He seethed
President Donald Trump was furious after reports last year said he and his family hid in the White House bunker during the George Floyd protests, and he said whoever leaked that information should be executed, according to a new book by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender.
Executed, sure, why not.
In “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” Bender wrote that Trump seethed about the bunker story during a meeting with military and law-enforcement officials and West Wing advisors, according to CNN, which published excerpts from the book on Tuesday.
According to CNN, Bender wrote that the president “boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it.”
“It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president,” the book continued, according to CNN. “‘Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump yelled. ‘They should be executed!'”
The people who fought their way into the Capitol and went looking for Nancy Pelosi in hopes of killing her, on the other hand – they should get medals, right?
Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, tried to calm the president down, while other aides avoided making eye contact with him, the book said, according to CNN. In the following days, it said, Trump became “obsessed” with discovering who had leaked the story, and those who had witnessed his reaction saw it “as a sign of a president in panic.”
Well, it was a sign of a worthless empty husk of a human trying to get people killed.
What a weird way to describe the problem. If DJT was upset at the story because he and Brave Brave Brave Brave Sir Robin were not hiding in the bunker, he’d be screaming about “who put out the ‘fake news.'” But that’s not why he’s fuming. He wants to know who LEAKED the story, thereby tacitly admitting that the story is true.
I don’t think that The Man has been happy for a minute in his life, not even with minions eating up very word he says. So, it pleases me to no end that he was so upset by something that he was “seething.” Very, very unhappy.
Yes. That is good.
@2 I don’t believe it. He’s an abusive bully, a liar, and an idiot. It’s all part of his clown act. Look at him out there peddling his bullshit to anyone who will still listen. Angry maybe, having a tantrum maybe, but unhappy or miserable? No way. He’s entirely too stupid and lacking in basic human decency to understand such things.
He’s in his element, getting attention, feeding his ego, and happy as a pig in shit.
I’m with Michael H on this. Trump strikes me as someone who never really experiences any substantial happiness. His ego is insatiable, and his insecurities too great, to permit any but the most transitory of pleasures.
Even his election win in 2016 didn’t really bring him any happiness, because he was immediately outraged that he wasn’t suddenly treated with respect and worship.
Screechy @5 I agree that his happiness has to be fleeting, but feeding his enormous ego provides him with as much happiness as a humourless person like him could muster. I don’t think his ire is unhappiness though, it only provides him an opportunity to regroup and make other people suffer, it’s anger and vindictiveness. But this is what makes him happy, only when it’s at someone else’s expense. But for someone like that to be truly unhappy or miserable, they would have to have a measure of humility that he utterly lacks. I don’t buy it.
Yes, and he was furious and seething that the election had been rigged against him — even though he won.
GW @7, Except he didn’t really win in 2016. The popular vote went decidedly to Hillary. He seemed to be angry at that, but gloated at his electoral college win anyway, and went on to abuse her in the media. Then he lost both the popular vote and the electoral vote in 2020, and has yet to admit his loss, and has abused Biden, the media, the election process, and yes, the entire American public in the wake of it. He’s a stupid asshole, and he deserves to be unhappy, but he’s not. I won’t believe that until he goes away permanently and leaves us all in peace. Ambition and self promotion don’t necessarily mean he’s fending off unhappiness, and anger isn’t unhappiness. I’ll believe he’s unhappy when he starts doing things unhappy people do, like jumping off a tall building or something, but what he’s doing now doesn’t point to that at all. It points to a stupid, lying, egotistical asshole. He probably jokes around the dinner table, of course at other people’s expense, of how important he is. That’s not misery.
“He probably jokes around the dinner table, of course at other people’s expense, of how important he is. That’s not misery.”
It’s not proof of misery, but it’s at least as consistent with misery as it is with happiness, in my opinion.
I’ve found that truly happy people have a certain peacefulness about them. They’re secure in their own skin. Conversely, people who are constantly showing off their status — whether by insulting others, or bragging about their own importance and/or wealth — always come across to me as unhappy.
Perhaps that’s wishful thinking on my part, and I can’t prove objectively that I’m right about this, but I’m pretty confident in that view.
I think Trump is happy in the moment when he’s doing a “rally” and people are screaming their devotion at him. I think that’s his happy place. I think it’s probably his only one, which makes him a very unhappy camper, because you can’t spend 16 hours a day doing a rally with people screaming their devotion at you.
I think there’s something to it, but I also think Trump (for one) derives happiness from insulting people and bragging. It doesn’t seem like happiness to more or less normal people, because why would that make anyone happy?, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make Trump and people like Trump happy. I would hate to stab an animal but some people love torturing animals and people.
Screechy @10, Yes of course I can’t prove it either way, and yeah, he’s not obviously happy, for he is humourless and angry, but I really don’t see any unhappiness because his lack of resignation or withdrawal doesn’t indicate such a thing.
Ophelia @9 I do agree with this point, but I really think that when he is not doing his ‘happy stuff’ that he is not necessarily unhappy, he could be neutral and plotting his next opportunity to feed his self indulgent ego at other people’s expense, which might be in anticipation of some future happy place. There are no reports of him wallowing in misery and retreating in dejection, only reports of his anger. I don’t think he’s a happy person by any measure, but by the same token I don’t think he’s unhappy either. Classic sociopathy might be a more reasonable take, extreme anger, lack of compassion, lack of awareness to how he affects others, and not caring about anyone but himself.
I would be pleased to hear that he’s unhappy, remourseful, humbled, or regretful of his nasty treatment of others, and that he has become unhappy or despondent. From all I have seen of him over the years, it’s simply not who he is. Anytime there has been occasion for these things to come to light, and they have not, he has doubled down on being an abusive bully, and continues to parade his clown act to whatever self satisfying effect he can.
Like I said, he’d have to shoot himself in the head for me to truly believe that he is unhappy in the least.
To be clear, I don’t think Trump is remorseful, humbled, regretful of his nasty treatment of others, or despondent. I think his unhappiness takes the form of constant resentment that he doesn’t get the respect he thinks he deserves from the people he really wants it from, along with a sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t deserve it after all — a suspicion that he promptly pushes down with rage.
Screechy @13, That’s plausible, but let me put it this way; we have all known people who were truly unhappy or miserable in their lives, not saying permanently, but maybe grief stricken, or deeply depressed, or simply unhappy due to no fault of their own. How do people feel towards someone like this? I personally feel sorry for them, and a feeling that I want to help in some way for them to not feel so badly, and some amount of caring about their plight and thinking that, if not for circumstance, that could be me. A sense of empathy of compassion toward someone feeling that way is how most well adjusted people react to someone who is unhappy or in misery. I don’t feel this way toward Donnie Dipshit, and this gives me the gut feeling (nevermind psychoanalytical conclusions), that he is not really unhappy at all. He is pathetic, no doubt, but I have never found him pitiable. His abusive bullying of anyone who doesn’t kiss his ass contributed largely to this, and the fact that he is of (in my estimation) less than average intelligence is no excuse. Mine is not a scientific analysis by any means, but I really don’t think he’s unhappy or miserable in the least. Just look at his latest rally, tell me if you feel sorry for him in all his arrogance, and then tell me how miserable he really is. He’s just not, and he makes no apologies for anything, and he’s humourless and repulsive. If the only way he has to avoid unhappiness is to carry on in the fashion that he has in the last forty or fifty years, then he’s doing it wrong. I don’t feel sorry for the stupid shit, and all he has for us is contempt, so there you have it.
People like him should just shut the fuck up and go play golf until they melt into the Florida sand. IMHO :P
Ah, see, again we have a fundamental disagreement about what kinds of unhappiness exist and how we should react to them.
I think Trump deserves his unhappiness, and I feel no empathy towards him, and no guilt for not having empathy towards him. I don’t think he’s unhappy in the sense of being some sad little boy who sits alone late at night listening to sad music and wishing someone would love him. I think he’s unhappy in the sense of being a twisted shell of a human who mostly just feels rage and WANT WANT WANT that he can never satisfy — but that he tries to fill with cruelty and domination. I don’t think there’s any moral obligation to feel sorry for someone like that.
Can twi and Screechy perhaps both be partly right?
I think I’m probably wrong because I’m going by observation of public behavior. I don’t know him.
Ophelia
So the people saying that Trump is the Son of God are going by the fact that he has the same traits as his putative celestial father? Sounds reasonable. Forget that happy-clappy Jesus stuff; as the previously incarnated Son of God he was obviously the disliked, unwanted, abused twin of God’s favourite.
Indeed! After all, the Biblical God is portrayed as an omni-malevolent monster and chemically pure of any redeeming traits what so ever too…
I’m basing my opinion on public appearances and articles written by those who know him, and also I am projecting my own definitions of misery and happiness on him so I can only imagine that he is miserable. And that makes me happy.
And samesies to Melania, but I don’t care, do you?
twiliter — obviously, I’m going off just public behavior, too. I don’t think this is a question of either of us being “wrong,” we’re just putting different labels on what I think are mostly the same observations and inferences. (Which a surprising number of discussions turn into at some point!)
Yep Screechy, it’s all good. I don’t think my armchair psychology is equal to the task of noodling out what exactly’s wrong with his stupid ass, but whatever it is I don’t like it, or him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯