What do you get for a man who has everything? President-elect Donald Trump has got money, fame, and the keys to the White House. He has a loving wife, a beautiful home, and at 70 years old still sort of has all his own hair.
What do you get a man like that?
How about treatment for his narcissistic personality disorder?
Because his money was given to him by his daddy and he keeps losing it. The fame he so desperately craves has mostly brought him the adoration of hate mail-loving xenophobic rubes and swivel-eyed conspiracy theorists. His loving wife has yet to learn the importance of blinking and his homes are all decorated in a style that could politely be described as early-Gaddafi.
Or is that late-Hussein?
Remote Parole Freak
To be fair, nobody should be diagnosed at a distance, not even Trump. There’s good precedent for that.
During the 1964 presidential race between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson over 1,100 psychiatrists were asked to evaluate Goldwater’s mental state. Most were none too kind and the American Psychiatric Association later warned its members against diagnosing public figures. Today it’s still referred to as the Goldwater Rule.
Perhaps he does suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. Because in a matter of weeks, the entire Federal government is going to start dumping some seriously grown up shit in his lap.
So, it doesn’t matter why he acts the way he does. It doesn’t matter why he feels the need to hog the spotlight, brag about his wealth, obsess over the size of his hands, or even let people know how fuckable he thinks his daughter is. What matters is that he stops behaving like a man entranced by a picture of himself after he’s hit the beautification filter on Snapchat for the first time. He needs to change.
And he’s not gonna.
All He Wants For Christmas Is Trump
Trump’s intervention to stop jobs at a plant in Indiana going to Mexico was exactly the kind of thing he said he was going to do as President. It was great PR to be sure. He waded in, offered the plant $7,000,000 in tax breaks and incentives and just like that 1,100 people got to be as tired of winning as Trump warned them they would be.
That it set a precedent for the worst kind of corporate blackmail was lost in the euphoria of the moment. Indeed, even as he folded before the altar of corporate greed like a biplane in a hurricane, Reuters was reporting that in Indiana alone, at least 3,660 other jobs were being sent overseas.
The attention grabbing headline, the bold claims. The net loss. That’s quintessential Trump.
Still, the whole thing presented him with an opportunity to revel in the virtuosity of the moment. Not that he was going to let the triumph of hardworking Indiana plant workers get in the way of what for him was a deeply personal victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHBgb9DhYh4
Skip to 8:10 to listen to Trump’s unfettered self-congratulation.
Red Hat Moments
As Trump took to the stage, he withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket and placed it on the podium. Judging from the speech that followed the only word written upon it was Trump:
“Mike has been such a wise decision for me. When people were saying, ‘I don’t know. How good is he at decision-making?’ they’d always say, ‘Yeah, but he picked Mike Pence. That’s a good decision.’ And everybody loves Mike. He’s become something very special.”
And then proceeded to perform the kind of self-congratulatory back slapping that hunchback movies are made of. He praised the scale of his victory, how great it was to win, casually mentioned again that he won big and noted how much he loved a shirt — that presumably had his name on it– someone in the crowd was wearing.
The gloating was all too much for some.
The ‘This CNN’T Be Happening’ Effect
For CNN contributor Jeffry Toobin, it was the moment he realized that Donald Trump was never going to transform into a presidential figure, was never going to settle into the role as convention would dictate. He said:
“I mean, come on. He’s 70 years old! He just was elected president of the United States. He is who he is. He’s not going to change.”
Toobin added:
“To see an inaugural address or State of the Union address in that style. But you know what? That’s what we’re going to get, because that’s who he is and that’s who won the election, and people who don’t like it are going to have to deal with it.”
Toobin has a point. Trump’s inaugural address is going to going to be one for the history books no question about that.
Of course, someone will have to write ‘WTF’ in the margins a lot, which will be a first sure.
But perhaps, a welcome one.
