Saturday
Feb162019
The Not-So-Secret Life of Donald Trump
Sometimes when I read or hear a story of some horrifying event, I will imagine how I would or should or could handle it, were I at the scene. I calculate what might be the heroic thing to do, and I try to place myself as the hero. Such imaginings actually may be practical "rehearsals," in that they give one a chance to think through how to act instantaneously in rare, dangerous situations. I would guess most people imagine themselves in dangerous situations, more or less in this way. This is not to suggest we're all running around like latter-day Walter Mittys, absorbed in fantasies. Well, that is, most of us are not. Moreover, we don't confuse these momentary musings with real-life events. Well, that is, most of us do not.
But I know of someone who does; that is, someone who not only fantasizes that he is a hero, but also quickly comes to believe his fantasies are real. Unfortunately, he is the President* of the United States.
Here's a case in point. During his nutty Rose Garden speech last week, Donald Trump said,
...I believe he [President Obama] would have gone to war with North Korea. I think he was ready to go to war. In fact, he told me he was so close to starting a big war with North Korea. And where are we now? No missiles. No rockets. No nuclear testing. We’ve learned a lot. But much more importantly than all of it — much more important — much, much more important that that is we have a great relationship. I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. And I’ve done a job. In fact, I think I can say this: Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize. He said, 'I have nominated you…' or 'Respectfully, on behalf of Japan, I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize.' I said, 'Thank you.' Many other people feel that way too. I’ll probably never get it, but that’s okay.
Let's unpack that.
As Peter Baker reports in today's New York Times, this is not the first time Trump has made himself the hero of this particular story: "'That was going to be a war that could have been a World War III, to be honest with you,' Mr. Trump said at a cabinet meeting last month. 'Anybody else but me, you’d be in war right now,' he told reporters a few days later. 'And I can tell you, the previous administration would have been in war right now if that was extended. You would, right now, be in a nice, big, fat war in Asia with North Korea if I wasn’t elected president.'”
Trump even made the same claim in this year's State of the Union address: “If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed.”
But the story is a fable. Baker writes, "It is impossible to prove a negative, of course, but nobody who worked for Mr. Obama has publicly endorsed this assessment, nor have any of the memoirs that have emerged from his administration disclosed any serious discussion of military action against North Korea. Several veterans of the Obama era made a point of publicly disputing Mr. Trump’s characterization on Friday."
We were not on the brink of war with North Korea in 2016. -- Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, in a tweet
President Obama was never on the verge of starting any war with North Korea, large or small. -- John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, on MSNBC
Oh, as for Trump's claim that Japan's prime minister nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize? Uh, probably not:
Roberta Rampton of Japan Today: "He said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had given him 'the most beautiful copy' of a five-page letter in which Abe nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for opening talks and easing tensions with North Korea. 'You know why? Because he had rocket ships and he had missiles flying over Japan,' Trump said. 'Now, all of a sudden, they feel good. They feel safe. I did that,' Trump said, adding that the Obama administration 'couldn't have done it.' The White House declined further comment on Trump's claim that Abe had nominated him, and a spokesman for the Japanese embassy said he had no information about such a letter." *
Update: Makiko Yamazaki of Reuters: "Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated ... Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize last autumn after receiving a request from the U.S. government to do so, the Asahi newspaper reported on Sunday." Emphasis added, while laughing.
According to Baker, "Mr. Trump bases his argument on the single extended conversation he has ever had with Mr. Obama. In November 2016, Mr. Obama invited ... [Trump] to the White House for a 90-minute discussion of the issues awaiting him. Mr. Trump’s account of that conversation has evolved over time. At first, he said that Mr. Obama told him that North Korea would be the new administration’s toughest foreign policy challenge, which seems plausible enough. Only later did Mr. Trump add the supposed war discussion."
As Baker writes, "The only president who has vocally threatened war on North Korea in recent times is Mr. Trump. After a provocative intercontinental ballistic missile test, Mr. Trump in the summer of 2017 threatened to rain down 'fire and fury' on North Korea and a month later told the United Nations General Assembly that he would 'totally destroy North Korea' if it threatened the United States. In January 2018, after North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, talked of having a nuclear button, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that 'I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!'”
Trump is Walter Mitty on steroids. Mitty has his heroic fantasies, but he keeps returning, if reluctantly, to the real world where his wife badgers him & others push him around. Trump has his fantasies, but he never returns to the real world. The fantasies become real. He is the hero of these fantasties. There are bad guys -- like President Obama -- and there are Trump fans, like Prime Minister Abe.
In this particular fantasy, Trump has used his negotiating skills & charm to single-handedly prevent World War III. He has saved "millions of" lives. This is not true, but Trump has imagined it, and so it has "become." The reason Trump doesn't trust his intelligence agencies is that they tell him things that run contrary to this imagined world. Andrew McCabe writes in his new book of a July 2017 briefing in which intelligence officials told Trump that North Korea had, for the first time, test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile. "... Trump called the launch ... a 'hoax,' telling officials he knew North Korea did not have the ability to launch that type of missile 'because Vladimir Putin had told him so.'" Of course, there's no way to know what Putin may have told Trump because Trump eats any notes of his conversations with Putin. It is hard to know what is more alarming: that Trump believes an adversary over his own intelligence team or that Trump just made up the entire story. Either way, Trump is so obviously unfit for office.
Since Trump's fantasy world requires bad guys to defeat, he invents villains. He claims the bad guy -- President Obama -- was planning to start a devastating war with North Korea "with potentially millions of people killed." Here, it is also possible that Trump imagines Hillary Clinton is the phantom villain, because he says this horrible war would have occurred had he not been elected. That is, it's possible that she would have started the war that Obama somehow restrained himself from starting. There is no evidence Clinton would have started a war with North Korea and there is ample evidence that Obama never planned to do so. But Trump has imagined it, so it has "become." This fantasy is so real to Trump that he shares it with the American people.
Trump's fantasies also require international acclaim. He imagines Shinzo Abe is so grateful to Trump for ending the rain of North Korean "rocket ships and missiles" over Japan that Abe has nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. There is no evidence for this, but Trump needs veneration, so he imagines it. To Trump this probably imaginary nomination has "become," so he shares it.
Donald Trump's fantasies -- his lies -- are not without meaning or consequence. We are all paying for them. Whether it's his climate change denial or his rich people's tax cut law or his wall, or whatever, in more ways than one, we are all victims of Donald Trump's not-so-secret life.
Share Article
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
Reader Comments (11)
Nice summery of our Walter Mitty Monstrosity and your point about these fabrications–-these lies–-having dire consequences for us is key, not only economically, but globally in every conceivable way.
Another fabricator was of course Reagan who would cite as real life experiences from films he had played in. Some thought he actually became confused as to this reality; others thought he knew he was lying and figured he could get away with it. Somehow Reagan's scenarios seem tame compared to this dunce. There is something truly rotten to the core in the heart of this narcissist where lying for him is like a warm cover he needs to actually function.
It is as if the phrase "a legend in his own mind" were created just for the Pretender, swaddled as he is in layer upon layer of self-delusion.
I've referenced this one before. I think it was when I first head snippets of the interview he gave about his baseball prowess that I concluded that Marvin had it exactly right. We had one really nutty guy running for national office, and most everything he's done since has proven Marvin correct.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/donald-trump-greatest-baseball-player-in-ny-795427907978
If you add the obvious overweening greed and the genuine racism he exhibits time and again in speech and policy to the fantasy life of his self talk that he attempts to impose on a reluctant and uncooperative world, you have pretty much the whole Pretender package. The man is repellant, nasty, and downright awkward (much like his speech) because the performance often falls seriously short of the brag. (I'd posit that mismatch is sometimes so obvious that even the Pretender notices, hence the anger, the lashing out, which is part of what makes him as frightening as he is embarrassing.)
BTW, "Walter Mitty" is still one of my favorite stories. I first read it in ninth or tenth grade, and have never forgotten the experience, which as I remember left a residue of sadness/pity in addition to the obvious comedy. As you say, none of that this time around.
Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa....
The puzzle is why he still has so many adherents. Racism explains some of it, I guess, and the attraction the strong-appearing leader has for some, maybe, but don't you have to be as deluded as the Pretender himself not to see that the man is short more than a brick or two?
Diagnosis from a distance: Sickos, all of em.
Marie,
Excellent distillation of one of the most frightening problems facing the nation, one that an entire political party, their adjuncts and media arm have decided to ignore, the fact that the president* is not just unfit, but delusional.
As you suggest, many, if not most of us, utilize the gift of imagination in creative and helpful (and sometimes not so helpful) ways. I’ve thought about what I would do if there was a fire in the house, or if someone broke in, not so much to picture myself in a the heroes’ garb, but to walk through what might be the best thing to do. Of course there have been times when I’ve replayed events that didn’t go my way, thinking of scenarios that might have been more, shall we say, enjoyable. People involved in sports frequently devise imagery of success to help prepare them for contests. But in none of these cases does anyone confuse these musings with real events.
Unless they are mentally unstable.
I wouldn’t accost the president* for dreaming up scenes of personal greatness, single handedly saving the world and winning a Nobel Prize. Who cares? But here’s where things cross over from pleasurable day dreaming to dangerous hallucinations, when he starts talking about these things in public as if they really happened.
This is a clear indication of a truly disturbed person. When Ronald Reagan claimed that he had served with American troops in WWII, and was part of a detachment that liberated a concentration camp, rather making training films safely back home in the states, I never took this as a Walter Mitty episode come to light. As it turns out, it was most likely a sign of the Alzheimers that claimed him not long after.
With Trump it’s different.
I think now that this is a condition he’s had for years if not decades. It might be an outgrowth of his extreme narcissism. The way he’s been able to turn all of his many failures and downright stupid business decisions into unqualified victories should have been a giveaway. The evidence has always been there. Trump has lots of ideas, most of which involve him being the best deal maker in the world or the most successful businessman in history. But he has hardly ever been able to follow through on his ideas in any meaningful way. So when he loses, it’s not because he had no idea that preening overconfidence is no substitute for logical thinking and a well thought out plan, it’s always someone else’s fault. And that is still the case.
He has never been willing to acknowledge that his successes, especially the presidential campaign, have often come because of outside forces, his daddy’s money and connections or Putin’s plans.
He’s been lucky enough to be an exceptionally gifted con man with the kind of showboating personality that tabloids love.
But none of that allows anyone the freedom to overlook the fact that a guy who controls the greatest military might in world history, who can decide the fate of millions, who can claim control of billions of dollars for his own purposes, is delusional and clearly unstable.
That guy on the subway who staggers around telling people that he knows who killed Kennedy? Trump is the same, just better dressed.
We’re in big trouble here, and almost 40% of the country thinks it’s just great.
And talking about delusional (well, in this case, just cowardly), I heard the increasingly supine Lindsay Graham this morning talking about the vital role Congress must play in oversight.
Oh, not oversight of a delusional crazy person in the White House who indulged in overt collusion with a foreign adversary. Graham is talking about the need to go after those, like Andrew McCabe, who “clearly hate” the Glorious Leader. And that, by itself, is worthy of a prison sentence in this age of winger authoritarianism.
I don’t know what is more astonishing and repulsive, the fact of Trump’s own perfidy and obstruction of justice, or Graham’s sycophantic and frantic delight in looking the other way and instead demanding investigations into those who show up his naked emperor.
At one point a reporter asked Graham about the clear evidence of Trump’s obstruction. Graham responded that they’ll (the Senate) will be getting to bottom of things soon. The reporter, for a moment, thought he meant Fatty’s obstructing of justice. But no, Graham meant “the hatred of our president by the McCabe gang”.
This isn’t delusional, this is treason.
And by the way, I know he’s trying to remain above the fray, but Fatty’s outrageous lie about the last real president being on the brink of war with North Korea demands a detailed and immediate rebuke from Obama. Not just as a way to set the record straight but as part of what now needs to be a regular, point by point rejection of Fatty’s dangerous fantasies. His rabble won’t belive it, but the larger goal will be to force the R’s in Congress to either go along with obvious hallucinations or acknowledge that their Glorious Leader is a fucking fruitcake.
Can anyone tell what motivates the Lindsay?
He seems nowhere near as stupid as the man whose, let's say, boots he has chosen to lick.
Is it all about holding on to power? Money? Is he a closet racist finally coming out into the open, but still hiding some small nasty parts himself behind the Pretender's large behind?
@Ken Winkes: Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Also, (tentatively) February 29, 2020 (date for South Carolina GOP primary not yet set).
We are unable to predict what we will or will not do in extreme circumstances. Studies reveal that in sudden disasters only about 20% of people are able to take effective action. However, rehearsal of extreme events does improve performance in adverse circumstances. So to some extent, it is useful to imagine how one would do, or to review what we should or should not have done in certain events in our lives. But really we don't know how we will do.
However, this is not what Trump is doing. I have my own opinion of what diagnosis Trump may have, but the bottom line is that he cannot perform the basics of his job, and now he is putting our Constitution and our country at risk. He needs to be put out of office now. (full stop).
After what Congress can do now, I think we should get working on the 25th amendment. There's a lot about that amendment that i'm not sure of. For instance, can the cabinet alone declare him unfit? I think so, but what if a majority of the cabinet members are "acting", which means they have not been cleared by the senate?
@Victoria: Thank you. "It's easier to make moves when they're acting," Trump has said when about queried about the unusual number of acting Cabinet members. "Really, I like acting because I can move so quickly. It gives me more flexibility."
One does have to wonder if you have pinpointed the "real" reason Trump prefers his Cabinet members to be "acting": acting members might not have standing to vote on invocation of the 25th Amendment.
Bea,
Yeah, in a nutshell. The Pretender outpaced HRC in S. C. by 15 percentage points in 2016.
Still begs the question of what kind of man is this Lindsay fellow? What animates him to associate himself so publicly with a certified wack-a-doodle? Why not lie low, keep mostly mum and let the shit storm pass him by instead of smearing himself with the flying offal?
Nothing at all to be proud of I'd wager.
He must know his voters better than I'd care to.
Maybe Trump is saying by year ten of Obama's presidency the stress of being an actual president would be too much. Obama snaps and then it's WWIII. Does Trump fantasize about Obama still being president? I guess he has a lot of time to daydream since he doesn't do any real work.