He’s a fascinating character to witness, if you can compartmentalize the psychodrama unfolding from its political consequences.
I think Trump has a big heart and I think it’s reserved for people very close to him. Underneath Trump’s extremely arrogant and brash persona, I think there’s an insecure guy who only trusts a few people in his inner circle, like a small clique of kids at a high school rejected by the popular crowd. You’re with him or against him. I don’t believe that his personal/family life is, or was, predominantly dysfunctional. I think he’s happiest with his friends and family. It doesn’t make him a “good guy” in general and it doesn’t mean he’s a good leader.
He’s sort of like the opposite of Howard Hughes. Hughes was a billionaire with a very debonair, gentlemanly, classy exterior - lots of people greatly admired him and found him to be kind and personable. But under the surface, there was incipient dysfunction, which unfortunately spiraled out of control eventually. Estranged from his family and friends, he died childless and alone.
The difference is that Hughes actually invented things that were useful and he aspired to a certain pinnacle of excellence, whether it was entertainment or technology. Trump just built tacky hotels and casinos, and shuffled money from one pile to another.
That was the anecdote that Comey brought up on CNN’s Town Hall tonight. He said it was the only video he could find on Youtube of Trump laughing at all.
Regardless of the cause, Trump is also, at base, predominantly highly dysfunctional. His heart, microscopic as it is, doesn’t extend to Dreamers, or Democrats, or anyone else who doesn’t happen to agree with his loony-toons philosophy or like his perpetual lies and self-aggrandizement, and won’t stroke him for the Great Leader that he clearly isn’t.
He’s not a big-picture or abstract thinker, at all. I fully believe that when he saw pictures of dead Syrian children, he really did feel bad for them. I believe if he were to SEE the consequences of his bad policies, if he were to literally SEE people suffering, he’d have some sympathy. He seems to be the kind of guy where, if a concept is not personalized for him, he is unable to really comprehend it. It has to be tangible and first-hand. In other words, exactly the WRONG kind of person to be any kind of leader. But I don’t think he’s some kind of evil Grinch-like character. He’s just kind of fucked up.
I have to stick up for Silent Cal, here. He was well aware of his taciturn reputation. His wife used to tell a story about a woman who came up to him at a diplomatic function and told him, “I bet my husband I could get more than two words out of you.” Coolidge is said to have replied, “You lose.”
He said he wanted to have prisoners tortured and their families murdered. He said Nazis are very fine people. He saw to it his own nephew’s son lost his health insurance; said nephew’s son has cerebral palsy. He’s a con artist and a serial sexual predator with the hots for his own daughter. Stop me when I get to something that’s not evil.
There is no way in hell that Donald Trump has it in him to personally witness and oversee the torture or murder of anyone. He is saying this hyperbolic shit to get attention and maybe he thinks he wants it, but he doesn’t have the capability to ever do anything like that himself. He’d never get his hands dirty. He delegates everything to his lackeys.
He is a selfish, greedy buffoon who’s politically incompetent, talks tough, and basically enables the very powerful corporate interests to do their thing, who have been doing their thing since forever. He is not a “psychopath”, he is not like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, he’s not like Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin, I’m really starting to tire of the over the top proclamations about him like he’s some kind of fascist dictator. He is not a dictator. He is also not some kind of inhuman monster who lacks a “normal” sense of humor…he is eminently human, with all of the good and bad that go along with it; and he is not particularly special in any way, other than having a lot of money and being good at shuffling it from one pile to another.
I think the “hots for his own daughter” thing has nothing to do with pedophiliac/incestuous urges. A genetic child is, in some ways, your reflection. If that child is successful/attractive, it is a reflection you will welcome.
Trump loves himself so much that there is no one he’d rather make love to than himself. I think that’s what is at the heart of his inappropriate comments about how hot his daughter is. Is it creepy? Yeah, it is. But not necessarily in the way a lot of people make it out to be.
This is just pure grade, absolute bullshit. Everything about Trump screams a distinct lack of normal human empathy. He is entirely about himself. I know a lot of people, both in real life and online, and I don’t know any who are as morally bankrupt as Trump.
Yes, he’s not a mass murderer. That doesn’t make him a normal human, or even not a psychopath. I tend to think he’s more narcissistic than sociopathic, but he is not normal. He clearly only cares about himself. He acts like a worse version of my sister’s boss, who had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
He very much has tried to run things like a dictator. When he got into power, he tried to directly control those under him. He fired someone investigating him, thinking it would fix everything. He ran on the idea that he would shut down freedom of speech because people were saying bad thing about him, and is still at every opportunity trying to undermine the free press. If he could control everything, every sign shows that he would do all these things.
He is also a pathological liar. He doesn’t even seem to comprehend the idea of truth. He just says what he thinks will get him what he wants. He’s contradicted himself so, so many times. He’s paranoid and a conspiracy nut, and thinks everyone is out to get him.
What bothers me is people downplaying all this, acting like he’s perfectly normal. It actually is the main reason I got depressed around the time he was elected. Seeing people I thought I knew seeing someone so clearly being evil and still voting for him and defending him? It was heartbreaking.
I don’t know if he ever finds things funny. Even monsters often can find something amusing. But he is a monster. He is very clearly evil. I didn’t even scratch the surface.
Did you forget his “superior genetics” comment? His racism towards immigrants? His sexual harassment, that he even joked about? The list goes on.