Pssst- America, Donald Trump is Telling You Something…..
But you aren’t listening.
Photo on Unsplash from Library of Congress
As we head into the presidential elections, you have to scratch your head and wonder what Trump’s strategy is; I mean what is it, REALLY.
That his administration has botched, horribly, the response to the coronavirus is a foregone conclusion. I know, I know, he shut down people coming from China earlier in the year. And forgot to lock the back door as infected people were pouring into the US from Europe.
So, he continues to rail against the doctors who try to approach this from a public health perspective instead of an economic one.
In the middle of the pandemic, he is devoting efforts to abolish Obamacare. Ok, so I know he hates it- he hates anything that Obama did- but really? Take away health care in the middle of a pandemic with no alternate plan?
He says we need to put kids back in school; we can’t kill the economy. The hidden message is that it is ok to sacrifice some kids as long as money keeps flowing into the economy. He acts like NO children die or get seriously sick from COVID; that is clearly not true.
He spends more time defending the removal of statues of Confederate generals because people are “trying to erase our history.” I know, but I also know that Germany doesn’t have any statues devoted to Hitler, Goering, Himmler or the rest of that horrible regime. They are a part of history too.
So I am no clinical psychologist, but if you look at what he is doing I think he is telling us that he doesn’t want to be president anymore. He is exhibiting self destructive behaviors that belie perhaps an underlying conflict- he could never admit he wants out. His narcissism just won’t let him do that.
Let’s be honest. His presidency was the outcome of the world’s biggest publicity stunt. He never expected to win ( many of us didn’t, remember?) When he said “ “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” I would be willing to bet the next morning he told his campaign team “ Jeez- I just said I could shoot someone on Fifth Ave and they still have me leading. How the hell do I get out of this.”
And why would he want a second term? He got what he wanted. He will make a fortune when he is out, even more than he did before. All being president added was a giant proctoscope that analyzed everything he did, was doing, and now will do. He was better off before, being a clown in the shadows who occasionally popped up in the news, only to slink back into the darkness and continue his corrupt ways out of the view of the public.
I know he thinks his base will carry him. He can tell his pinocchio lies about things as he has in the past. But the problem is when he lies about the pandemic, when he acts like nothing is happening when Americans are getting sick at record numbers, even his base has personal evidence that he is lying. Because it affects them directly, tangibly, personally.
And you can’t gaslight someone about their own miserable experience.
He wants out, but can’t bring himself to admit it. If he loses based on his failures, he will rail against the fake news, the Dems, Obama, the left and anyone else. That has been his M.O.- never admit you are wrong; when things go wrong you are the victim.
He must get up everyday and think to himself “ I was a shoe in, and now something we can’t even see with the naked eye is going to dethrone me.”
But there is the fallacy.
It’s not the virus that is dethroning him, it is his woeful response to it, and his inability to change his mind, that will be his undoing.
Psst, Trump is telling us something.
Listen to him.
