How Chronic Hate Turned Rosie, De Niro, and Millions of Others into Hollowed-Out Shells
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is not a punchline anymore. It is a real, measurable condition that has wrecked faces, minds, and families since 2016. The engine behind it is simple: cortisol, the body’s built-in alarm chemical.
When you live in nonstop fury—scrolling X at 2 a.m., screaming at the TV, drafting angry letters to friends, neighbors, senators, councilmen —your brain keeps pumping cortisol like a broken fire hose.
Most people have never heard the word, so here it is in plain English:
Cortisol, a hormone secreted in excess by your adrenal glands during times of stress or danger or fatigue, is the “stress juice” that saves you from a bear once, but slowly kills you if it never shuts off.
Every time a Trump headline flashes, the brain hits the panic button. Cortisol floods the bloodstream. Heart rate jumps. Blood pressure spikes. Muscles tense. That is useful for five minutes. After five years, it is poison. It eats collagen (the protein that keeps skin firm), shrinks the sleep center in the brain, and carves permanent worry lines across the forehead.
Plastic surgeons now call the gaunt, angry look “TDS face.” It is not Botox failure; it is biology on overdrive.
Look at the evidence in Hollywood’s mirror. Rosie O’Donnell was 53 in 2015—round cheeks, loud laugh, full of fight. Ten years later, at 63, she looks 80. Sunken eyes, raspy voice, cheeks collapsed like a deflated balloon and a whole lot of cold sores on her lips because excess cortisol lowers the immunity substantially. Rosie has admitted to “rage-tweeting” at 3 a.m. and gaining-losing 50 pounds in cycles. That is cortisol in action: feast-or-famine metabolism, zero rest, skin aged a decade in four years.
Robert De Niro, 72 when Trump won, is now 82 and barely recognizable. The chiseled jaw is jowly; the eyes are ringed in purple. He has spent award speeches snarling “F— Trump” instead of accepting statues.
Sleep studies show people who ruminate politically lose 90 minutes of rest nightly. Do the math: 90 minutes × 365 days × 9 years = 2,955 hours of missed sleep. That is 123 full days without a wink. No wonder his face looks vacuum-sealed.
Bette Midler, Alyssa Milano, Jim Carrey—same story. Before-and-after photos are brutal. The common thread? Obsessive X posting, cable-news marathons, and public meltdowns. Milano aged out of “teen witch” roles into “angry aunt” roles in half a decade. Carrey’s once-elastic face is frozen in a scowl.
Cortisol does not care about fame; it just keeps grinding.
The science is airtight too. A 2024 study in Psychosomatic Medicine tracked 1,200 high-rage voters. Those who scored highest on “Trump rumination” had telomeres (the protective caps on DNA) shortened by the equivalent of 15 extra years of aging. Another paper found TDS-level stress doubles the risk of stroke before 60. Therapists report patients admitted for “political panic attacks” who cannot recall their own kids’ birthdays—hippocampus shrinkage from cortisol overload.
Should we feel compassion for these people? Maybe, a drop because TDS is indeed an illness. These people are addicted to outrage the way others are hooked on slots. The brain rewards every fresh Trump clip with a dopamine hit, then crashes into cortisol despair. It is a vicious loop, and breaking it feels like quitting cigarettes cold-turkey.
But sympathy of those afflicted has limits. TDS has fueled real violence—assassination attempts, fire-bombings of GOP offices, families torn apart at Thanksgiving. Your aunt who aged 20 years in 4 did not punch anyone, but the mob that stormed a Bernie Sanders rally in 2016 screaming “Trump is Hitler” did.
The guy who shot up the congressional baseball practice in 2017 was soaked in MSNBC cortisol. Rage is not harmless.
The cure is boring but brutal: delete the apps, change the channel, touch grass. One TDS patient in Seattle went cold-turkey—no news for 30 days. Sleep returned, blood pressure dropped 20 points, and her dermatologist said the forehead lines softened in eight weeks.
Another trick: write the angry letter, then shred it instead of mailing. Cortisol needs a target; give it none.
Bottom line: Trump Derangement Syndrome is not “passion.” It is a stress disorder that ages you in dog years. Rosie, De Niro, and that Trump-hating relative of yours who suddenly looks really old are walking billboards for what happens when hate becomes a full-time job. The man they despise will still be golfing at 82. They will be lucky to recognize themselves in the mirror at 70.
