Everything Donald Trump is doing and will do makes perfect and sudden sense if you understand one simple fact: For him, it’s all a show.
He views the White House as a sound stage, like the set made to look like a boardroom where he performed for NBC on The Apprentice. He sees the people around him as a supporting cast, who can each be easily and quickly replaced (and often are) if they fail to play their roles the way he thinks will work best for the program.
Partly, this is because this is all he knows how to do. He was a terribly incompetent businessman, pissing away his father’s entire fortune on a series of businesses that he ran into the ground, one after the other:
Trump Steaks, Trump Water, Trump Board Game, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Castle, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, Trump Magazine, Trump Ties, Trump Cologne, Trump Vitamins, Trump Ice, Trump Suits, Trump Homes, Trump Financial, Trump Institute, Trump New Media, Trump Shuttle Airline, Trump Plaza Hotel, Trump University, New Jersey Generals, Tour de Trump, Trump Magazine, etc. Every single one failed, some spectacularly.
The only real success he’s had in his entire life — before entering politics — was the TV program that Mark Burnett carefully staged and choreographed, NBC carried and promoted, and GE invested in by paying for his acting lessons. It succeeded because Donald had no control over it; he just showed up and did what the show’s writers and Burnett told him to do.
Running the White House like a reality show also fits well with his personality and his psychopathology. As a sociopath or psychopath (as psychiatrists Dr. Bandy X. Lee and Dr. Justin Frank both mentioned on my radio program), his brain was already wired to view other people as mere props in the grand play of his life: people with his affliction have little ability to empathize with others or even to recognize other people as fully human.
It’s why he was so absent from parenting his own kids, why he serially cheated on every one of his three wives, why he uses people up and then discards them and has done so his entire life. It’s why he bonded so tightly with fellow psychopath Roy Cohn, who gleefully sent an innocent Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair just for his own entertainment.
It explains why he’d send an innocent man to a horrible prison in El Salvador and then argue that he shouldn’t be brought back to the US; not admitting a mistake is far more important to his narcissism-riddled ego than imagining the terror Armando Garcia, his wife, and his two children (including his nonverbal, autistic son) must be feeling.
Running the White House as a reality show also explains Trump’s “casting” for his cabinet and senior officials. As he’s repeatedly proclaimed, he’s far more interested in their being telegenic and able to perform for the cameras than being competent. He was entranced by “Mad Dog” Mattis, who’s now replaced by the equally colorfully-nicknamed Lt. Gen. John Dan “Razin” Caine.
And his cabinet officers — particularly those who share Trump’s sociopathy — know that their job isn’t to run their agencies competently; it’s far more important that they get in front of cameras as often as possible.
While Biden’s cabinet officers were expected to show up at work every day, keep their staffs and agencies on the straight-and-narrow, and produce results for the American people, Trump only wants public performance and fealty. After all, it’s just a show.
Thus, Kristi Noem travels the country in tight tops or ICE uniforms, pointing big guns and showing off her hair extensions and $60,000 Rolex watch to El Salvadoran prisoners. Bob Kennedy goes to funerals and entertains conspiracy nuts. Pam Bondi appears so often on Fox “News” (with her little gold cross above her cleavage) that that network should pay her a salary. Ditto for Karoline Leavitt.
You could see it all on display at yesterday’s televised cabinet meeting show, as billionaire after billionaire lavished Trump with praise, occasionally having to wipe the slobber from their mouths. Or when, the day before, Trump bragged, “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are!”
This understanding also explains how and why Trump is so dangerous to average Americans and such a threat to world peace.
This man who’s doesn’t appear to maintain a drivers’ license because he’s been chauffeured everywhere since he was a child — who grew up in a 23-room mansion filled with servants, silk, and gilt — has no understanding of the lives and struggles of everyday citizens who must worry about their kids, their homes, and their jobs.
It explains why he’s just fine with billionaire-funded Republican legislators — many among them also sociopaths — gutting Medicaid, defunding public schools, denying the climate crisis, worsening student debt, privatizing Medicare, and refusing to pay for food banks and school lunches.
Not to mention his right-hand-billionaire, Elon Musk, condemning millions of people across the planet to horrible deaths from HIV and TB by destroying USAID while he’s crippling Social Security and firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are now desperately trying to figure out how to pay their mortgages or put their kids through school.
The biggest danger from Trump’s performance-based presidency isn’t the damage he’s doing to Americans, however. It’s his constant craving for the show to be bigger, more spectacular, and have better ratings. He wants adulation and eyeballs, and — like throughout the rest of his life — doesn’t care who it hurts.
For that, he’s climbed up onto the world stage and just these past two weeks has declared a spectacular trade war against the planet’s second-largest economy with the second-largest military (soon to surpass ours).
Fully fifteen percent of China’s GDP is tied up in exports to the United States, and the country was already in a fiscal mess as they’re experiencing the crash of a housing bubble, deflation, and an internal debt crisis. Backing President Xi into a corner as Trump is doing is extraordinarily reckless; Trump, however, correctly believes it’ll increase his ratings and add drama to his show.
It could also, though, easily lead to World War III, and China has a larger army, larger navy, and a nuclear stockpile that could wipe out America a dozen times over. Plus, they’ve developed a tight alliance with Russia; this would be a reprise of the Allies-Axis conflict that was World War II, except this time Russia won’t be on our side and Europe may well try to sit the conflict out.
It’s tempting to want to just sit back and watch the daily drama of the Trump Show, not thinking it will affect us or our families. That, however, would be a huge mistake because no matter how entertaining or shocking it may be, it will eventually come for each and every one of us.
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