Our president* tweeted and retweeted self-adulatory content 34 times, so far, in one hour.
The narcissistic injury induced by Woodward tapes is severe.
I thought, maybe if Trump could hear what a eulogy for him would sound like, maybe that would give him some insight into himself – so I prepared a modest example for him.
#TrumpEulogy
#FakeFuneral
#FlyWhinyLittleBitchFly
👼
Trump's reaction is not that of a wounded pride that with time will accept loss.
He is psychologically incapable of admitting defeat. When faced with it, his paranoid defenses intensify, removing him further from reality.
He's not just your garden variety conman but...
A narcissist is always the hardest working and least appreciated person in the entire world.
And the first one to tell you about it, time and again. And again. And again.
I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing
@nytimes
about my work....
3 days before the most important election of our lifetime, this is the most salient and still officially unaddressed fact:
Donald Trump is a profoundly psychologically damaged man whose incurable character defect, narcissistic psychopathy, makes him a danger to our survival.
If our current reality was a work of fiction, we would scoff at its grotesque improbability.
Our precarious fate is in the hands of a sadistic madman, and those who could possibly stop him are either helpless or worse, on his side.
A memo to the much coveted future historians:
Everything we're currently experiencing and will continue in the future, incl hundreds of thousands dead and the suffering millions, is a direct result of electing a malignant narcissist to presidency and believing it doesn't matter.
It is important to remember, as difficult as it may be to accept, that the problematic behavior of a narcissistic psychopath in a position of ultimate power will not change for the better, but will most certainly grow worse with time.
Malignantly narcissistic leaders inspire uncritical devotion in their followers who share their delusions of grandeur and victimhood. This creates a mutually reinforced narcissistic trance that allows and excuses any misdeeds and atrocities.
#pathocracy
Fox & Friends preview an interview with Rick Perry, where he says that Trump is "the chosen one" and "sent by God to do great things"
Pete Hegseth: "God has used imperfect people forever," but what Trump "has withstood is unlike what really any other mortal could understand"
Decompensation in malignant narcissists whose fragile self is threatened by reality manifests in, among other symptoms, stratospheric levels of delusional grandiosity.
Even Hannity looks uncomfortable there for a second.
Nora O'Donnell asks Biden about his (speculated on) "dementia."
Why doesn't any interviewer ask Trump about his (glaring) psychopathy?
Asking for a friend.
Once his days in court are over, President Trump should do his part to unite the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go, writes
@KarlRove
No people has found the American lurch toward authoritarianism under Trump more alarming than the Germans. A recent cover of Der Spiegel portrays Trump holding a lighted match with the country ablaze. The headline: “Der Feuerteufel,” or "the Fire Devil.”
...a malignant narcissist who lives in a reality of his own making, entering our shared reality only when it provides him with endless adulation.
When our shared reality becomes injurious to him, he abandons it as easily and permanently as if it was his next ex wife.
In the contest between Trump and reality, Trump always wins, no matter the evidence, as his disordered psyche either rejects unpleasant facts outright (denial) or remakes them into a conspiratorial hoax against him (paranoia) -- to be discredited & rejected.
Either way, he wins.
Narcissistic rage is one of the darkest and deadliest forces known to mankind. Before it erupts, it usually simmers and percolates for a long time, fueled by resentment, envy and entitlement, the latter always aggrieved as the narcissist's need for...
If / when we survive this pandemic, we need to learn one of its most important lessons: that electing psychopaths -- people w/o conscience -- to positions of power has deadly consequences, so it has to be prevented. Our existence depends on it.
That's the book the Trumps are really afraid of as it will expose the intergenerational pathology that has produced the dangerous, conscience-free occupant of the WH
Pundits & co shocked by the Woodward's interviews do not understand Trump's character defect, narcissistic psychopathy.
That may have been excusable in 2016. Now, not so much.
Such is the nature narcissistic psychopathy characterized by emotional stuntedness, lack of conscience, extreme egocentrism, and an insatiable drive for power and adulation. Other people exist only as instruments of need/wish fulfillment, if at all.
Trump never seems to express distress, sadness, or any other emotional reaction to the deaths of 64,000+ people. He never seems to extend any genuine desire to comfort. Other than his family--and himself, of course--I'm not sure he sees others as "real."
Looking @
@realDonaldTrump
Twitter activity this morn.
At some point, we will have to reckon with the narcissistic collusion between our politicians, media, and professional orgs like APA that enabled the normalization of this profoundly disordered individual and his cabal.
We've been telling you for YEARS that as a malignant narcissist he will cause chaos, destruction and death, and usher in a kleptofascist pathocracy in America.
But we were just mental health professionals, right? What do we know...
Trumpists are lauding Trump's dark, divisive Mt Rushmore speech as the best ever & his comeback.
They're energized by its projected hatred & sadistic themes of destruction, scapegoating & punishment.
This is how malignantly narcissistic leaders inflame their base & start wars.
Mary Trump said that Donald has been permanently institutionalized all his life. She meant by it the heavy, ongoing support of his various handlers/sycophants who clean his messes, lie for him, and intimidate his critics, enabling his (disordered) functioning in society.
Lesley Stahl asks Vice President Pence why President Trump ended his interview early.
“President Trump is a man who speaks his mind,” says Vice President Pence.
When this nightmare is over, whenever that happens, I hope the purveyors of this inhumanity are not left in peace to prosper, as it has been our custom with privileged psychopaths in power.
I hope we have the courage to bring them to justice and make them pay for their misdeeds.
He also doesn't have the cognitive and emotional capacity to lead. Intellectually, he is very limited.
He doesn't understand the basics involved in this, or any other situation that goes beyond preening for cameras and adoring crowds.
Trump is genuinely afraid to lead. He can’t bring himself to make robust use of the Defense Production Act, because the buck would stop with him. exactly
“It says a lot about the President and less about the country,” George Conway says on Pres. Trump’s refusal to accept the election results. “It says three things about the President,” Conway says: that he’s delusional, running a scam on the American people and is malevolent.
Yes, we did.
We wrote about it. In 2015 and 2016. We predicted his presidency and its dastardly effects when nobody believed he could be elected.
And we warned about it already then. Nobody wanted to hear it, least of all the press.
For anyone who thinks that by refusing to concede Trump is playing some 10-dimensional chess, calculating his future gains, and positioning himself for this, that, or something else:
He is not.
He sincerely believes he's won.
He will die believing it, no matter the evidence.
If we don't admit that Trump is profoundly psychologically defective, then we normalize his (and not only) lack of conscience, sadism, delusional grandiosity, lies, paranoia, and manipulativeness.
And yes, we will keep lowering the bar, to the ninth circle of hell.
There are now more recorded cases of COVID-19 in the White House than in New Zealand, Taiwan, and Vietnam combined, and they have 124 million people.
Let that sink in.
That said, I want to stress that Trump is done. His temper tantrums will continue, intensely for a while, and he will forever believe that he was cheated out of the presidency, but the reach of his malignancy is curtailed now. No matter his & his sycophants posturing, he is done.
...[
@realDonaldTrump
] will continue spinning the election results as a fraud and conspiracy to oust him, fomenting rage and hate among his followers, and social unrest which will serve as his revenge by proxy.
---
@YourAuntEmma
This is the transcript of the story Trump told about what he saw and thought when he visited Dover Air Force Base as soldiers killed in action were returned in coffins.
He didn't "ruin" anything. By expressing his genuine feelings and thoughts, he achieved his desired result. He is authentic that way. He cannot condemn white supremacists without condemning himself.
“Donald Trump ruined the biggest layup in the history of debates by not condemning white supremacists," Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade said Wednesday.
"He’s gotta clarify that right away."
.
@SenRonJohnson
said Trump “vehemently” denied that he was holding aid to Ukraine during a phone call with him. “That is the piece of the puzzle I’m here to report today.”
#MTPDaily
Mary is of course right. But if we did not know it before, and if we had to wait for her to tell us that, then we are in even bigger trouble than it would appear.
.
@GovChristie
is currently saying that Trump did not understand the power of his own words and did not expect today's events.
This is nuclear grade denial.
@YesWeCan4Us
@gtconway3d
In order to not ever elect someone as deficient as Trump, a mistake human societies make time and again, we must learn to recognize and name this particular deficiency — because it has a name — to better understand the dangers it represents and ways to avoid it.
“In 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. ‘For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. ... The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.’”
Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!
“Donald Trump in defeat, it turns out, is even more whiny, dishonest, and self-absorbed than he was before his decisive loss to Biden a month ago,”
@sbg1
writes.
People who support Trump tend to share his pathology to a significant degree. Their conscience is compromised or absent. This makes easier to excuse his vile deeds.
Let’s face it. Donald Trump is a rough individual. He is vain, insensitive and raw. But he loves America more than any President in my lifetime. He is the last firewall between us and this cesspool called Washington. I’ll take him any day over any of these bums.
#Trump2020
It's early morning and our president's* Twitter activity is already a full-blown Dispatch from the Abyss, offering a glimpse, as always, into malignantly narcissistic symptomatology. Here, solipsism, delusions of grandeur, denial, and smears. As usual.
The Republican Party, and me, had a GREAT day yesterday with respect to the phony Impeachment Hoax, & yet, when I got home to the White House & checked out the news coverage on much of television, you would have no idea they were reporting on the same event. FAKE & CORRUPT NEWS!
Oh, and by the way.
Malignant narcissist can't stop lying about obvious and easily provable facts. While his sycophants excuse even his most egregious and dangerous lies.
Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or
@VP
. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News
@nytimesbooks
, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!
In that case, future historians should consult clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who have already provided explanations for the "unexplainable" behaviors of malignant narcissists in power and their sycophants.
He is playacting a president. Just as he playacted a successful businessman, a caring husband, a doting father. It's all an empty facade. He knows it too, somewhere within, and it terrifies him. That's why he so easily projects it on others when he accuses them of fakery.
The widening desire to protect the tender feelings of the narcissistic psychopath in chief in order to avoid his narcissistic rage leads to erasing of truth and dismantling of our values.
That's how
#pathocracy
happens.
Yes.
We also repeatedly warned about this development.
Let's now prevent the historical revisionism -- "nobody could have predicted!" -- from setting in.
Trump's America. Five years ago, did anyone imagine that threats of violence against public officials would become routine? Or taken beyond talk, as in MI? Or effectively encouraged by a president? Easy to lose sight of how radically our situation has changed & how fast.
Trump is not interested in exercising his power to effect meaningful, much less positive change, but to sow chaos and discord to exact revenge on his enemies and soothe his narcissistic wounds.
Every behavior is a function of his pathology. Can't be otherwise.
Watching it right now. It is disastrous for
@realDonaldTrump
. Let's reiterate for those in the back: this man is so cognitively, emotionally and morally disordered that he is unfit to run a lemonade stand, much less a country, esp during a pandemic.
Just finished interview with
@realDonaldTrump
in Arizona - on risks involved in re-opening parts of the country, on possibility of 19% unemployment and whether the election should be a referendum on his handling of the pandemic.
Rumor has it the president is unwell. Some are even saying that he is delusional.
This isn't breaking news. This is just Trump being Trump. He's always been delusionally grandiose, bereft of a conscience, impulsive, and driven by insatiable need for power/adulation/revenge.
@davidmweissman
@gtconway3d
See this, for instance, written the night of Trump's inauguration (although our warnings dated to the start of last election):
WATCH:
@Chucktodd
says
@SenRonJohnson
is "trying to make Donald Trump feel better" by bringing up a conspiracy theory instead of answering a question about his quote in a recent WSJ article.
#MTP
#IfItsSunday
@gtconway3d
@realDonaldTrump
I don't think most folks understand the psychopath's utter disregard for human beings and their lives.
Other people do not really exist for him, except as disposable instruments of need fulfillment, if that.
I know "something I'll never understand" is a figure of speech indicating our disapproval, but we really need to start understanding the narcissistic collusion between a tyrant and his supporters because our lives depend on it. There is no mystery to it.
Chris Christie was sacked by Trump in 2016. He came back to help him debate. Now his life may be in danger as a result. The bizarre cult of Trump, and the huge sacrifices that people make for this man who does not give a damn about them, will be something I’ll never understand.
Sadism is a feature of malignant narcissism.
Trump revels in violence and has openly incited it throughout his presidency.
Watching others commit violence on his bidding gives him pleasure and satisfies his lust for power and revenge.
“As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.”
I see that Twitter disappeared my pinned thread/series. Time to recreate it then, piece by piece. It may be just as well -- on his program,
@chrislhayes
recently asked
@SteveSchmidtSES
: "How did we get here?" This series of posts from 2016 and 2017 will shed some light on it.
Terms like idiocracy and kakistocracy fail to account for the malevolent intent of Trump & co. Focusing on their "incompetence" similarly misses the point.
Pathocracy, the rule of people without conscience -- psychopaths and their ilk, aka human predators -- is the term to use.
Because of his narcissism Trump can't understand that Russia, NK, etc use flattery to manipulate him. Thus they are easy to deal with -- unlike the principled, honest opposition at home, which is "sick" in his eyes for that very reason. As is anyone who criticizes him.
Trump tells Hannity that he "very recently" "aced" a cognitive test: "I took it at Walter Reed, a medical center, in front of doctors, and they were very surprised"
A judge dismisses the Trumps' petition for a protective order saying their claims are 'fatally defective' -- not unlike the subject of the book himself
Am I the only psychologist who finds this claim and this threat truly alarming? Wouldn’t these normally trigger a mental health hold? Right and Left must set aside politics and agree that there is a serious problem here.
6 killed, 24 seriously wounded in the Highland Park shooting. A doctor present on the scene describes unimaginable, war-zone-like injuries.
The shooter, still at large, is a while male of slight built, around 18-20 yrs old.
The shooting is described as "completely random."
"We now know that he is that bad a human being and that lousy a leader."
WE knew that 5 years ago. Nah, make it 30+.
Trump did not break us. What broke were our illusions, revealing the truth about ourselves that we must face in order to change and grow.
I don’t mean this facetiously: Trump is an actual madman. No one could keep him in check. The only way of holding him accountable was for the people to fire him.
He keeps proving—every day—that he deserved it.
We are being sacrificed on the altar of Trump's narcissism.
Pathocracy led by a malignant narcissist first devours facts and values, then lives, which must be destroyed to protect the narcissist's fragile ego.
The question posed here 👇 is whether Trump is delusional or malevolent.
It's not either/or. The answer is both.
If our now proverbial "future historians" will puzzle over anything, it will likely be our reluctance to acknowledge the tragically obvious.
"Either the President actually believes what he is saying, in which case he is crazy, or he does not, in which case he is engaged in the most cynical attack on American democracy ever to come from the White House," writes
@sbg1
.
Of course we cannot, should not measure Trump by normal standards, because he is not normal. He is pathological. We kinda have been hinting at it for the past, oh, five years or so.
We don't lower the standard. We change it. We change the lens thru which we view him, to that...
"The scale and frequency of [Trump's] offenses is so far outside the historic norm that it is impossible to measure him by normal standards. The only way to cover his lies and misconduct is to create a different, lower standard." Not lower.
@yourauntemma
how should we judge?
.
@BarackObama
: "I did not believe how easily the Republican establishment, people who had been in Washington for a long time and had professed a belief in certain institutional values and norms, would just cave.'
Full interview comes tomorrow
@TheAtlantic
.
Rep Yoho apologizing on House floor right now for nasty remarks to AOC. but says he can't apologize for his "passion, loving my God, my family or my country. "
Somehow Trumpists can't decide whether the other side is fascism or communism, and it's not clear if they know the difference, or whether it matters at all.
This rally encapsulates the bizarreness of the cult of Trump. It's like the Mos Eisley cantina in the open air in DC.
“Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”
Will see the
@GOP
& Co's reactions (= denial + smears) to this obviously truthful book.