Trump's Narcissism Won't Let Him Move Past The Election

(This image of the Narcissist-In-Chief is from a caricature done by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

If there is anything that is clear about Donald Trump, it's that he is a complete narcissist. He believes that he is the best at everything, and that obsessive belief colors everything he does and says.

It is also the reason that he can't move past his rather odd electoral victory last November. Trump wants us to believe (as he does) that his electoral college victory was the largest in history, that he would have won the popular vote if not for Millions of illegal votes, and he won because most Americans wanted him to be president.

Of course, none of those things are true. Trump lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes (all legally cast), and he is president only because of the quirks of our electoral college system. And that tears him up. His personality demands that this not be true -- and that is affecting his job performance. It has resulted in chaos in the White House and throughout his administration -- and it's left leaders on both sides of the aisle unsure about his leadership abilities.

Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman have written an excellent article in the New York Times about Trump narcissistic inability to get past his slim and odd electoral victory. Here is part of that article:

In the small dining room next to the Oval Office where he works much of the time, President Trump keeps a stack of color-coded maps of the United States representing the results of the 2016 election. The counties he won are blotchy red and span most of the nation.

Mr. Trump sometimes hands the maps out to visitors as a kind of parting gift, and a framed portrait-size version was hung on a wall in the West Wing last week. In conversations, the president dwells on the map and its import, reminding visitors about how wrong the polls were and inflating the scope of his victory.

At the root of Mr. Trump’s unpredictable presidency, according to people close to him, is a deep frustration about attacks on his legitimacy, and a worry that Washington does not see him as he sees himself.

As he careens from one controversy to another, many of them of his own making — like his abrupt decision to fire the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was leading an investigation into the president’s associates — Mr. Trump seems determined to prove that he won the election on his own. It was not Russian interference. It was not Mr. Comey’s actions in the case involving Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was not a fluke of the Electoral College system. It was all himIn the small dining room next to the Oval Office where he works much of the time, President Trump keeps a stack of color-coded maps of the United States representing the results of the 2016 election. The counties he won are blotchy red and span most of the nation.

Mr. Trump sometimes hands the maps out to visitors as a kind of parting gift, and a framed portrait-size version was hung on a wall in the West Wing last week. In conversations, the president dwells on the map and its import, reminding visitors about how wrong the polls were and inflating the scope of his victory.

At the root of Mr. Trump’s unpredictable presidency, according to people close to him, is a deep frustration about attacks on his legitimacy, and a worry that Washington does not see him as he sees himself.

As he careens from one controversy to another, many of them of his own making — like his abrupt decision to fire the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was leading an investigation into the president’s associates — Mr. Trump seems determined to prove that he won the election on his own. It was not Russian interference. It was not Mr. Comey’s actions in the case involving Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was not a fluke of the Electoral College system. It was all him.

He sits in the dining room or Oval Office stewing over the Russia inquiry that Mr. Comey was managing, arguing to anyone who will listen that the matter is all a Democratic-inspired conspiracy to undermine the validity of his victory. . . .

Mr. Trump burns with frustration over not getting enough credit for winning the nation's highest office after having never so much as run for City Council or town alderman. . . .He expected to be celebrated for it, and that has not happened. . . .

Other presidents have basked in their electoral victories and have seized on various data points to argue that theirs was greater than others. But few seem to have relived their elections and relitigate them as persistently as Mr. Trump has. . . .

For Mr. Trump, what is happening today is still about what happened last year.