Trump’s Latest Rage Attack

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“I’m sure the Twitter act was orgasmic!” wrote my psychiatrist friend in an email discussing Trump’s latest pivot from a narcissistic psychopath to a malignant narcissist (the distance is zero, in case you wonder).

Those impressed last week by Trump’s ability to read from a teleprompter for about an hour without mocking the disabled (though he came close by exploiting a grieving widow of a soldier who died as a result of his desire to appear commander-ish-in-chief) or grabbing whatever, may perhaps re-evaluate their cheery estimates of the man. Or perhaps not, because if there is one thing — among oh-so-many — we learn from Trump/ism it is that being a pundit means never having to say you’re wrong. Or sorry.

Here’s what happened (for those who were inexplicably not focused on our national nightmare): After his Tuesday speech, which no doubt created a much needed sense of victory in him, Trump and his cabinet members were faced with new accusations of improper contacts with the Russians during his campaign. Damn the fake media.

Dark circuses ensued.

Jeff Sessions suddenly realized these were not the Prussians he thought he talked to; Carter Page (who, you ask? I know — nobody knew) underwent what appeared to be some form of an existential crisis in public, leading him to question the nature of reality and his place in it; and everyone was reminded that we should have paid attention to Paul Manafort as his behavior begged us to. Sadly, attention is not among American strengths.

And at the center of this chain of matrioshka dolls was a solid Soviet apparatchik named Sergey Kislyak.

Our so-called president, meanwhile, went ballistic on his staff — exactly as predicted — blaming them for not stanching the truth as he demands of them (that’s their no.2 job; no.1 being soothing his tender ego — though the two are closely related). He stormed off to his “Southern White House,” another weekly trip costing taxpayers gadzillions of $$, leaving Steve Bannon crushed, to the extent a cheap imitation of Darth Vader is crushable.

BTW, those among Trump’s associates and external observers who believe that Bannon controls Trump should give up that illusion as well. It’s time. Really.

Then, in the quiet hours of early dawn, when most of America was still asleep, Trump unleashed a torrent of jaw-dropping tweets accusing President Obama of spying on him and, essentially, causing the whole TrumPrussianGate.

Here I will quote my psychiatrist friend, whose analysis is spot on (slightly edited for clarity):

(…) No narcissistic rage attack ever goes unanswered and MUST be answered in a fashion over and above how it impacts the narcissist — that is why such attacks lead to [violent] actions (all justified in their eyes) even as murder!

We both know that he lost sleep, became more vengeful and angry and could not go on until he acted. None of these actions ever make sense, but to hear them as I have they all make perfect sense to the narcissist. He turned to sources that have in the past provided succor to his vengefulness and without question grasped onto the Breitbart story, rushing in glee to Twitter, to blame Obama, whom he despises because he is so admired and is brighter than him. He is even more angry that his political colleagues insisted he admit that Obama is a citizen. I’m sure the Twitter act was orgasmic!

The rationalizations on the TV are so tragic. 

Yes, they are. But they are a necessary part of our tyranny in progress, the part where we normalize it and pretend there’s really nothing to see here, move right along, straight into an abyss.

You may be, um, pleased (?) to learn that this weekend’s crisis was resolved by the resourceful White House staff helping Trump prepare a new travel ban for Muslims — because nothing soothes the pain of a malignant narcissist’s injured ego like inflicting suffering on the weak and innocent, a.k.a The Others. It is an act of “unwounding,” discussed by Dr. Lynne Meyer in Richard Greene’s post.

This time the ban sufficed; but, as his rage escalates, such mild (ha) moves won’t be enough. The sadistic drive to punish and destroy is a malignant narcissist’s modus operandi. And given his lack of inhibitions — a result of a missing conscience — we should expect to see more dramatic and hurtful attempts to satisfy that drive.

For more on Trump and narcissistic rage, see Hell Hath No Fury Like a Narcissist Scorned.

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