Sunday marked six months to the day since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, but the epidemic of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” shows no signs of abating.

To the contrary, this pernicious affliction, which has ravaged the mental health of hundreds of thousands on the Left, appears to be worsening with each new public policy pronouncement of the Trump administration—most recently, the defunding of PBS and NPR.

Still, no one has yet suggested “stopping the spread” of Trump Derangement Syndrome—TDS, for short—through mandatory masking or 6 feet of social distancing.

That would seem to be advisable, given the monthly nationwide outbreak of “No Kings,” “50505,” and “Good Trouble” anti-Trump rallies.

These astroturf (i.e., not grassroots) uprisings are superspreaders for the TDS virus, intended for transmission to otherwise normal, mentally stable individuals.

There’s no known treatment, much less a cure, for this contagion.

Short of that, Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, has introduced the Trump Derangement Syndrome Research Act of 2025.

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

The legislation would direct the National Institutes of Health to study what Davidson calls “the psychological and social roots of what is known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, a phenomenon marked by extreme negative reactions to President Donald J. Trump.”

“TDS has divided families, the country, and led to nationwide violence—including two assassination attempts on President Trump. The TDS Research Act would require the NIH to study this toxic state of mind, so we can understand the root cause and identify solutions,” Davidson said.

“By leveraging NIH’s existing programs at the National Institute of Mental Health,” he said, his bill would:

  • Investigate TDS’ origins and contributing factors, including the media’s role in amplifying the spread of TDS.
  • Analyze its long-term impacts on individuals, communities, and public discourse.
  • Explore interventions to mitigate extreme behaviors, informing strategies for a healthier public square.

Davidson also should call on the American Psychiatric Association to add a chapter on TDS to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

To raise public awareness of a disease and the search for a cure, it’s not uncommon to feature a “poster child.” Who better for that than “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau?

Garry Trudeau (via Garry Trudeau)

As I have extensively chronicled, Trudeau for years has suffered from Stage 4, apparently incurable, TDS:

Since Trump’s return to office on Jan. 20, Trudeau’s poison pen has continued to regularly attack Trump in the Sunday-only comic strip.

Trudeau’s TDS must have been in brief remission this past Sunday because “Doonesbury” made no mention of the president. But on July 13, it depicted a White House news conference at which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump was charging millions of dollars in bribes for “tariff carve-outs” and presidential pardons.

Trudeau may yet come to regret those four-Pinocchio falsehoods, given how litigious Trump can be when maligned by the lamestream media. (You could ask George Stephanopoulos, “60 Minutes,” and now, The Wall Street Journal.)

Two weeks before, on June 29, “Doonesbury” ridiculed what Trudeau called Department of Government Efficiency “zombies” who “move fast, without thought, swarming the zone, breaking and infecting everything they touch.” On May 25, Trump himself was depicted as having been sent to the same El Salvadoran supermax prison as the so-called Maryland dad and was referred to as a “convicted felon” and “sex offender.”

Given Trudeau’s severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, he should be required to mask up when he’s feted by journalism’s Poynter Institute on Nov. 15 at its 50th anniversary Bowtie Ball in Tampa, Florida. The “Doonesbury” cartoonist will be presented with—wait for it—a Distinguished Service to Journalism Award.

Poynter cites Trudeau’s “incisive commentary on the cultural issues of the last half-century” (all of it far left) while euphemistically adding: “He also chronicled the life and times of Donald Trump, both before and after his elections as president.”

Just as an aside, TDS has historical precursors. With the possible exception of Gerald Ford, every Republican president dating back to Richard Nixon has been portrayed by the far left as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or as a “Nazi.”

But it was the now-deceased syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist by training, who in 2003 coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” He described it as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush.”

As for Trump Derangement Syndrome, Krauthammer characterized it as an “inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and … signs of psychic pathology.”

So, TDS is not a new disease, but today’s strain is far more virulent and violent than anything that has gone before it.

One can only imagine what the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Davidson’s Trump Derangement Syndrome Research Act of 2025 will be like.

As with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing July 17 on Trump’s nomination of Emil Bove to a seat on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, committee Democrats will likely storm out in a huff—in the process exhibiting symptoms of TDS themselves.  

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