What’s Next for Donald J. Trump?
Republicans are gonna need another golden calf
Editorial rights purchased from iStock. Photo by Jun.
Rudy Giuliani had an appointment to testify before the January 6 Committee. He did not keep that appointment. Giuliani said he would appear, but at the last minute, he made a demand the committee would not agree to: He wanted permission to record his deposition before the committee. The committee refused, so Giuliani bailed.
Everybody’s been wondering why Giuliani would make such a request in the first place. I can think of one reason: Trump told him to record it. Trump probably thinks a tape of Giuliani’s deposition will give him a jump on preparing his own defense. He is hoping that if he can create an unfair advantage for himself, he can talk his way out of the mess he created.
Or maybe he thinks it will help him figure out who he needs to buy off or threaten to make it all go away.
A written transcript of Giuliani’s testimony will not help Trump. His performances with the teleprompter point to low reading comprehension. A transcript would do him no good. Trump needs to see, or in this case, hear the movie version. That puts Trump in his element, where he’s the star of a reality TV show.
Trump’s a narcissist — we can’t forget that.
But Trump is not just plagued with narcissistic personality disorder; he is a malignant narcissist. Here is a quote from a book by John Gartner, Ph.D., a former psychology professor at Johns Hopkins. (The book is Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump.)
“Trump suffers from malignant narcissism, a diagnosis far more toxic and dangerous than mere narcissistic personality disorder because it combines narcissism with three other severely pathological components: paranoia, sociopathy, and sadism. When combined, this perfect storm of psychopathology defines the ‘quintessence of evil,’ according to Fromm, the closest thing psychiatry has to describing a true human monster.”
There are plenty of people who will disagree with this diagnosis. Some say without a personal interview and first-hand knowledge, it’s not appropriate to provide a diagnosis. In most cases, I think that’s true. But we have seen more of Trump than most therapists ever see of their patients in a one-hour session a few times a week — so this needs to be taken into account.
We’ve also seen the paranoia, sociopathy, and sadism that Trump is plagued with. Interestingly, the argument for failing to support the malignant narcissism diagnosis comes from Allen Frances. Frances wrote the definitions for personality disorders in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
This is the publication that doctors the world over rely upon when making a diagnosis. According to Frances, Trump doesn’t meet the criteria for a mental illness because Trump “does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose a mental disorder.” — Psychology Today
I would suggest that this opinion fails to take into account the distress and impairment Trump regularly exhibited to all the people in his cabinet who witnessed his extreme irrational and erratic behavior, all of which have been well-documented in recently published books by John Bolton, William Barr, and Mark Esper.
So, while his opinion might be based on a thorough understanding of personality disorders, it is not based on a thorough understanding of Donald J. Trump. And I would bet money that his diagnosis would be different today than it was when he originally stated his opinion three years ago.
I studied abnormal psychology in college. What I learned is that personality disorders develop when people get wounded at a very young age, and a part of them gets stuck in that stage of development. In Trump’s case, his family was dysfunctional to a degree that’s hard to imagine if you've grown up in a healthy environment.
Trump’s niece, Mary, in her book, Too Much and Never Enough, provides vivid details of Trump’s early family life and his own father’s pathological and sociopathic tendencies. From my perspective, Trump didn’t have a chance — his life circumstances were stacked against him. Yes, he had money — but nothing else — no love, no guidance, no compassion.
Trump was rewarded for pretending everything was fine even as everything was falling apart. It’s very sad, and people like him deserve our sympathy — but they don’t deserve to be president.
One of the least endearing qualities of a personality disorder is that it’s permanent. In other words, therapy won’t help Trump. Therapy requires the patient to understand that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Generally, people with personality disorders are not capable of comprehending that something is wrong with them.
I think we’re about to find out what happens when Trump is extremely unhappy. This could be new, uncharted territory. Trump will not get a preview of what to expect from the Jan 6 Committee as he may have hoped, and Giuliani may yet be slapped with contempt of Congress.
Giuliani’s law license has already been suspended, and now he could lose it permanently. He may also be looking at jail time. Not that Trump cares about Giuliani — he doesn’t.
This attempt by Giuliani to make a deal with the committee is what you might call a lose-lose scenario — a standard in Trump World. How could it be otherwise? Trump’s efforts are devoted to one thing: pumping up his fragile ego. His solution in every situation is to find ways to make himself look better.
This is not a recipe for successful governing. It’s not a recipe for success in anything. Hence, his repeated business failures and multiple bankruptcies. His book The Art of the Deal would be more aptly named The Art of the Steal.
How does Trump get away with this? It’s simple. People lie for him.
In a recently released audio tape, Trump prompts Lindsey Graham into delivering an embarrassing validation of Trump’s golfing prowess, which is both inappropriate given the context of the conversation and probably untrue.
According to Mary Trump, her uncle has been cheating at golf since he was in his teens. Back then, he prompted his friends to validate his superior skills and would bully them until they complied. Just like Lindsey Graham, they lied to make Trump happy.
Unfortunately for Trump, the Jan 6 Committee is not a golf game. He won’t be able to get other people to cover for him this time. If Trump testifies under oath, his behavior may go beyond the usual unacceptable, ignorant antics we’ve all seen before.
He could start speaking gibberish or become almost catatonic. I’ve witnessed both in people with personality disorders when they come up against reality in an irrefutable way.
When a person’s identity is based on lies, forcing them to face those lies is as emotionally traumatizing as fighting for their lives — because, from their perspective, that’s exactly what they are doing.
Giuliani knows that his fate hangs in the balance. If Trump has a public meltdown, there goes the 2024 presidency and Giuliani’s only chance at a pardon. So, Giuliani is highly motivated to save Trump and to keep Trump on his side. But this is not as easy as it might seem.
This relationship between Giuliani and Trump is the Trump World equivalent of a symbiotic relationship. It satisfies the people making the deal, but it requires Trump to contribute something in the future — something that may never materialize.
This is how Trump does politics. It’s how Trump does everything. Unfortunately, it has also become the working template of the new Republican Party.
It’s how the sausage is made now — if you are a Republican. Trump has institutionalized the quid pro quo: You scratch Trump’s back; he’ll pretend to scratch yours.
Never mind that all this incessant backscratching generates nothing of immediate value to anyone other than Trump. Trump lives in the moment. If he makes a promise today and it’s not in his interests to fulfill it tomorrow, he won’t. Equally irrelevant is the illegality (not to mention immorality) of Trump’s deals. All that matters is that Trump is happy.
How long will it take Republican leadership to face what they’ve done by supporting Donald Trump?
How long before they realize that sooner or later, as David Jolly predicted several years ago, Trump will be on one side, and everybody else will be on the other?
What happens then?