I don’t think Trump’s enjoying himself. He seems to have a bottomless need to have people tell him he’s great and he’s certainly not getting that. Sure, he can go to rallies and have a few thousand people shouting his name and I’m sure he loves that. But then he has to hear about how millions of other people think he’s terrible and that ruins it for him.
Plus I imagine he gets annoyed every time some staffer reminds him that the Presidency is an actual job and he needs to do some work on something.
As Jim Palmer once said of the great baseball manager Earl Weaver, “Earl isn’t happy unless he’s not happy.”
What does Trump, according to all the evidence, enjoy?
Making money.
Being the boss of you, and
Getting into fights and winning.
By all three measures, Trump is having a ball.
Is he making money? Absolutely. He’s printing money for himself; being able to siphon millions off the government by using his own properties as government retreats is probably the tip of the moneyberg. He still controls his companies, so believe me, there’s some stuff going on there.
Is he the boss of everyone? Yup.
Is he getting into fights and winning? As far as he’s concerned he is. He beat everyone in the election. He gets into a constant stream of fights; if he can fire the person, he does, and wins, and if it’s a Twitter feud he tweets something, blocks the person, and declares himself the winner. If something doesn’t go his way, he
A) can hold a rally, and
B) In truth, nothing that has gone against him really matters to him anyway. Like Donald Trump gives a shit about health care.
Don’t look at him and think “I would hate that so he must hate it.” He’s a narcissistic sociopath. He doesn’t like the same things.
If making money makes Trump happy, he’s lived a relatively unhappy life. Sure, he has a lot of money but he started with a lot of money. And he’s been very secretive about how much money he has now. So it’s reasonable to assume Trump has basically broken even over the course of his career. He’s never been an outstanding success as a businessman.
This is the one I think he’s most unhappy about. Trump probably believed that once he was President he would be the boss of everyone. But he’s finding out that isn’t true. He tells people what to do but they ignore him. He actually has no real power over Congress, the courts, state and local governments, foreign governments, or various private companies and individuals. None of these people work for the President.
I think this is why we always see Trump getting so heated up over his staff and the military. These are the only people that actually have to listen to his orders.
The last fight Trump actually won was the election. I think that’s why he keeps talking about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He living in the past, back in his glory days. He’s like the guy in his twenties who’s still bragging about what a great athlete he was in high school.
Well, according to this Trump hates everyone in the White House.
You know, back in the old days I’d always be pretty skeptical about stories sourced to anonymous officials. But just about every single one of these stories turned out to be confirmed one way or another. So I guess I’m starting to figure that the lamestream media doesn’t have to bother making up fake stories about the White House adult day care, because they can write a newly sourced story about a new miserable failure every day.
But he can’t do that anymore. He’s being told that firing Comey was the worst mistake in modern political history, and if he fired any more people (Mueller and Sessions for example), he’d be in even deeper trouble. I’m guessing this makes him miserable, or at least frustrated.
Nope. He ain’t the boss of Congress.He may be the boss of the cabinet, but firing everyone is going to look bad and puts the lie to how he only hires the best people.
If someone calls you a moron and still has his job, you’re not really his boss.
I also expect the non-political professionals are doing their best against him. The right calls it “deep government” which is code for people who know what the fuck they are doing.
If he were really happy he wouldn’t avoid press conferences and public appearance where the audience is not carefully screened.
I said, before he was elected, that I thought there were pretty good odds that he’d resign as a result of having to deal with being called an idiot by every person he met every day. I’ve also bet money on it, so I certainly hope so!
I can’t help the nagging suspicion he is rather enjoying himself. I always felt he got into the race, developed the idea of running for POTUS years ago, mostly to upset the system. He seems like he has managed that pretty well.
Several people from his circles have talked about how he has always been upset that the “old rich” of New York never paid him any mind no matter how successful he became. He’s always seeking respect and wants everyone to see how wonderful he is. So he becomes president and, instead of everyone saying “wow, what an amazing guy”, he’s seen as an unfortunate joke and, instead of being thought of as brilliant, his win is seen as either because of Steve Bannon pulling the strings or because of the Russians. In either case, little credit for Trump himself.
As far as people saying he just loves these fights and stuff, I dunno. Maybe? Again, I think the losses from the fights are really upsetting to him. But mainly I just don’t see him looking like he’s enjoying it. Granted, I’m not in the White House but Obama famously loved “being president” despite its obvious toils and hardships. Bush looked like he was enjoying it. Clinton seemed to enjoy it. I’m not getting that vibe from Trump. And there were numerous reports out of the transition period that Trump and his team just straight up had no clue what the actual job entailed. This led to a chaotic start and a failure to make any real achievements that couldn’t be done by signing an executive order. Those other guys at least knew what being president meant. I don’t think Trump even really considered it until it was upon him (by the admission of his own team, no one was expecting him to win election night).
If an average American of Trump’s intelligence and temperament became POTUS, he’d be having the thrill of his lifetime. Yes, such a thin-skinned asshole would be the butt of many jokes, but he’d be used to that.
Trump, OTOH, has been used to getting his own way all his life. He’s hired all the best whores, jetted around the world, grabbed any pussy he wanted, hobnobbed with top mobsters in Russia and elsewhere, committed criminal frauds confident his lawyers would get him off — he’s lived the American Dream.
Now he’s in way over his head, the butt of jokes all around the world. He still acts gruff — but it’s the gruffness of a rabid dog soon to go down.
There’s much controversy about Trump’s intelligence, but I think he’s smart enough to realize what an utter failure he is as President. Instead of going down in history as a quirkish billionaire celebrity, he’ll go down as perhaps the most bizarre laughing-stock(*) in all of history. If he had human emotions he’d be weeping and grieving inside.
Is there anyone in all of history who was such a laughingstock? Nero the Fiddler of Rome comes to mind, but Trump is far more comical than Nero … and far more tragic. I hope the Board’s historians will weigh in on this question.
For those who think Trump is enjoying himself: where are you getting your news?
Every other day there is a story about Trump spiraling out of control, and blaming others for his own incompetence. These reports clearly show that he is pissed that he knows he isn’t getting things done, like repealing Obamacare or building the wall. He’s become increasingly paranoid that his own people are out to get him, which is at the heart of all those firings; not to mention that his close associates are going public with concerns about his well-being.
I can’t see how any of that adds up to evidence that he’s having fun in his job.