Saturday, July 11, 2020

Trump Views National Problems As Personal Attacks On Him


Our nation is in crisis. The Coronavirus pandemic is worse than in any other country, racism is exhibiting itself in our police departments and other institutions, and the economy is in a deep recession leaving many millions of workers without jobs.

In times like this, past presidents have stepped up and shown the leadership necessary to bring the country together to overcome the problems. Sadly, we now have a president who is incapable of doing that. His rampant narcissism prevents him from even recognizing the country has problems. For him, the country's problems are just personal attacks on him.

Here is part of how Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, and Josh Dawsey describe Trump's narcissistic problem in The Washington Post:

Callers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble.

The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president.

Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings.

Instead, Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.

Trump put his self-victimization on public display Thursday in response to a Supreme Court ruling rejecting his claim of absolute immunity and permitting a New York prosecutor to see the president’s private and business financial records.

Trump reacted with a social media meltdown, writing on Twitter, “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!” and “POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He wrote that the decision was “Not fair to this Presidency” and claimed that “Courts in the past have given ’broad deference’. BUT NOT ME!

Trump has always exhibited a healthy ego and his self-victimization tendencies are not a new phenomenon, according to those who have known him over the years. But those characteristics have been especially pronounced this summer, revealing themselves almost daily in everything from private conversations to public tweets as the pandemic continues to upend daily life across America and threaten the president’s political fortunes. . . .

Now, however, Trump’s sense of victimhood strikes even some allies as particularly incongruous considering the devastation wrought by the pandemic and the pain and anguish apparent in Black Lives Matter protests.

More than 130,000 Americans so far have died of the novel coronavirus, with more than 3 million cases reported. Nearly 43 million Americans — more than a quarter of the labor force — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic began. And the nation is riven not just by protests following the death of George Floyd, the unarmed black man killed in Minneapolis police custody, but also by a president who has deliberately stoked racial animus.

Even those in Trump’s orbit are trying to nudge him toward a sunnier, less egocentric approach to the crises he is facing, fearing that his sullen demeanor could backfire politically. . . .

To some of his longtime advisers, the president has seemed tired, low-energy and lacking the passion and energy that defined him when he was a candidate during the 2016 race. Aides noticed he largely read his script at Mount Rushmore and did not veer off the teleprompters for high-energy riffs like he usually does when delivering political speeches.

He has been spending an inordinate amount of time watching television news and has been scrambling for ways to fire up his base and keep his loyalists supportive, with little in the way of a set daily schedule.

“Every guy that talks to him, the first half of the conversation is, ‘Woe is me,’ ” said one of the outside operatives, speaking anonymously to share private details. “They’re all saying, ‘You’ve got to snap out of it. You’re the president. Presidents are supposed to deal with crises.’ But he’s fixated.”

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