Donald Trump's Brittle Brain and Tragic Inability to Change
The only upside to Donald Trump being the most powerful man in the world for four extremely traumatic years was that the man gave bloggers like myself something to write about on a weekly, if not daily basis.
That was by design. Donald Trump professes to despise the press, to the point of calling them the Enemy of the People, yet he is also obsessed with Fake News and how he’s treated.
Unfortunately Trump gave me a lot to write about because he never stopped doing things that were egregiously wrong and blatantly amoral. His administration was a train wreck that we couldn’t look away from that left everyone on the left with varying degrees of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Then Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020 by a terrifyingly slim margin. It was an unforgivable insult to his ego that he could not, and would not, accept. He still hasn’t. He never will.
You know how you could tell that Joe Biden won the election? Because Donald Trump was forced to move out of the White House and Joe Biden was invited by the American people to move in.
Trump never really left, however. He never stopped bitterly complaining to anyone who would listen, and plenty of people who wouldn’t, that he won a sacred landslide victory in 2020, winning by, as he invariably brags, “a lot” before that staggering, historic victory was robbed from The American People by the Deep State, Joe Biden, Twitter, Facebook, Hollywood and, confusingly enough, lots of his Republican supporters who wanted him re-elected yet were forced by human decency and also the laws of our sometimes great land to concede that Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost.
Trump thinks that he doesn’t need to mount a persuasive argument that everybody else in the world was wrong and he was right in his fierce assertion that he totally won when he can just yell a bunch of random phrases that have great meaning to his cultists and defenders but are meaningless to everyone else.
I recently watched a minute long clip of Trump being interviewed by Brett Baier on FOX, which used to be a strongly pro-Trump outlet but that, to Trump at least, turned into America-hating Communists obsessed with destroying him for deeply personal, deeply evil reasons when they acknowledged that Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020, something that Trump will neither forgive nor forget.
Trump angrily and indignantly insists, “First of all, I won in 2020 by a LOT, let’s get that straight.”
The twice-impeached ex-president is throwing down the gauntlet: either you accept that something that you know is false is actually true or I will become furious and antagonistic.
When Baeir asserts that Trump lost and that recounts and investigations showed no widespread voter fraud Trump doubles down with a trademark word salad, angrily insisting, “If you look at all the tapes, you take a look at Truth to Vote, they have people stuffing the ballot boxes on tape. Let’s go to a recent: FBI Twitter. Let’s go to recent: the 51 agents, all corrupt.”
I have no idea what Trump means by Truth to Vote. I don’t know who they are but I’m guessing by context they’re an unethical pro-Trump organization. I similarly don’t know what he means by FBI Twitter or 51 agents but Trump clearly thinks that viewers will hear him rambling and think, “Truth to Vote? FBI Twitter? Stuffing the ballot box? 51 corrupt agents! I’m convinced! Let’s declare martial law so that Trump can be reinstated as president for life!”
It was sad. It was fucking sad. It was more than sad. It was pathetic. It’s been three long years and Trump refuses to give up the lie that he won the 2020 presidential election but it was stolen from him.
In keeping with Nazi ideas about the persuasiveness of the Big Lie, Trump makes sure to brag that he won by “A lot” and also by a “landslide.” It’s not enough to say that he won. He needs the American people to believe that it wasn’t even close and that Joe Biden was absolutely destroyed.
Trump’s message to 2024 voters remains, “I was screwed because I won the election and you were screwed as well because I am your voice in the fetid swamps of D.C and the establishment knows that they have to get through me to get to you.”
You’d think a bratty, juvenile message of unending personal grievances would have limited appeal to voters ostensibly more concerned with the economy and health care than Donald Trump’s precious ego.
Yet it seems to be resonating with voters all the same. A headline in Forbes reading “Republicans Increasingly Realize There’s No Evidence Of Election Fraud—But Most Still Think 2020 Election Was Stolen Anyway, Poll Finds” captures the weird cognitive dissonance of Republicans realizing that Trump is full of shit when he whines that the election was stolen because he has no proof and there is no evidence to support him but they don’t care and think that the Democrats cheated anyway because they disagree with him politically.
When I look at Donald Trump in the clip I see someone who is mentally ill but unwilling to acknowledge their mental illness or seek treatment. I also see a child who cannot accept that not everything can go their way.
But more than anything I see a man who is brittle. I see a man who is inflexible. I see a man who is unyielding. I see a man who is incapable of change or growth because his massive ego won’t ever acknowledge that someone so perfect would need to change or grow in any way.
You need to be flexible to be a successful politician. You need to have an open mind that is open to being changed when you receive new information or things change.
That’s not just necessary to be a successful politician: it’s essential for being a successful adult as well. It’s a big part of being a grown up but Trump won’t admit that he’s not perfect so he is NEVER going to admit that he’s wrong, either about little things or the Great Big Lie that the election was stolen.
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