Donald Trump just confessed
Donald Trump screwed up and admitted that he lost the election. In a video of Trump at one of his Florida golf clubs, Trump is announced by one of his golfing buddies as, “First on the tee, the 45th president of the United States.” Trump replied with the closest he ever gets to a quip: “The 45th and 47th.” The only way that could turn out to be true would be if Trump ran again in 2024 and won, and the only way that could happen is if Trump really did lose in 2020.
Of course it’s not much of a confession, but it still showcases just how often liars stumble. If true, the claim that Trump never lost the election would imply that he’s technically still the 45th president, and that his term of office technically runs out on 20 January 2025.
Now that Joe Biden has been President for more than a year that narrative is appearing less and less attractive to Trump and his adherents. After all, in the Trump fantasyland Biden is eating up Trump’s term of office at an alarming rate. Very soon there will be nothing left of it.
The only time in American history when one president had two nonconsecutive terms was when Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President. That extraordinary exception explains why Joe Biden is the 45th man to occupy the office instead of the 46th, a point of common confusion among political observers.
Whatever Trump meant by his quip, I do not think he was whistling past the graveyard. Trump doesn’t seem to understand just how much legal peril he is in. That’s a common enough hazard of narcissists, as anyone who has any experience with narcissists will tell you. It’s very possible that Trump could be in prison by 2024. We can only hope.
Trump’s apparent ignorance of his danger from criminal indictment is probably real. The first gullible fool to believe any narcissist’s lies is usually the narcissist himself. That infection appears to extend to Trump Junior, who continues to caustically and merrily tweet away as if he hasn’t a care in the world.
The only one in the Trumpland gene pool who appears to have sufficient brain wattage to be scared is Ivanka Trump. She has known since Election Day that she is in one hell of a mess. Her bizarre husband Jared seems to know it too. They are both behaving with the caution, fear and circumspection appropriate to people fully conscious of the danger they are in.
But back to Trump’s quote. The main headline is, of course, that Trump said what he said because he intends to run again in 2024. So the question must be, does he really believe he will be in a position to run? Yes, I think he believes that, and I think he believes that because he’s sufficiently narcissistic and sufficiently stupid to think that his current legal troubles don’t stack up to much. I can’t imagine how any rational person would not be worried, but then I never said Donald Trump was rational.
There are eight million stories in the naked city of narcissistic delusion. This has been one of them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.