Trump Derangement Syndrome has been widely chronicled and discussed. Mainstream media and the Left have labeled it simply a phrase or meme used by the Right to parody or disparage people who oppose Donald J. Trump. The Right, at times, uses the phrase lightly. However, the intense desire to oppose Trump has a virulent strain that has led to a significant loss of rational thought, resulting in flawed decisions on a societal and global scale.  

But can TDS warp people's thinking and actions so severely that it results in actual harm? Has TDS led to actual death, destruction, and civil chaos? The answer is emphatically yes. 

While there are many examples of the dangerous results of TDS, including anti-Trump BLM riots, corruption of revered institutions like the FBI and DOJ, and, more currently, the exposure of the syndrome in the Federal Judiciary, there are a couple of cases that demonstrate its destructive capacity: The exuberant, deadly support for the Ukraine conflict and the destructively wrong responses to Covid.

Debate rages about the fault and cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Many see it simply as Russian aggression. Historians know it was born of decades of complex geopolitical factors. But regardless of cause and fault, a few facts are clear. It is a fact that US support for Ukraine with weapons and money has been robust. Another indisputable fact is that the fighting is brutal and barbaric on the scale of the trenches of WWI. At a minimum, such support for industrial warfare ought to have been based solely on causes. But it was not. The US involvement in the war in Ukraine was driven by hatred of Donald Trump.

US support could be based on supporting Eastern European sovereignty or fighting Russian expansionism. However, these obvious factors do not explain the blank checks the old guard of the Republican party was happy to write for Volodymyr Zelensky or the incredibly anti-Vladimir Putin sentiment of Democrat leadership and voters. Until Ukraine, American-made weaponry was never used against Russia proper, even during the height of the Cold War, as mutual nuclear annihilation felt imminent for both parties. It didn't happen.

The closest US resources came to kinetic conflict with the Russians was modest, veiled support of the anti-Soviet "freedom fighters" of Afghanistan, the Mujahideen. And the unprecedented anti-Russian warfare cannot be explained by any special US historical connection to Ukraine. Historically, US support for Ukraine has been limited and confused, at best. And this US support, indeed, isn't based upon American citizens' knowledge of the complex geopolitical history of Ukraine. Before the invasion, most Americans had little or no knowledge of Ukraine on a historical or current basis, or even where the country is on a map. We don't know how to spell its capital city, "Kyiv," correctly.

So what does explain the cult-like support on the American (and global) Left for a barbaric conflict against a nuclear power? Trump Derangement Syndrome. Stated, "Trump is bad for democracy, and support of Ukraine is good for democracy."

The message was clear: Trump is bad for democracy. War in Ukraine is good for democracy. This assertion became a unified drumbeat from the Left and many establishment Republicans. It was repeated relentlessly on the floor of the House and Senate, at press conferences, and, of course, in mainstream media.

Putting Trump's purported "badness" aside, this strain of TDS also blinded supporters to the fact that it was not a simple, bloodless conflict. It closed their eyes to the fact that the conflict was being conducted in savage, primitive, and inhumane forms. Often, at stalemate conditions eerily similar to the immovable lines that WWI manifested. With an estimated 200,000 dead, 1.2 million other casualties, and millions displaced, it is the deadliest European conflict since WWII. To summarize, TDS has resulted in and possibly accelerated death and destruction because it blinded its victims to rational, logical thought. To the TDS-infected, it doesn't matter how many innocents have to die—they are blinded by their dangerous, one-sided conviction that "Orange man is bad."

Public health decision-making must be run through the TDS filter. Weingarten's anti-Trump tirade and The Guardian's doomsday prophesy were perpetually expressed by those on the Left and by mainstream media, with the battlelines being over "lockdowns." 

Mainstream media consistently framed lockdowns as a rational response to (in their view) Trump's erratic leadership, with editorials praising governors like New York's Cuomo for defying Trump's re-open calls—transparent anti-Trump decision-making. On March 24, 2020, The Washington Post Editorial Board stated, "Now, as Mr. Trump dangerously flirts with a premature end to social distancing, the country may have to rely on governors such as Mr. Cuomo to keep its virus response on a rational and evidence-informed track."

No matter that, by the end of 2020, New York led the nation with 38,000 Covid-related deaths. A New York Times opinion piece by Paul Krugman stated, "Trump('s)….basic position is that thousands of Americans must die for the Dow." These critiques conflated anti-Trump sentiment with false science-backed measures to protect public health. They positioned lockdown support as a direct counter to Trump's leadership. Democratic governors' lockdown orders were three times longer than Republican ones. That was not science at work.

TDS wasn't just affecting politics and policy. It also corrupted scientists regarding lockdowns, origin, and health. In a March 11, 2024, essay in City Journal, Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard epidemiologist and co-author of The Great Barrington Declaration, wrote: "It was clear from early 2020 that lockdowns would be futile for controlling the pandemic. It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage, not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. We will be dealing with the harm done for decades."

In Chris Serre's March 10, 2025, Boston Globe article "The Lockdowns Were Never Really Effective: New Research Shows COVID Stay-at-Home Orders Did More Harm Than Good," Serres reports on emerging research showing lockdowns caused significant harm—economic collapse, mental health crises, and delayed medical care—while offering limited benefits in curbing COVID spread.

How dangerous was this TDS-influenced reliance on flawed science and bad origins intel? Did it result in significant additional deaths and permanent developmental and mental damage, especially in children? An alarming fact is that many blue states with severe lockdown stances, such as New Jersey, California, New York, Massachusetts, and New Mexico, had the highest death rates. Red states with fewer restrictions saw the lowest. As Serre stated, "New research paints a troubling picture of the immense collateral damage inflicted by them.

The measures increased poverty and wealth disparities, spurred a dramatic rise in adolescent anxiety and depression, contributed to a surge in fatal drug overdoses, and led to devastating learning losses in schoolchildren." And evidence points to actual increased mortality. A November 2022 British Medical Journal article by Elisabeth Mahase reports a British Heart Foundation analysis finding over 30,000 excess deaths involving coronary heart disease in England from March 2020 to August 2022 attributed to healthcare disruptions (all disruptions). TDS goes international among European Union leaders, as did the near-universal support for Ukraine against Russia

And maybe the most extraordinary TDS victim of all? The truth behind its origins. Even The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece titled "We Were Badly Misled About Covid" (March 16, 2025), noting how the initial dismissal of the lab leak as a conspiracy led to serious reconsideration. US, British, and German intelligence are now rushing to disclose that they have suspected the lab leak theory since the beginning. Because of TDS, the truth was suppressed, and we may never know the answers to something that may have ended humanity.

The strange case of Trump Derangement Syndrome is almost mathematical in its simplicity, or at least logical in its inverse correlation. I cannot imagine another public figure with such instant polarity in modern memory. Wars are now fought, pandemics are planned, and millions are dying so that those infected with a bizarre mind virus can woke-signal their self-asserted moral, ethical, and sociopolitical superiority to anything associated with Donald J. Trump's policies and person.