Nothing Donald said during the campaign--from his disparagement of Hillary Clinton, arguably the most qualified presidential candidate ever in this country, as a 'nasty woman'; to his mocking of Serge Kovaleski, a disabled New York Times reporter--deviated from my expectation of him. In fact, I was reminded of every family meal I had ever attended during which Donald had talked about all women as ugly, fat slobs or the men, usually more accomplished or powerful, he called losers, while my grandfather and Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert all laughed and joined in. That kind of casual dehumanization of people was commonplace at the Trump table. What did surprise me was that he kept getting away with it. Then he received the nomination. The things I thought would disqualify him seemed only to strengthen his base.
Does Donald have other symptoms we are unaware of? A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is also considered sociopathy but can also refer to criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others. Donald may also meet the criteria for dependent personality disorder, the hallmark of which include an inability to make decisions or take personal responsibility, discomfort with being alone, and going to excess lengths to get support from others.
Mary [Donald Trump's mother] had been the youngest of ten in 1912 in the Outer Hebrides, located 40 miles off the coast of Scotland. Mary, one of six daughters, was encouraged to journey to America, where the opportunities were greater , and the men more plentiful.
In 1930, in a classic example of mass migration, Mary boarded the RMS Transylvania in order to join two of her sisters who had already settled in the US. Despite her status as a domestic servant, as a white Anglo-Saxon, Mary would have been allowed into the country even under her son's new draconian immigration laws introduced nearly 90 years later. She turned 18 the day before her arrival in New York and met Fred not long after. Fred and Mary were married in 1936.
Cohn recommended that Trump Management file a countersuit against the Justice Dept. for $100 million over what he alleged were the government's false and misleading statements about his client. The maneuver was simultaneously absurd, flashy, and effective--at least in the terms of publicity it garnered; it was the first time that Donald, at 27, had landed on a newspapers' front page. And although the countersuit would be tossed out of court, Trump Management settled the case. There was no admission of wrongdoing, but they did have to change their rental practices to avoid discrimination. Even so, Cohn and Donald considered it a win because of all the press coverage.
Donald was successful because he was a success. That was a premise that ignored one fundamental reality: he did not and could not achieve what he was being credited with. Despite that, his ego, now unleashed, continually had to be fed, not just by his family, but by all who encountered it. New York's elite would never accept him for anything but the court jester from Queens, but they also validated his pretensions and grandiose self-image by inviting him to their parties. The more New Yorkers wanted spectacle, the more willing the media were to provide it.
Every time you hear Donald talking about how something is the greatest, the best, the biggest, the most tremendous, you have to remember that the man speaking is still, in essential ways, the same little boy who is desperately worried that he, like his older brother, is inadequate and that he, too will be destroyed for his inadequacy. At a very deep level, his bragging, and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at an audience of one: his long dead father.
Despite the fluke that was his electoral advantage and, a victory that was at best suspect and at worst illegitimate, he never had his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist; his bluster and shamefulness just happened to resonate with certain segments of the population. If what he was doing during the 2016 election hadn't worked, he would've kept doing it anyways, because lying, playing to the lowest common denominator, cheating, and sowing division are all he does. He is as incapable of adjusting to changing circumstances as he is of becoming "presidential". He did tap into a certain bigotry and inchoate rage, which he's always been good at doing.
Donald didn't drag his feet in December 2019, in January, in February, in March because of his narcissism; he did it because of his fear of appearing weak or failing to project the message that everything was "great", "beautiful", and "perfect." The irony is that his failure to face the truth has inevitability led to massive failure anyway. In this case, the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be lost, and the economy of the richest country in history may be destroyed. Donald will acknowledge none of this, moving the goal posts to hide the evidence and convincing himself in the process that he's done a better job than anybody else could have if only a few hundred thousand die instead of two million.
Donald's initial response to COVID-19 underscores his need to minimize negativity at all cost. Fear--the equivalent of weakness in our family--is as unacceptable to him now as it was when he was three years old. When Donald is in the most trouble, superlatives are no longer enough; both the situation and the reactions to it must be unique, even if absurd or nonsensical. On his watch, "Nobody could have predicted" a pandemic that his own Department of Health and Human Services was running simulations for just a few months before COVID-19 struck in Washington State. Why does he do this? Fear.
Most of those paths would have required no effort on his part. All he would have had to do was make a couple of phone calls, give a speech or two, then delegate everything else.
Why did it take so long for Donald to act? In part, because like my grandfather, he has no imagination. The pandemic didn't have to immediately do with him, and managing the crisis in every moment doesn't help him promote his preferred narrative that no one has ever done a better job than he has.
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The above quotations are from Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump Ph.D. Click here for other excerpts from Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump Ph.D. Click here for other excerpts by Donald Trump. Click here for a profile of Donald Trump.
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