Better and better every day
Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker tell us Trump is increasingly isolated and self-willed (as only a narcissist can be).
When President Trump grows frustrated with advisers during meetings, which is not an uncommon occurrence, he sits back in his chair, crosses his arms and scowls. Often he erupts.
He calls his aides “fucking idiots.”
For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him.
It’s weird that – assuming the wealth of reporting that says this is correct – he never pauses to think he might be the one who’s an idiot. Maybe he does and he just doesn’t betray the fact, but then that doesn’t sound like the Trump we see every day, does it – what crosses his mind falls out of his mouth. It appears that he does think everyone else is a fool and he alone is a genius…but how? I mean, when you and I see someone doing a difficult gymnastics move or designing an astonishing bridge, we don’t tell ourselves we could do it better, right? We pay some attention to the world around us and we understand that many people can do things we can’t do, and we thus realize that we’re not sitting alone on some pinnacle of excellence – in short we don’t automatically assume we’re the smartest person in the room. Trump is the opposite of that, yet he’s dumb as a stump. It’s very odd.
At the midpoint of his term, Mr. Trump has grown more sure of his own judgment and more cut off from anyone else’s than at any point since taking office.
While the disasters pile up. How is he growing more sure of his own judgment? What’s the mechanism?
https://mobile.twitter.com/jaynordlinger/status/1076122181153771520
The mechanism? Denial is not just a river in Africa.
His arm crossing is such an obvious ‘tell’, a barrier put up against whoever is in front of him. He did it to Merkel, just before tossing the sweets onto the table, albeit with a smug grin rather than a scowl.
He’s a fucking baby in a old man’s fat-suit.
First, eliminate all outside sources of negative information. Watch mostly Fox News, which praises Dear Leader at every turn.
Second, you weed out any internal sources of negative information. Promote and otherwise reward staff who are “loyal,” defined as praising you and denying any bad results or blaming them on things other than your decisions. Marginalize and ignore any staff that try to do otherwise.
Three, have enough narcissism that you can rationalize the above acts as being wise methods of protecting your brilliance from the haters and nay-sayers rather than an attempt to hide from reality. After all, YOU won the election when EVERYBODY SAID YOU COULDN’T! YOU, glorious YOU!
The Dunning Kruger effect, magnified by clinical narcissism. Reinforce both by doing what Screechy said: remain as far as possible inside an echo chamber.
P.S. Reading this post I flashed on that scene from the Hitler movie that everybody makes memes out of.
To the above I’ll add the fact that Trump’s spiritual belief, such as it is, seems firmly wrapped up in his early admiration for Norman Vincent Peale and the “ power of positive thinking.” The New Thought world view doubles down on belief in the face of criticism: doubt * literally * makes bad things happen. The universe magically grants gut instincts and then magically rewards those who trust their gut instincts. It’s the dark side of “Believe in Yourself.”
And oh — the rallies. Trump thinks his fervent fans are “the people.” The people love him and totally approve of everything he did and does. He’s so much more connected to the people than the so-called “experts.”
This reminds me of a Steven Wright joke:
I was watching the superbowl with my 92 year old grandfather. The team scored a touchdown. They showed the instant replay. He thought they scored another one. I was gonna tell him, but I figured the game HE was watching was better.
Maybe Trump’s watching a better game than the rest of us.
To add to Screechy, to Her Majesty the Queen of Everything, and to Sastra, is the way he credits himself and only himself very loudly and very publically for everybody else’s positive achievements, regardless of the lack of his personal involvement in them, and equally loudly and publically blames anybody and everybody except himself for his own failures.