The President Is Trapped – The Atlantic

YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that dont serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.

This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. He finds it intolerable when those things are missing, a clinical psychologist told me. Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. Theres no room for that now, and so hes growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout overwhelm Trumps capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.

ITS USEFUL HERE to recall that Trumps success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, evenor perhaps, especiallyif those impressions are at odds with reality. He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman and knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else.

Read: How the pandemic will end

But in this instance, Trump isnt facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. Hes facing a lethal virus. It doesnt give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, dont work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

So as the crisis deepensas the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramaticallyits reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception.

But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things dont turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal dont work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporterspeople who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will diethat no matter what Trump says, he cant alter this epidemiological reality?

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The President Is Trapped - The Atlantic