Trump theorists on both sides are grasping for something to either throw into the hopper of the “bad Trump” garbage truck or are performing the Clintonian “it depends on what ‘is’ is” dance of definition.

Coming up with “bad Trump” material is a lot easier than defining him into innocence. That’s because he has bad lingo and there are more writers, networks and publications searching for new and improved ways to knock him than there are on the other side. The pro-Trump definers are using moronic legal theories to pat blondie Trump on the pompadour as the victim of “deep state” treason.

Last weekend, PoliticoMagazine published a piece called “Inside the Mind of Donald Trump” by  Yale School of Medicine assistant clinical professor of law and psychiatry Bandy X. Lee and “Art of the Deal” co-author (with Trump) Tony Schwartz. In this piece, the authors excoriate Trump as having “paranoia, grandiosity, lack of empathy and pathological [sic] deceit” even though they have never examined him. But, they say, while you can’t diagnose Trump from a distance, you can knock him as a sicko because “[t]here is a difference between diagnosing a specific disorder and analyzing the meaning of the qualities Trump exhibits…” Huh? They are exhibiting dumb thinking in my humble opinion. Talk about “lack of empathy!”

The Lee and Schwartz article says the authors are entitled to go down the path of psychobabble because of their “unique vantage points,” since the doc has treated more than 1,000 “individuals with characteristics similar to Trump” [bad hair?] and the author spent eighteen months shadowing Trump as the co-author of their book.

While their non-diagnosis diagnosis is silly, it actually has a nefarious side effect. It wrongly medicalizes Trump’s behavior. People are responsible for their behavior. If Trump’s behavior is dangerous to the nation and to the world, what difference does it make if he is allegedly nuts? He is responsible. It is absurdly docile for his opponents to turn to psychology to “explain” him when, by their lights, he is just bad and dead wrong and they should just go ahead and say so.

The other side is not any better and maybe worse.

Last week we were treated to the Trumpista’s legal conclusion that “even if” Trump colluded (“no collusion!!!”) with the Russians to seek to pollute the 2016 election, that’s not a crime.

The inventors of this harebrained theory have never heard of synonyms. In fact to collude is to conspire. If Trump conspired with the Russians to attack the 2016 election, he has committed several crimes and ought to be held responsible for them. If the special counsel’s proof shows that to be the case but he believes that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, let him name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator and let the Constitution and the voters take care of the rest.

A weary citizenry  should be wary of unfounded argumentation on either side that is actually psychobabble or fatuous legal theorization.