Make no mistake; Donald Trump doesn’t want to be president. Can you imagine him going to work at 9 a.m. every day for four years, doing boring, backstage stuff he doesn’t enjoy that someone else put on his calendar?
Nope. He wants the thrill of the chase and the constant attention he gets so easily by saying outrageous things and then being free to blame the media or rigged elections to explain why he lost. He’s going to lose because that’s exactly what he wants. If he wants to win, he’s smart enough to do things that will make that more likely.
It’s no news that Donald Trump suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The interesting thing about Trump is that his narcissism feeds on a vulnerability so extreme that it’s emotionally dangerous for him to even entertain the possibility that he might have done something wrong. For example, if I make a mistake and someone says to me, “Hey, Vicki, you made a mistake!”, I can look at what I did and say, “Oh, you’re right, that was a mistake,” and still feel like I fundamentally love myself and that I’m okay even though I made a mistake.
For a very fragile narcissist, being told that he made a mistake makes him feel so bad that he can’t even think about the fact that he might have made a mistake. Allowing himself to admit that he made a mistake opens the door to feeling worthless because it conflicts with his belief that he is the smartest person in the world and that he alone can save America. He has to deny the mistake and project it onto someone else, using the first response that comes to mind, even if it’s ridiculous.
It’s fascinating to watch. Trump loves the spotlight and the fact that he’s the main story on the news every night. If he tones down his rhetoric in a genuine attempt to win an election, he’ll lose the thing he craves, which is attention. He doesn’t care about the content of that attention; he just needs it.
Trump and I went to the same elementary school, Kew Forest in Queens. I don’t remember him—he was years ahead of me. From what has been written about his relationship with his father, it’s safe to assume that the elder Trump had a major influence on his life and that he needed to prove to his father that he was worthy, perhaps even perfect. There likely was little tolerance for failure.
Euripides or Aristophanes, where are you when we need you? This archetypal story about a man’s desperate need to prop up an intensely fragile identity is the stuff of both Greek tragedy and comedy, combined. It’s riveting watching. If only it weren’t so destructive.
