Donald Trump, narcissist
In speaking with Federal prosecutors investigating his notorious father-in-law, it is reported that Jared Kushner assumed that Donald Trump truly believed that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. However preposterous this may seem to most thinking people, it is entirely consistent with my own observation of narcissists. I have a personal history with two narcissists who figured prominently in my life for years at a time, so my experience with them is more than casual.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that the narcissist believes in his or her own lies not as a matter of convenience but as an essential component of their own mental survival. The world the narcissist constructs is one of existential urgency sustained by conviction. They can’t function without it the way the rest of us can’t function without food and air. No amount of evidence will allow a narcissist to admit they were wrong about something they regard as vital to their belief system.
On the rare occasion that a narcissist does admit they are wrong it is almost always about something that they dismiss as unimportant. For instance, a narcissist might readily admit that they know nothing about, say for example, football, because football might be unimportant to them, or just a contemptible waste of time. They will even glory in their ignorance as proof that, first, they only pay attention to important things and, second, it proves they have the “humility” to confess that they don’t know everything.
Donald Trump is different from the narcissists who used to be in my life in one important respect. My two narcissists were avid readers and Trump reads nothing. In fact, Trump doesn’t even pay attention to what others have to say. This makes him very unusual among people, let alone narcissists.
For evidence of this, listen to how he speaks. He almost never employs cliches, and when he does he thinks he invented them. Do you recall when Trump once claimed to have invented the phrase “priming the pump”? He did so in the context of justifying his raising the deficit in the near term via tax cuts for the rich. He did so in the belief such an action will “prime the pump” for future economic growth.
This of course was nothing more than Reaganomics, trickle-down theory warmed over. But Trump claiming authorship of the phrase “prime the pump” was more than just weird, it was downright terrifying. It gave away how completely out of touch with other human beings he is. He didn’t know it was a common phrase because human beings use it all the time and he never listens to human beings.
People who don’t use cliches fall into two kinds. The deeply literate who consciously “avoid cliches like the plague,” as William Safire once so amusingly put it. The other kind exist because they are wholly unacquainted with cliches. This happens to people for whom English may be a second language, or people with a mental impairment. It also, much more rarely, happens with people who take absolutely no interest in what others have to say or write. This happens to narcissists when the narcissist in question is of a truly extraordinary type. Trump is of that extraordinary type.
This is a disturbing trait and makes the narcissist in possession of that trait particularly dangerous. It means that human connections have no meaning to them. It means they have no loyalty at all, not even the fundamental kind of loyalty the rest of us have to close friends and immediate family. It is an unbelievably aberrant, dangerous trait for the president of the United States to have, and we are all incredibly lucky to have survived Trump’s single term of office. It is doubtful that we will survive a second.
Donald Trump is without question the most mentally deranged person to ever occupy the presidency. To find his equivalent one must turn to past monarchies when the mentally imbalanced, congenitally stupid and insane came unavoidably to power by the fait accompli of birthright. For the population of any nation to actually elect such a person in the first place is absurd, and a symptom of a staggering national sickness.
Trump’s dislike of animals completes the picture. He’s a man utterly absent any human warmth or compassion. He is what a growing number of psychologists refer to informally as a malignant narcissist. If you think of the narcissist as someone who might say “everything is all about me,” think of the malignant narcissist as someone who says “everything is all about me and never about you.” The malignant narcissist is indifferent to human suffering. Sometimes he enjoys it.
I am not interested in judging how likely it is that Trump could ever become president again. I am only interested in the fact that if there exists a road to that eventuality we must take every conceivable legal step to prevent it. Enough powerful people want him to win again to make it possible. So we had better make it an absolute priority to make sure that it never happens again.
The first thing you can do is vote Democratic. The second thing you can do is speak out against Trump’s selfishness and criminality, and never let anyone forget about it. Another thing you can do is volunteer for Joe Biden and Democratic candidates running for Congress and the Senate.
Because he’s a narcissist, now that Trump has had a taste of what it’s like to be president of the United States he needs that feeling again. He also believes becoming president again will save him from prosecution. It may be a highly unlikely fantasy, but narcissists can’t separate fantasy from reality. This is another thing that makes him so very dangerous. This is another reason that putting him in prison now is a vital priority. Failure is not an option. 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.