Wanted to have a non-political discussion about Trump.
If we set politics aside, a lot of Trump’s thought processes are fascinating to delve into, albeit very embarrassing and peculiar.
To cite one example: When Trump fussed and demanded that Machado gift him her Nobel Prize medal - the physical medal itself - and was immensely gratified when she did in fact later gift him the medal - it exposed one of his weird thought processes: namely, that the physical object is what makes a prize a prize, rather than the actual honor or process of obtaining the prize. In other words, Trump believes that being given the physical gold Nobel Prize medal is the same as him actually being awarded the Prize by the Nobel Committee itself.
To every other sane rational person like you and me, of course, this is farcical logic; it would be like as if I were to think that if Bill Belichick gifted me one of his Lombardi Trophies, that that would somehow mean I was a Super Bowl champion. It obviously wouldn’t. But Trump thinks it does.
There must be 100 other examples of fascinating Trump logic (non-political,) feel free to contribute them as you see fit. I’ll add more as they come to my mind. What other things do you see?
To me, and I’m not a psychologist or anything even close or adjacent, a whole lot of what he does and how he acts seems to be driven by a desire to be the winner/dominant/on-top in whatever venue/competition he’s in. It also strikes me that this is driven by some kind of deep insecurity.
The whole Machado Nobel medal thing wasn’t so much that he thinks he’s a Nobel Laureate because he possesses a medal, but rather that he’s important/enough of a big shot/powerful enough that he was able to get one when he wanted one. Didn’t really matter that he didn’t win it himself, because he was able to pester Machado into giving hers up. Of course, she’s still a Nobel Peace Prize winner , and he’s not, but he got to compel her to do it, which makes him a winner in his own head because he came away with the symbol that she won.
It really does seem to be the Talladega Nights Reese Bobby “If you’re not first, you’re last” mentality, where if he’s not on top in some way, he’s a failure. Which is absurd to anyone remotely well adjusted, but we’re talking Trump here, so it tracks.
I tend to think of what Dave Barry once said about Lyndon LaRouche: he’s an ordinary human being, except that where you or I have a brain, he has a Whack-A-Mole game.
Agreed, it’s about power. He arrested Maduro and publicly humiliated Machado. When anyone looks at the medal on his wall, that’s what he wants them to remember.
Yes, I know that story, but Putin wasn’t inane enough to think that the Super Bowl ring meant he was a football champion. (well, if Putin even knows anything about NFL football.)
In the first round of bombing of Iran, several months ago, the planes that flew the mission flew all the way from Missouri, even though that gave a lot of advance warning that they were coming (and in fact, Trump actually announced the successful mission before they even got there, which has been overlooked by all of the press). We have closer airbases which could have been used to launch the mission, most notably Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. Why didn’t we?
Because Trump heard someone mention Diego Garcia, and thought they were referring to Abrego Garcia, the guy that he’d kidnapped and illegally deported. And he didn’t want the mission to have anything to do with that guy.
I think he’s also a hoarder, a greedy grasping hoarder. He wants it ALL! Like the rich girl from Willy Wonka, or the animated seagulls(don’t know the movie); Mine mine mine. He also thinks he is entitled, to it ALL, and the world owes it to him because he is the best, bestest, ever better than anyone has ever seen, many if not all experts say so.
I agree with the OP. Trump puts much too high an emphasis on the value of owning physical objects as opposed to the ownership of abstract assets. If you offered him a choice of a gold ring worth a thousand dollars or a patent worth a million, he’d probably choose the ring because it’s something he can see and touch. So it seems more real to him.
I don’t imagine Trump would do well on the marshmallow test.
I think the central tenet of Trump’s philosophy is that strong people bully weak people.
Things like the law don’t enter into his thinking. The law, in his mind, is just something strong people use to push around weak people. That’s why he has no problem with breaking laws himself while prosecuting other people for breaking those same laws. There’s no discrepancy in his actions in his mind; he’s just demonstrating that he’s stronger than those other people.
The main source of his strength, in his mind, is the power he gets from being President of the United States. He feels that all of this power belongs to him personally so he’s allowed to do whatever he wants with it.
Oh, and another Trumpism: Trump thinks that if you don’t officially record something, that thing didn’t happen. That was his logic behind not wanting a cruise ship with Covid patients to be recorded in the USA statistics, “if you don’t record it then the cases aren’t official.”
Long-distance psychological analysis is fraught with difficulty (even for an expert like me with a background of close to a month and a half on a psychiatry rotation), but the overall picture seems closest to one of narcissistic personality disorder compounded by elements of sociopathy, shadowed by advancing dementia. It’s going to get much uglier in the next year and a half or so.
And I thought that I might just
Give you a chance to explain
What the hell is in your brain?
Something don’t seem right…
Cause you sure don’t act like you should
This is fundamental. It works towards the conviction that the righteous outcome of everything is that what he wants, he gets, and the career long pattern that he’ll try to stiff you for what he owes you.
And he has internalized that this is the normal, natural way to be — so to him, being in any sort of vulnerable position is unacceptable since he is convinced we will all seek to maliciously destroy him because why wouldn’t we?
You also see it in things like his constant ruining of negotiations by jumping up as soon as anyone even floats a provisional concession and loudly saying we won the other side totally caved and our side totally ruled and we got ten different things that were not even on the table. Then when the others say “wait, that’s not what happened” he’s enraged and wants payback because how dare they not play along to make him look like the winner, how dare you publicly call him a liar. Because how can they be so stupid to not know that you are supposed to let him boast HE came out on top.
Or it’s something that the aggregate of weak people have concocted to tie the hands of the strong, and some of the strong are stupid enough to go along instead of displaying their power.
I think the way Trump sees it, the people who choose not to break the law due to morals or stupidity are showing that they number among the weak. Strong people know they don’t need to worry about breaking the law. So if you’re not breaking the law, it’s an admission you’re not strong.
This means somebody like Trump will break the law, even when he doesn’t need to, in order to demonstrate he can.
I believe Trump thinks the same way about paying money he owes. He doesn’t seeing it as fulfilling an agreement he made. In his world view, weak people pay tribute to strong people. So when somebody does some work for him, he sees that as them acknowledging he is stronger and giving him what he wants. But if he then gives that person money, he would be acknowledging that they are the stronger one.
