Last night I got a bit tired of hearing all the gee-whiz announcements that Trump used the N word. His niece Mary told that to Rachel Maddow, which was to me the least interesting part of the interview on Maddow’s show last night. Of course he did. The man’s a stone cold racist. Tell us something we don’t know already.
In fact, I don’t recall that Mary T. said anything I didn’t at least suspect, but here is what I found most critical for our understanding of the present moment —
One, according to his neice, back in the day when Trump was allegedly flying high as a big-deal real estate tycoon and casino executive, he didn’t appear to do any actual work. Trump had asked Mary to ghost write a book for him, and she spent several weeks at his office and traveled with him a bit, during which time he told her absolutely nothing useful for his book. He spent his days gossiping on the phone, giving interviews about his social life, and reading newspaper clippings about himself. The people around him were working to keep his businesses going, but Trump appeared to just spend time doing whatever he felt like doing in the moment. In the book, she wrote, “after all of the time I had spent in his office, I still had no idea what he actually did.”
This corroborates my suspicion that one reason Trump hasn’t done, and still isn’t doing, anything to address the pandemic in the U.S. is that he is incapable of disciplining and organizing himself to do anything. He doesn’t know how to do anything. He decides what he wants to happen, and he orders that it be done, but if he had to do anything himself he’d be lost. He’s never actually held a job, remember.
See also “Trump Doesn’t Do Plans” and “The Push to Reopen Schools: Trump in a Microcosm.”
We all know Trump is a liar. But if anything was a revelation, it’s Mary’s description of Trump’s lying as a source of pleasure and as a way to gain power over people. He lies incessantly because he enjoys it and because few people have ever corrected him.
Mary T writes in her book that in the Trump family, lying is a standard coping mechanism. Lying was how they related to each other as children, especially to the sociopathic paterfamilias, Fred Trump Sr. Lying was how they dealt with stressful situations, especially Fred Trump’s wrath. Lying was how they defined themselves. From the book: “For some of the Trump kids, lying was a way of life. … For Donald, lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was.” From an early age, lying was Donald Trump’s primary mode of relating to the world. At this point he’s probably beyond comprehending the difference between lies and the truth. Wrapping himself in lies may be a weird way of protecting, re-affirming, and comforting himself.
Another significant moment in the interview was this:
“I want people to understand what a failure of leadership this is, and the reason he’s failing at it is because he’s incapable of succeeding at it,” Mary Trump said. “It would have required taking responsibility – which would, in his mind, have meant admitting a mistake, which, in his mind, would be admitting weakness, which in my family was essentially punished with the death penalty, symbolic or otherwise. What I think we need to grapple with now is why so many people are continuing to allow this.”
Mary Trump helps us understand why: Faith in these powers of deception were built up over years of wielding them with little consequence, and this became an exercise of power in and of itself, a kind of default setting he can always fall back upon.
It’s also clear in retrospect that when Trump declared in March that “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the epic failure to mobilize testing, it was a seminal moment, a declaration that he would not do this at any point henceforth, no matter what.
Mary Trump helps us understand why: Taking responsibility — undergoing a major course correction — would have constituted an unthinkable admission of failure.
In short, Trump is a walking collection of character and personality flaws, or whatever you want to call ’em — maladjustments, disorders, pathologies. He is incapable of doing anything normal, including normal human relationships. He can’t organize and discipline himself to carry out complex tasks. He doesn’t process information in a normal manner. He is pathologically dishonest. He is incapable of responding normally to basic life challenges, never mind the job he’s got now. And he’s not going to change. If it weren’t for the fact that he was protected by his father and boatloads of money, he wouldn’t have been able to manage an ordinary life or hold any sort of job for very long.
What should alarm us is not so much that Trump is utterly screwed up. It’s that our political system is utterly screwed up. He should never have gotten near a presidential nomination. I believe that in earlier times party leaders would have recognized how unsuitable he was and made sure he was eliminated from the competition, somehow. But that didn’t happen. Once nominated, he shouldn’t have been elected. I blame news media for a lot of that, and the Democratic party also. And once elected, and once it was obvious Trump is incapable of doing the job, he should have been removed from office via a 25th Amendment process. The fact that the system is so broken that we are still stuck with Trump is the real issue here.
I'm shocked! I tell you I am totally shocked to learn that pathological liars tell lies.
Stupid and lazy and incompetent at anything other than lying and seeking self-gratification is a shorter description of this president.
No argument here. Trump has incited so much hatred that his core is welded to him. There is nothing he can do that will pull them away. His quid pro quo with Stone is so clear and obvious that for anyone else, there would have been an immediate impeachment hearing and conviction. But wait. Iran-Contra did not result in that, either. Evidently only Democrats are held responsible.
Trump's laziness seems to confirm something I thought about Trump.
Some people view executives as people who sit around, waiting for problems that need solving, and they solve them, usually by giving orders to underlings. It seemed to me that Trump feels that way. Like, I'll bet he's seething because he thinks all Obama did was give a "go" order to kill Osama bin Ladin, but *he* did the same thing, (albeit to someone far less dangerous, at a time when it was far more stupid to do so), but no one praises *him* like they did Obama, when he did (in his mind) the exact same thing.
At this point, I have no doubt that he thought "all those previous people were stupid, for not having their underlings praise them as the finest thing on earth, or in the heavens" because they missed out on some of the best butt-kissing you can ask for, but *he* wasn't so stupid as to miss out on that opportunity.
I'm not even sure he realizes that Covid-19 is a real, serious threat, that has to be dealt with, and that's why the press is hitting him over it, or thinks he might not get reelected because "some people don't love me, maybe." (Seriously: how could *anyone* be so nasty and divisive, and whine like that?)
But on the plus side, the GOP would never put up with <strike> someone who's such a huge risk to our national security being President,</strike> er,<strike> allow someone to obstruct justice while President,</strike> er, <strike>someone who abuses his power as President,</strike> er, <strike>someone who insists no one has a right to investigate him, ever,</strike> er, someone who drags down their poll numbers.
This sums it up:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdD5QVUUYAAxBM6?format=jpg&name=medium
What should alarm us is not so much that Trump is utterly screwed up. It’s that our political system is utterly screwed up. He should never have gotten near a presidential nomination.
You’re missing the point a bit and Mary T emphasizes this in her interview. It’s less about Trump and more about all the enablers who are lining up behind him. That is why she wrote the book.
Without people who did not want the political system twisted up, and who did not want a Trump, Trump would be a laughable NYC real estate operator, laundering Russian money.
“You’re missing the point a bit and Mary T emphasizes this in her interview. It’s less about Trump and more about all the enablers who are lining up behind him. That is why she wrote the book.” I didn’t miss the point; I just didn’t state the obvious. Political systems don’t corrupt by themselves.
Of course Mary Trump is a liar and a criminal, the first by the powers of projection, and the later because of her breach of a non-disclosure agreement. Such an act is, of course, a graver sin than a priest on a tell all session about juicy confessional secrets. This is my guess as to reality according to Donald. It passes the test of plausible, which is the only test he and his minions require to assert truth. (I am being liberal here and know many of them have totally broken bullshit meters and apply no reality tests at all.) Mary Trump's veracity should be suspect, however, as she is an apple from the same tree.
Let us assume that this is a case of liar vs. liar. With Trump we have over 18,000 lies or distortions as of April 14th of this year according to the WP. His rate of lying has been increasing of late with his current average of 23.8 lies per day, up one lie per day since last year. His lies have been broken down by subject matter and means of dissemination. Both have changed considerably over time, and analysis seems quite revealing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2020/05/05/trump-is-lying-more-than-ever-just-look-at-the-data/#78d66b131e17
With Mary Trump we have little record to go on. She claims training as a clinical psychologist and this fact has not been contested. Her book does trace Donald's problems to his father, which appears radical and contradictory to classical clinical psychology training. The mother, of course, is always the primary suspect in aberrant pathology, and Mary Trump seems to have ignored what would be the "normal" avenue of analysis. Other than that curious notion, we seem to have little evidence that Mary inherited the "lying gene" which she noted as a family characteristic. It would certainly not hurt if she made public her personal tax returns, as this is the place which she reports a family propensity for fiction.
Oh that Rachael is a national treasure. One does need a good portion of her show in ones information stream to maintain proper perspective.
“She claims training as a clinical psychologist and this fact has not been contested.”
She has a PhD in clinical psychology from Adelphi University. What experience she has working as a clinical psychologist I do not know; perhaps not much.
“Her book does trace Donald’s problems to his father, which appears radical and contradictory to classical clinical psychology training. The mother, of course, is always the primary suspect in aberrant pathology, and Mary Trump seems to have ignored what would be the “normal” avenue of analysis.”
That’s less true now than it used to be. FYI I am reading the book; DT’s mother shares the blame.
Well then I am forced to conclude that Mary is more credible than Donald by a landslide.
So is the book a recommended read?
It’s been interesting so far. I’m still in the early part of it.
When I turned on the news early this morning, to my profound sadness, I found out that America lost two great men and leaders in the fight for voting/civil/HUMAN rights – and not just black/brown people, but – for ALL people.
John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian, are gone.
Yet Donald tRUMP and Moscow Mitch live on.
I just can't…
May their souls rest in heavenly peace…
May their legacies be renewed by overcoming the racism of the John Roberts Supreme Court which gutted the Civil Rights Act and by overcoming the refusal of #MoscowMitch refusing to let the new Civil Rights bill be put to a vote which would surely succeed.