign very excited. They thought, “Man, he’s off his game.” He wasn’t off his game at all. Freud would have been standing up, like applauding, standing ovation. To be able to address such an intensely personal issue and say, “Listen, there’s no problem in that department,” to me that showed an incredible degree of psychological strength. With Donald Trump, he may err, he may make errors in saying what he thinks, telling us the truth, saying things that are gritty, perhaps attacking with some unkind words, which he could scale back, but you know what, his demons are on his sleeve. There’s not a lot of psychoanalysis that hasn’t been presented already.”
In addition to supporting Trump, Dr. Keith Albow also openly opposed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy during the 2016 election. In September 2016, Albow penned another column that appeared at Fox News under the headline, “Dr. Keith Ablow: Hillary Clinton — Inside the mind of a shameless liar.” In the column, Albow concludes:
Hillary Clinton is the one whose psychological make up would seem to leave her vulnerable. Her penchant for lying is a problem, but the really big problem is that she seems unable to determine when her lies are registering with audiences as clearly untrue. At the core, people who lie transparently do so because they lack empathy—the ability to intuit and vicariously experience what others are thinking and feeling. Locked behind walls of narcissism or arrogance or imperiousness, consumed with the pursuit of power, they can’t tell convincing lies because they can’t truly resonate with how their words and mannerisms are being received.
It’s important to note that in publicly rendering his opinion on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton without an in-person examination, Albow defied the American Psychology Association’s so-called “Goldwater Rule,” which prohibits mental health professionals from rendering opinions on subjects without first examining them. Just as in the case of rumors that President Trump is suffering from dementia (a claim we found to unproven), any claims made by mental health professionals about politicians without first examining them should be considered their personal, not medical, opinion.