Trump's Grandiose Narcissism and Other Chimpanzee Personalities

Donald Trump's Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a reminder of the importance of personality in political life.  This should draw attention to the biological science of political psychology, which includes the biological study of nonhuman animal personalities as showing the evolutionary roots of the personality traits manifest in U.S. presidents and other political actors.

Psychologists have identified two different dimensions of the narcissistic personality--grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism.  Trump is obviously a grandiose narcissist.

Psychologists have studied grandiose narcissism among U.S. Presidents.  Here's the abstract for one study (Watts et al. 2013):

"Recent research and theorizing suggest that narcissism may predict both positive and negative leadership behaviors.  We tested this hypothesis with data on the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush, using (a) expert-derived narcissism estimates, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential performance, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Grandiose, but not vulnerable, narcissism was associated with superior overall greatness in an aggregate poll; it was also positively associated with public persuasiveness, crisis management, agenda setting, and allied behaviors, and with several objective indicators of performance, such as winning the popular vote and initiating legislation.  Nevertheless, grandiose narcissism was also associated with several negative outcomes, including congressional impeachment resolutions and unethical behaviors.  We found that presidents exhibit elevated levels of grandiose narcissism compared with the general population, and that presidents' grandiose narcissism has been rising over time.  Our findings suggest that grandiose narcissism may be a double-edged sword in the leadership domain."

This study built upon the data set of Rubenzer and Faschingbauer (2004), who had 121 expert raters (such as historians and psychologists who have studied the lives of the U.S. presidents) evaluate the personality of the 41 U.S. presidents up to and including Bill Clinton.  Watts et al. (2013) added ratings of George W. Bush from a previous study.  They were then able to rank the first 42 presidents for their grandiose narcissism.  Here are the top seven:

1. Lyndon Johnson
2. Teddy Roosevelt
3. Andrew Jackson
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt
5. John Kennedy
6. Richard Nixon
7. Bill Clinton

This suggests that Trump's grandiose narcissistic personality is not unique among the U.S. presidents, although we might wonder whether Trump manifests a more extreme form of this personality than any other president.  Perhaps this shouldn't surprise us.  After all, shouldn't we expect that the sort of person who would have the driving ambition for power that would motivate him to successfully win the presidency would often have the traits of a grandiose narcissist--such as fearless dominance?

These same personality traits can be seen in other political animals.  I have written about the biology of animal personalities (here), and particularly chimpanzee personalities (here).  For me, this shows that any biopolitical science needs to include the biological biographies of the individual animals in any political community.  The biological study of the political life of any animal community must include not only the genetic history of the species and the cultural history of the community, but also the individual history of the political actors in the community, with each individual having distinct personality traits.

Now, a new article (Weiss et al. 2017) presents a study of the personality traits of the chimpanzees in the Kasekela and Mitumba communities of Gombe National Park in Tanzania.  The New York Times has an article on this study.

The method for identifying the personality traits of these chimpanzees was essentially the same as that used for studying the personalities of U.S. presidents.  The personalities of 128 chimpanzees in Gombe were rated on 24 items from the "Hominoid Personality Questionaire," which is a slightly modified version of questionaires used to rate the personality of human beings as following the "five-factor-model" of personality based on five domains--Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).  The ratings were made by the Tanzanian field assistants who have observed the chimpanzees at Gombe almost daily for over 30 years.

For each of the 24 items, the raters were asked to rate a chimpanzee on a seven point scale from low to high.  Each item was stated as an adjective along with one or two descriptive sentences.  Here are some examples:

"FEARFUL: Subject reacts excessively to real or imagined threats by displaying behaviors such as screaming, grimacing, running away or other signs of anxiety or distress."

"DOMINANT: Subject is able to displace, threaten, or take food from other chimpanzees.  Or subject may express high status by decisively intervening in social interactions."

"RECKLESS: Subject is rash or unconcerned about the consequences of its behaviors."

"THOUGHTLESS: Subject often behaves in a way that seems imprudent or forgetful."

"VULNERABLE: Subject is prone to be physically or emotionally hurt as a result of dominance displays, highly assertive behavior, aggression, or attack by another chimpanzee."

"BULLYING: Subject is overbearing and intimidating towards younger or lower ranking chimpanzees."

 "AGGRESSIVE: Subject often initiates fights or other menacing and agonistic encounters with other chimpanzees."

"IMPULSIVE: Subject often displays some spontaneous or sudden behavior that could not have been anticipated.  There often seems to be some emotional reason behind the sudden behavior."

These ratings were statistically analyzed for "interrater reliability"--that is, the degree to which the ratings of the same chimp by different raters agree.  For most of the items, the interrater reliabilities ranged from acceptable to good.

There are three important conclusions from this study.  First, this confirms that, like other animals that have been studied, these chimps really do show individual personalities.  Second, the patterns in the personalities of these wild chimps are similar to those found among captive chimps in zoos or study facilities.  Finally, this shows remarkable similarities in personality traits between these chimps and human beings, which suggests an evolutionary continuity in personality traits.

Notice how some of the items in the above list apply to Trump.  Dominant?  Reckless?  Thoughtless?  Bullying?  Aggressive?  Impulsive?  I have written some posts on "Trump's Chimpanzee Politics" (here  and here).

Notice also that the study of presidents found a connection between grandiose narcissism and impeachment resolutions and unethical behavior. If Trump is impeached by the Congress, or if the Cabinet uses the 25th Amendment to declare him "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," we will have to decide whether Trump's personality traits are so dangerous for the country that he should be removed from office.

Can the president's authority to launch nuclear strikes with thousands of nuclear warheads be trusted to someone with the most extreme form of grandiose narcissism, perhaps even more extreme than Lyndon Johnson or any other previous president?  Or should the Congress declare that the president has no constitutional authority to launch a preemptive attack without a congressional declaration of war?


REFERENCES

Rubenzer, S. J., and T. R. Faschingbauer. 2004. Personality, Character, and Leadership in the White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents. Brassey's Inc.

Watts, Ashley, et al. 2013.  "The Double-Edged Sword of Grandiose Narcissism: Implications for Successful and Unsuccessful Leadership Among U.S. Presidents." Psychological Science 24: 2379-2389.

Weiss, Alexander, Michael Wilson, D. Anthony Collins, Deus Mjungu, Shadrack Kamenya, Steffen Foerster, and Anne E. Pusey. 2017. "Personality in the Chimpanzees of Gombe National Park." Scientific Data 4, article number: 170146.

Trump's Grandiose Narcissism Explains His Competitive Authoritarianism

Donald Trump is not a protectionist.  He is not an isolationist.  He is not a nationalist.  He is not a conservative.  Terms like protectionism, isolationism, nationalism, and conservatism suggest some kind of social theory or doctrine.  But Trump doesn't do theory.

Sure, as I have indicated in my previous posts, Trump is attracted to the theory of the unitary executive.  But that's not because he's been persuaded that it's a correct theory.  He is attracted to that theory only because, and only so long as, it serves his real priority: the restless search for directing the public attention of the world to Donald Trump.

That explains why he sometimes rejects positions in the afternoon that he took in the morning.  Reversing himself so quickly surprises and shocks us so that we can't take our eyes off him.  And that's the point of it all.

That's why my wife and I need the Wall Street Journal to provide us with a "Trump Tracker" every morning.  This morning, it lists "45 Major Moves in 46 Days."

That's what you do if you're a grandiose narcissist like Trump.

Trump's grandiose narcissism also explains why Trump has decided to try in his second term to change the American regime from liberal democracy to competitive authoritarianism.  Again, this is not because he believes that competitive authoritarianism is in principle a better form of government, but because in the present circumstances of American political history, this form of government offers him the best prospect for keeping public attention constantly focused on himself.

First, I'll remind you of what I have said about grandiose narcissism as a personality disorder displayed by some authoritarian political leaders like Trump and by some other primates who strive for despotic dominance.  Then I'll explain what I mean by "competitive authoritarianism."

GRANDIOSE NARCISSISM

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes nine diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD):

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early childhood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Who does this remind you of? 

The narcissism of people like Trump can often give them the swagger and charismatic excitement that make them the center of attention in a way that can be translated into political success.   And, as Lincoln observed, many politically ambitious people like this will be satisfied in a liberal democracy to be elected as a congressman, a governor, or a president.  But this will not satisfy someone like Trump who thinks himself a "Towering Genius" like Napoleon who needed to become the Emperor to satisfy the grandiosity of his ambition.

COMPETITIVE AUTHORITARIANISM

As Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have argued in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Trump's Napoleonic narcissism is driving him to overturn American liberal democracy and replace it with competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2025).  "Competitive authoritarianism" is the term they have invented as a label for a distinctively hybrid regime that combines elements of democracy and authoritarianism, which has emerged around the world over the past 35 years since the end of the Cold War (Levitsky and Way 2002, 2010).

I have written about democracy and autocracy as the natural but not inevitable products of human political evolution.  What Levitsky and Way call competitive authoritarianism is a mixture of democratic competition and autocratic governance.

At one end of the political spectrum, a fully authoritarian regime either does not have multiparty elections for the executive and other offices of government, or it has elections, but they are not free and fair; and basic civil liberties (speech, press, association) are denied.

At the other end of the spectrum, a fully democratic regime has multiparty elections that are free and fair, most adults have the right to vote, basic civil liberties are protected, and the authority of elected governments is not restricted by unelected military or clerical powers.

Somewhere between these two extremes of the spectrum, a competitive authoritarian regime has multiparty elections, but they are not completely free and fair, because the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the electoral playing field against the opposition, and basic civil liberties are restricted to make it hard for the opposition to challenge the ruling party.

Under competitive authoritarianism, opposition forces can compete seriously for power.  And, occasionally, the opposition can win an election, and the incumbents lose.  But this regime is still not fully democratic, because the ruling party uses its power over the government to attack opponents and co-opt critics.

These three regime types are distinguished by the kind of countervailance--power checking power--that they allow.  A fully authoritarian regime allows little or no countervailance.  A fully democratic regime allows strong countervailance.  A competitive authoritarian regime allows weak countervailance.

For example, in a competitive authoritarian regime, the ruling party can politicize and weaponize the government bureaucracy by filling it with party loyalists who will use the power of the government to punish opponents and reward allies.  Levitsky and Way point out:  

One of the first moves undertaken by elected autocrats such a Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey has been to purge professional civil servants from public agencies responsible for things such as investigating and prosecuting wrongdoing, regulating the media and the economy, and overseeing elections--and replace them with loyalists.  After Orban became prime minister in 2010, his government stripped public employees of key civil service protections, fired thousands, and replaced them with loyal members of the ruling Fidesz party.  Likewise, Poland's Law and Justice party weakened civil service laws by doing away with the competitive hiring process and filling the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the military with partisan allies (Levitsky and Way 2025: 41).

But notice that of all of these examples of competitive authoritarian ruling parties, one of them--Poland's Law and Justice party--lost its majority power in Poland's parliamentary elections of 2023.  So, this illustrates the real political competition in these regimes because the ruling party can occasionally lose to the opposition, even though the competitive playing field is unfairly tilted to favor the ruling party.  In a fully authoritarian regime, the ruling party would never lose an election.

Notice also that the list of competitive authoritarians includes Viktor Orban, who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, the longest serving prime minister in the history of that country.  For Trump and the right-wing intellectuals advising him, Orban is the model of what Trump would like to become in the United States.

Trump failed to do this in his first term for various reasons.  He did not have enough experience in government to plan ahead what he needed to do.  He appointed some establishment Republicans who were not slavishly loyal to him.  And he did not fully control the Republican Party.  

But now, he has come into his second term with a plan for establishing presidential authoritarian government provided to him by the Heritage Foundation (Project 2025), the Claremont Institute, The Federalist Society, and others.  He has turned the Republican Party into the Trump Party, so that the Republican-controlled Congress will not restrain his authoritarianism.  And he is filling the Executive Branch with his personal loyalists who will be his compliant servants.

Levitsky and Way are right in predicting that even if Trump is successful in doing this, he will not be able to establish a fully authoritarian regime--a fascist or one-party dictatorship.  There will be mid-term congressional elections in 2026 and a presidential election in 2028.  And Trump's opponents could win one or both of those elections.  Because even if Trump establishes a competitive authoritarianism, it will be truly competitive, although the competition will not be fully free or fair.

And yet, as Levitsky and Way say, Trump's success in establishing an authoritarian regime will be limited in at least three ways.  First, American constitutional institutions are stronger than in other competitive authoritarian regimes.  For example, an independent judiciary, federalism, a bicameral legislature, and midterm elections are all absent in Orban's Hungary.

Second, Trump is not as popular as many of the successful elected autocrats have been.  Some of them have had approval ratings of over 80 percent.  Trump has never come close to that.  Until recently, Orban and his party have been very popular.  But now his popularity has fallen behind the opposition Tisza Party, which could win the parliamentary elections in 2026.

A third constraint on Trump is the countervailing power generated by American civil society.  American capitalism generates a larger and richer private sector than is the case in any other country, and that creates dispersed power centers outside the government that are difficult to fully capture or bully.

But then, of course, the richest American is the leader of the Trump takeover of the government--Elon Musk.  That raises an interesting question.  How can a grandiose narcissist share the spotlight of public attention with another grandiose narcissist?  The answer is obvious--he doesn't.

So, at some point, Trump will have to fire Musk.  And he probably will blame Musk for many of the bad decisions made in Trump's second term.

REFERENCES (FOR THIS AND THE PRECEDING THREE POSTS)

Arnhart, Larry. 2009. Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question. Ed. Kenneth Blanchard. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.

Arnhart, Larry. 2012. "Biopolitical Science." In James Fleming and Sanford Levinson, eds., Evolution and Morality.  Nomos LII. New York: New York University Press.

Arnhart, Larry. 2016. Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Calabresi, Steven. 2021. "'A Shining City on a Hill': The Unitary Executive and the Deep State." The Balkinization Symposium on Skowronek, Dearborn, and King, Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive, July 18.

Calabresi, Steven, and Christopher Yoo. 2008. The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.

Chabot, Christine Kexel. 2020. "Is the Federal Reserve Constitutional? An Originalist Argument for Independent Agencies." Notre Dame Law Review 96: 1-54.

Chabot, Christine Kexel. 2022. "Interring the Unitary Executive." Notre Dame Law Review 98: 129-209.

Gordon, Scott. 1999. Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. 1961. The Federalist. Ed. Jacob E. Cooke. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press.

Herndon, William H. 1983. Herndon's Life of Lincoln. New York: Da Capo Press.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2002. "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism." Journal of Democracy 13 (April): 51-65.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2025. "The Path to American Authoritarianism." Foreign Affairs 104 (March/April): 36-51.

Lincoln, Abraham. 1953. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 8 vols. Ed. Roy Basler. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Lincoln, Abraham. 1989. Speeches and Writings. Ed. Don Fehrenbacher. New York: The Library of America. 

Nathan, Richard P. 1975. The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Roberts, Andrew. 2014. Napoleon: A Life. New York: Viking.

Shane, Scott. 2006. "Recent Flexing of Presidential Powers Had Personal Roots in Ford White House." New York Times. December 30.

Shugerman, Jed Handelsman. 2022. "Vesting." Stanford Law Review 74 (June): 1479-1570.

Shugerman, Jed Handelsman. 2023. "The Indecisions of 1798: Inconstant Originalism and Strategic Ambiguity." University of Pennsylvania Law Review 171: 753-867.

Skowronek, Stephen, John Dearborn, and Desmond King. 2021. Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tillman, Seth Barrett. 2016. "Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History, and Scholarship." Military Law Review 224: 482-540.

Wilson, Edmund. 1966. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.

How Roy Cohn Created Donald Trump and His Narcissistic Nihilism

 

In 2018, Donald Trump became enraged because he thought Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not doing enough to protect him from investigations of Russian support for his 2016 presidential campaign.  At one point, he shouted, "Where's my Roy Cohn?"  

Roy Cohn (1927-1986) had been Trump's lawyer and fixer for thirteen years from their first meeting in 1973 to Cohn's death in 1986.  For me, the two best accounts of how Cohn created Trump are Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark's new book American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump (Scribner, 2026) and the 2024 biographical movie The Apprentice, which is easily available at Amazon Prime Video.  Trump described this film as "a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job" and described those involved in the film as "human scum."  That means it's totally accurate.

Cohn first gained national prominence as a young Justice Department prosecutor who won the court case that led to the conviction and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for Russian espionage in 1953.  He then became the chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who was attempting to expose government employees who were communist spies or those who were homosexual and thus "security threats" because they could be blackmailed into becoming spies.  

In his work with McCarthy, Cohn became known for his ruthless methods that were often illegal and unethical.  He was also known for his hypocrisy in exposing homosexuals in government.  He was a homosexual although he always denied it publicly.  

From the late 1950s to his death, Cohn was a practicing lawyer in New York City whose clients included the most powerful and prominent people in politics and business as well as organized crime.  He was often prosecuted for his criminal behavior, but he was never convicted.  Finally, however, in 1986, he was disbarred by the New York State Supreme Court for unethical and unprofessional conduct, including misappropriation of clients' funds, lying on a bar application, and falsifying a change to a will.  A few months after his disbarment, he died from the complications from AIDS. 

When Cohn first met Trump in 1973, Trump was working for his father's real estate company.  The Justice Department had just filed a suit against Fred Trump's company charging them with violating the 1968 Fair Housing Act.  According to the Justice Department, thirty-nine Trump-owned apartment buildings in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island had systematically barred blacks from renting.  Their applications had been marked by a large "C," to identify the applicants as "colored."  Four Trump building superintendents were willing to testify to this.

The Feds proposed that if the Trumps signed a consent decree by which they agreed to integrate their sixteen thousand units, then there would be no fines and no admission of guilt.  But Cohn's legal strategy was always attack, attack, attack.  So he persuaded Trump to countersue the Department of Justice on the grounds of defamation, seeking $100,000 in damages.  Cohn and Trump held a press conference at the New Hilton to announce their suit.  They got a lot of newspaper headlines.  A federal judge dismissed the suit as frivolous, telling Cohn that he was "wasting time and paper."  But that was the point: Cohn's favorite tactic was to file totally bogus lawsuits that would delay the legal process and wear down his opponents.

Cohn dragged out the legal proceedings for twenty-one months.  He charged that FBI agents were coercing witnesses with "gestapo-like interrogation," and they were acting like "stormtroopers."  When the judge reprimanded him for making charges that were "utterly without foundation," Cohn retracted his statement.

Then he filed a contempt motion to have a young prosecutor--Donna Goldstein--removed from the case because she had been calling prospective witnesses in the middle of the night and threatening them with jail time if they didn't testify against Trump.  It was an absurd claim with no evidence to support it, but Goldstein was scared because such a charge could end her legal career.  U.S. District Judge Edward Neaher was forced to halt the main case and hold a hearing on the contempt motion.  A prosecutor spent two hours proving that the charges were baseless.  Cohen was silent throughout.  The judge then spoke to Cohn: "Mr. Cohn, I think it would be in the best interest of everyone if you would just withdraw your motion."  Cohn replied: "Well, I think the girl [Goldstein] has learned her lesson and I'm sure she won't do it again."

Eventually, in June 1975, Trump settled by signing the same consent decree that he could have signed in 1973.  He agreed to advertise his rentals in Black owned newspapers and list vacancies with the Urban League.  In effect, Trump had agreed to adopt an affirmative action program.

Trump and Cohn held a press conference and declared victory.  Trump has often claimed that this was his first great victory in the courts with Cohn as his lawyer.  As Bird and Goldmark have observed: "Trump learned from Cohn that the court of public opinion is far more important than the court of law" (265).

Three years later, the Feds filled another suit claiming that the Trumps were still discriminating against Blacks.  Cohn told reporters that the charges were without "the slightest merit."  But Cohn and Trump signed a new consent decree without admitting wrongdoing.

Bird and Goldmark conclude: "Roy had taught him that the pyrotechnics of publicity were more important than the law. What counted was controlling the images in any narrative" (266).  They quote from Sam Roberts, a New York Times reporter who covered city politics in the 1970s: "Roy was a master of situational morality.  He worked with a three-dimensional strategy, which was: 1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. counterattack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat."

In all of this, I see four character traits shared by Cohen and Trump: power-seeking, no ideology, narcissism, and nihilism.

1. Power-seeking.  Like Cohn, Trump has sought power--or at least the appearance of power--and it's power for its own sake, not power as a means to any end.  There are only two kinds of people in the world--winners and losers.  The winners are those who are powerful.  The losers are those who are not.  

As I have pointed out in a previous post, Trump's ambition cannot be satisfied by the limited powers granted to the President in the American Constitution.  As he told Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan when they interviewed him on March 16 of this year, it is not even enough for him to be the most powerful president who has ever lived, because he must be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known," which is what "a historian" had told him he was.  Haberman and Swan later found out that this "historian" was not a professional historian but the long-time caddie for the golfer Gary Player.

But notice that the mere appearance of power is enough for Trump.  For that, all he needs is the testimony of a golf caddie to his world-historical power.

2. No ideology.  Cohn was assumed to be a McCarthyite anti-communist Republican conservative.  Trump has been assumed to be a populist Republican conservative and an "America First" isolationist.  But in fact neither man was devoted to a coherent ideology.  Although Cohn was an informal adviser to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, he became a powerful member of the Democratic Party machine in New York.  Harvard law school professor Alan Dershowitz knew both Cohn and Trump in the 1980s, and he has said that neither Cohn nor Trump were ideological.  "Roy Cohn didn't really have any ideology, even anti-communist ideology.  He was somebody who rewarded loyalty and punished disloyalty," Dershowitz observed.  He saw that while both Cohn and Trump "wanted to win," they were "among the two least ideological people I knew."

Both Cohn and Trump pretended to have a populist ideology.  But as Bird and Goldmark note, this was a purely opportunistic stance by which they "used their personal resentments to tap into raw populist emotions that have long festered in American society" (382).  This pretense of populist ideology was only an instrument in the pursuit of power for its own sake.  Consequently, their ideology could be set aside if they thought some other position would better serve their pursuit of power.

For example, in all three of Trump's presidential campaigns, one of the preeminent themes was an "America First" foreign policy of isolationism and "no more foreign wars," particularly in the Middle East.  But then many of his most fervent MAGA supporters (such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson) were shocked when he launched his war against Iran.  They thought Trump was committed to an ideology of "American First" foreign policy.  

When Trump was asked by Haberman and Swan how helping Israel fight Iran could be consistent with his theme of "America First," he answered: "Well, considering that I'm the one that developed 'America First,' and considering that the term wasn't used until I came along, I think I'm the one that decides that" (194).  In other words, "America First" means whatever Trump says it means, and his followers will have to accept that.  

Ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Shah of Iran and established the Islamic Republic of Iran, when Trump was 32 years old, Iran has been a thorn in the side of the United States; and Trump throughout those years has complained that America has been humiliated by the failure of every President to defeat Iran.  

Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House at the beginning of his second term, and he shrewdly began working on Trump's psychology of power-seeking to persuade him that he could be the first president powerful enough to defeat Iran in cooperation with Israel.  Haberman and Swan report that Trump ignored the warnings of his military and intelligence advisors that Netanyahu's plan for "regime change" in Iran was wildly unrealistic and that going to war with Iran would be a foreign policy blunder of massive proportions.  Trump could not listen to them because Netanyahu had seduced him with the prospect of displaying his power to the whole world by defeating Iran in war.

3. Narcissism.  I have written about Trump's grandiose narcissism.  Cohn showed the same narcissistic personality.  And for both the prominent sign of their narcissism was shamelessness.  Cohn's cousin David Marcus has observed that both men didn't care what other people thought about their behavior.  "Roy would just make light of the fact that people in the family just didn't care about him.  He did not care.  That's the odd thing."  Marcus thought Trump was the same way, but there was a difference.  Trump showed "a narcissism combined with insecurity.  But in Roy it was a total security in who he was--except for the fact that he didn't want people knowing in public he was gay."  Mary Trump--Trump's niece, the daughter of his older brother who died young--has made a similar assessment of Trump as a psychopathic narcissist with the insecurity of a little boy who fears the abusive scorn of his father.

4. Nihilism.  Narcissism is intertwined with nihilism because if one believes the nihilist claim that truth and morality are not real, if they are just fictions of one's own mind, then the narcissist can create his own truth and his own morality.  Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the screenplay for The Apprentice, has Cohn telling the young Trump that "there is no right and wrong.  There is no morality.  There is no Truth with a capital T.  It's a construct.  It's a fiction.  It's man made.  You create your own reality."  Cohn once told an interviewer: "Certain rules are made to be broken.  They're designed to screw the little guy.  I decided long ago to make my own rules, to act according to my own choices, my own judgments, and my own conscience."

Compare this with what Trump recently said in an interview with the New York Times.  He was asked if there were any limits on his global powers.  He answered: "Yeah, there is one thing.  My own morality.  My own mind.  It's the only thing that can stop me."  Notice the emphasis by both Cohn and Trump: my own rules, my own judgments, my own conscience, my own morality, my own mind.  That's narcissistic nihilism.

For Cohn and Trump, their narcissistic nihilism is even expressed in the way they talk, in certain telling phrases.  Roger Stone noticed that Cohn would always say, "If you wanna know the truth," or "I can tell you," or "to be absolutely frank," and then you would know he was going to lie to you.  Listen to Trump when he's speaking casually to reporters or to audiences at his rallies, and you'll hear the same phrases.  Trump's phrases are all Roy Cohn's phrases, and they are always introducing a big lie.

So that's how Roy Cohn created Donald Trump and his narcissistic nihilistic politics.

The day after Trump was first elected president in November of 2016, Roger Stone called him to congratulate him.  At the end of their conversation, Trump said, "Wouldn't Roy love to see this moment?  Boy, do we miss him."

What Might Drive a Grandiose Narcissist Like Donald Trump to Suicide?

 

Recently, Donald Trump posted a video of himself as the Superhero that America needs, another childish expression of his grandiose narcissism.  He said that a "BIG ANNOUNCEMENT" would be coming. 

Over the past month, however, it has become clear that Trump's popular appeal has faded, even among his most cultish followers.  Increasingly, even his fanatical supporters now see him as a pathetic loser.  This will throw him into a narcissistic rage.  As he begins to feel the humiliation of failure and entrapment, will he at some point feel that the only way out is suicide?

I have written previously about Trump's personality as a grandiose narcissist, and how other American presidents and some alpha male chimpanzees have shown the same personality.  Remarkably, Jane Goodall has said that Trump's personality is familiar to her from her observations of some of the dominant male chimpanzees at Gombe.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes nine diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD):

"A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early childhood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

"(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

"(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

"(3) believes that he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

"(4) requires excessive admiration

"(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

"(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

"(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

"(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

"(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes." 

The narcissism of people like Trump can often give them the swagger and charismatic excitement that make them the center of attention in a way that can be translated into political success.  But once the popularity of this bombastic personality fades, the narcissist can feel such a "severe narcissistic injury" (as the psychiatrists call it) that he can suddenly decide that killing himself is his only escape.

Elsa Ronningstam (at Harvard Medical School) is one of the leading psychologists in the study of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and she and her colleagues have noted that the most severe narcissists have a high risk of suicide.   She has observed: 

". . . suicides in individuals with NPD can be sudden, carefully implemented and with high lethality. . . ."

". . . In one such type of sudden suicide, a need for superiority over life and death, with triumph over fear and pain, and with fantasies connecting lethal self-harm with control, active mastery and self-esteem, can endorse suicide.  In this context, there is a detachment in the narcissistic mental processing between the suicidal act and its real meaning, that is, the end of life. . . . a combination of affect dysregulation with self-enhancement and vulnerability can readily trigger suicide-related behavior in the context of interpersonal or life-related narcissistic injuries, limitations, trauma, or defeats" (Ronningstam et al. 2018: 501-502).

After all, what alternative is there for a grandiose narcissist like Trump when he faces humiliating defeat and no way to escape from this except by killing himself?

Trump might kill himself at any time.  Or he might wait until he is in jail, like Jeffrey Epstein.

Oh, and what was the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT promised by Trump?  Donald Trump Digital Trading Cards with pictures of Trump as a Marvel Superhero.  You can begin your collection with a credit card and pay only $99 for each!

But you should hurry.  Because Michael Anton, Curtis Yarvin, and other Trump enthusiasts at the Claremont Institute will be buying up these trading cards as a record of Trumps profound authoritarian statesmanship. 

REFERENCE

Ronningstam, Elsa, Igor Weinberg, Mark Goldblatt, Mark Schechter, and Bejamin Herbstman. 2018. "Suicide and Self-Regulation in Narcissistic Personality Disorder." Psychodynamic Psychiatry 46 (4): 491-510.

Trump and Political Philosophy (4): The "Art of the Deal" and the Bible--Trump's Two Best Books

                                                    Trump Plugs His Two Best Books

                                                         Trump Autographs the Bible

Tony Schwartz--Trump's Ghostwriter

     
                                          The Introduction to Season 1 of "The Apprentice"

Donald Trump was elected president because of his rhetorical success in promoting the myth of himself as the self-made multibillionaire, and that all began in 1987 with the publication of The Art of the Deal.

There is a straight line from this book to "The Apprentice" and then to Trump's rhetoric in his presidential campaign.  Prior to the book, Trump was not well-known outside of New York City.  Once the book became a world-wide bestseller--over a million copies--Trump was an international celebrity known as the young brash businessman who became one of the richest people in the world because he knew how to make deals, and he did it all on his own.

When Mark Burnett, the reality-television producer, read The Art of the Deal, he got the idea for having Trump as the star for "The Apprentice."  When the show premiered in 2004, it started with Trump in the back of his limousine, being driven through New York City, as Trump says, "I've mastered the art of the deal, and I've turned the name Trump into the highest-quality brand."  An image of the book's cover flashes onscreen as Trump explains that as the "master," he will now seek an "apprentice," and this will be the show--to see who can succeed in helping him manage his building projects.

Then, on June 16, 2015, he gave his speech in the atrium of Trump Tower announcing his candidacy for the presidency; and in laying out his qualifications, he said: "We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal."

He repeated this in his campaign speeches--saying that American politicians have failed to lead the country, that they could learn how to lead by reading The Art of the Deal, but now the voters have the chance to elect the author of that book.  He also explained that while The Art of the Deal was his second favorite book, he had to rank the Bible as the best book.  Remarkably, while campaigning, he often autographed copies of both The Art of the Deal and the Bible.

When Tony Schwartz--Trump's ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal--saw the broadcast of Trump's June 16th speech, Schwartz sent out a tweet: "Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on the fact that I wrote 'The Art of the Deal.'"  Later, speaking to Jane Mayer for an article in The New Yorker, Schwartz said that he had noticed that Trump had somehow convinced himself that he had written the book himself.  And Schwartz wondered: "If he could lie about that on Day One--when it was so easily refuted--he is likely to lie about anything."

Schwartz has confessed his sense of guilt that in writing The Art of the Deal, he started the myth of Trump as the self-made billionaire that led to Trump's presidential campaign.  He has admitted that his agreeing to write the book was a selling of his soul to the devil.  When Trump asked him to write the book in 1985, Schwartz was in financial trouble and worried about supporting his family.  Trump's offer to him--half of the $500,000 advance from Random House and half of the royalties--was too good to turn down.  In fact, the sales of the book made him a multimillionaire.  But now he has tried to redeem himself by speaking publicly about what he saw of Trump's true character and the danger that poses for the country.  "I put lipstick on a pig," Schwartz has said.  "I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is."

Initially, Schwartz thought he could get the material for the book by interviewing Trump over a number of weeks.  But he quickly discovered that Trump had such a short attention span that he could not be questioned about anything for more than a few minutes before he lost interest and refused to continue the interview.  Trump was happy to talk with reporters looking for some short sound-bite comments.  But he lacked any capacity for self-reflection in talking about his life.  Schwartz worried that it would be impossible for him to gather enough information from talking with Trump to write the book.

Then Schwartz came up with an alternative way to work on this.  He got Trump to agree to allow him to listen to all of Trump's telephone calls, which is how he conducted much of his business, while also following Trump to all of his meetings.  Schwartz would then interview the people that he met through Trump and gather information and documents from them.  He did this for over a year and a half.  So over this time, he came to know Trump better than anyone outside his immediate family.  Not only did Schwartz write the book, he also kept a journal where he wrote out his private thoughts about Trump's personality and his life.  When he began speaking publicly about Trump in 2016, he used his private journal to sketch Trump's true character.

He observed that Trump is driven entirely by the need for public attention--an insatiable hunger for money, power, praise, and celebrity.  He does not care about anything or anyone other than himself as an object of public acclaim.  Any sign that people do not love him as much he loves himself or any sign that those working for him are not absolutely loyal to him throws him into an angry fit of rage.  He will do anything to keep himself the center of attention, which often means saying or doing what he knows will be deeply offensive to people, because that forces people to pay attention to him.  That's the whole point of his tweeting rants. And he must constantly boast about himself and insist that no one is as great as he is.  (This is what I have written about in a previous post as Trump's grandiose narcissism.)

Trump's Advice to College Students in Wisconsin: "You'll find that when you become very successful, the people that you will like best are the people that are less successful than you, because when you go to a table, you can tell them all of these wonderful stories, and they'll sit back and listen.  Does that make sense to you?  OK?  Always be around unsuccessful people because everybody will respect you."  (I should say the rest of his remarks in this speech are not as disturbing as this one.)

Here's the first paragraph of The Art of the Deal:

"I don't do it for the money.  I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need.  I do it to do it.  Deals are my art form.  Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry.  I like making deals, preferably big deals.  That's how I get my kicks" (p. 1).

Schwartz says that this is a lie.  Of course Trump does it for the money.  That's why he becomes angry whenever business journalists write stories about how he is not as wealthy as he claims--that he is not one of the richest people in the world.  That making deals is for him an intrinsically joyful art--like writing poetry--sounds nice, but it's not true.  That it really is all about the money--or about his exaggerated claims about how much he has--is indicated (as I suggested in my previous post) by his ending his campaign book Great Again with a list of 70 of his properties--commercial buildings, golf resorts, mansions, airplanes, helicopters--that's why he does it, and that's what we're supposed to admire--his pile of luxurious stuff.

Trump's lying about his wealth is part of a pattern of shameless lying.  "Lying is second nature to him," Schwartz has said.  "More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."

In writing The Art of the Deal, Schwartz says, he knew he would need to contrive "an artful euphemism" to make Trump's lying sound innocent.  In one of the most often quoted passages in the book, he wrote:

"The final key to the way I promote is bravado.  I play to people's fantasies.  People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do.  That's why a little hyperbole never hurts.  People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular."

"I call it truthful hyperbole.  It's an innocent form of exaggeration--and a very effecitive form of promotion" (p. 58).

We have heard a lot of "truthful hyperbole" in Trump's political speeches, including his State of the Union Tuesday night.  But "truthful hyperbole" that is "innocent"?  Schwartz now says that "deceit" is never "innocent."  "'Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms.  It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?'"  He says that Trump loved the phrase.  The White House Press Office has used the phrase to justify Trump's lies.

That "people want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest" is an important part of the popular appeal of Trump's rhetoric.  In the second chapter of The Art of the Deal--"Trump Cards: The Elements of the Deal"--the first rule is "Think Big."

"I like thinking big.  I always have.  To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.  Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning.  And that gives people like me a great advantage" (pp. 46-47).

But then we have to wonder--when Trump brags about his "biggest and greatest" achievements, is this only "truthful hyperbole," or maybe not so truthful at all?  So, for example, when Trump told us Tuesday night that at the beginning of 2017, America was in a deep dark decline--economically, militarily, and culturally--and now after only three years, Trump has made America great again in every way, should we believe that?

Trump's rhetorical enthymeme is that we can trust him to make America great again, because we can see the greatness he has achieved in his business life, as described in The Art of the Deal and his other books.  But if one compares the story told in The Art of the Deal with the actual record of what he has done, one sees that much of that story is a lie.  As I have already indicated in a previous post, a big part of that lie is Trump's claim that his father gave him very little help: "My father had done very well for himself, but he didn't believe in giving his children huge trust funds.  When I graduated from college, I had a net worth of perhaps $200,000, and most of it was tied up in buildings in Brooklyn and Queens" (p. 93).  Now we know that by the time that young Donald was 8 years old, he was already a millionaire, and that was only the beginning of his father's life-long payouts to his son that saved Donald from financial ruin.

And if we're judging Trump's success in "thinking big," we need to examine the history of his biggest construction project, which he expected would be his greatest achievement.  In The Art of the Deal, Trump devotes one long chapter to what originated as his first major deal in Manhattan in 1974 (pp. 325-354).  He secured the option to purchase the railroad yards of the Penn Central Railroad on the West Side of Manhattan--78 acres on the Hudson River between 59th Street and 72nd Street.  He was forced to give up his option in the summer of 1979.  But then he bought it back in January 1985.

At the end of 1985, Trump (then only 39 years old) held a news conference to unveil his plans--with drawings and models.  He said this was "the greatest piece of land in urban America."  He would build 8,000 apartments and condominiums for up to 20,000 people, some 3.6 million square feet of television and movie studio space, and some 2 million square feet of space for luxury stores.  There would be six 76-story towers.  And rising above all of this would be the world's tallest skyscraper, with Trump living at the top--"above the clouds," he told someone.  At first, he named it Television City.  Later, he named it Trump City.  The New York Times described it as his "bid for immortality."

Trump promised that because of his unique skill for making deals, the construction for this project would start as early as 1987.  This would have been his biggest deal of all, because he had to persuade hundreds if not thousands of people to allow this--politicians in charge of zoning regulations and tax rebates, citizens in the surrounding neighborhoods, architecture critics, and bankers.

He failed.  By 1991 and 1992, he had filed for corporate bankruptcy four times; and he was headed to personal bankruptcy.  In 1994, he had to sell 70% of the ownership of the rail yards land to a consortium of Hong Kong businessmen.  In 1990, he had already agreed to capitulate to the opponents of his project, and he accepted the plans for development of the land proposed by an Upper West Side community group.  Their plans called for smaller, shorter buildings, and certainly not the world's tallest building.  It would be called not Trump City but Riverside South.

Pushed into a corner, Trump was forced to reverse his big plans and accept something small, because that was the only way he could survive.  And in so far as he did survive, he had turned defeat into a kind of victory, although it was a victory that depended on his father's help in bailing him out.

Michael Kruse, writing an article on Trump's failure to build Trump City, draws an insightful conclusion from this as showing Trump to be "the most successful failer of all time":

"On the Upper West Side, Trump was overbearing, tactless, and tone-deaf.  His proposals were extreme, offensive and ill-conceived.  Many of the people who fought him thought they beat him.  The prevented him from doing what he actually wanted to do.  But those buildings were built.  That money was money he made.  It's the Trump Paradox: He's the most successful failer of all time.  Because what really happened with what become Trump Place was that he created such a disturbance for so long that his opponents literally did his work, designing his development for him, which saved him, which enabled him to maintain a veneer of credibility, which allowed the 'Apprentice' to present him as it did, which let him run for president.  The election was an apt capstone.  He lost (the popular vote), but he won (the Electoral College).  And so, his transactional, bluff-and-bluster, react-to-me life became a candidacy, and now a presidency, that is driving change on a far larger canvas than just the New York skyline."

If this is true, there are lessons here both for Trump's opponents and his supporters.  For the opponents, the lesson is that defeating him requires backing him into a corner where he cannot survive without capitulating in a way that he can present as a success.  For the supporters, the lesson is that while Trump is likely to fail to deliver on his biggest promises, his grandiose bluster might shake things up in such a way as to bring some small but momentous changes to American politics.

Trump Is a Narcissistic Political Imposter Driving America to Geopolitical Defeat and National Bankruptcy

I have written about the evolution of human progress through the Liberal Enlightenment.  But I have also written about how Donald Trump's grandiose narcissism could threaten the two pillars of the Liberal Enlightenment--liberal constitutionalism and liberal internationalism.  Now, in the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan--Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump--we have an insider's account of the first year and a half of Trump's second term that shows how Trump's quest for absolute power over the whole world has exploded the liberal norms of constitutionalism and internationalism.  

But Haberman and Swan's analysis of Trump and his presidency falls short in many ways.  For example, they rightly stress the importance for Trump of his claim to be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known," but they mistakenly suggest that he is right about this.  They don't see how Trump's disastrous war against Iran shows that he is not as powerful as he claims to be.  They don't see that America's military defeat in Iran is part of a general decline in America's global power caused by Trump that could allow China to become the new geopolitical superpower.  

Haberman and Swan also ignore Trump's massive increases in deficit spending that are driving the U.S. to a colossal debt crisis, which is another example of Trump's political incompetence. 

Haberman and Swan don't recognize that Trump is a narcissistic political imposter who has failed as a political leader just as he has failed as a businessman.  Trump is a con man, and his claim that he has always been a "winner" in both business and politics is all part of the con.  Haberman should be able to recognize this because her previous book on Trump was entitled Confidence Man!

Mary Trump (Trump's niece) is better than Haberman and Swan in explaining Trump's psychological profile as a narcissistic psychopath produced by his father's abusive parenting.

MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN!

Haberman and Swan write about a conversation between Trump and Tucker Carlson.  Carlson warned him not to go to war with Iran.  Trump answered: "We're not doing that."  Carlson responded: "Good, because the only thing that can blow up your administration is if you get into a war with Iran. Your voters don't want any more wars. . . This is a trap set by your enemies.  These people fucking hate you.  And once you get in, it's very hard to get out of it.  And that'll wreck your presidency.  That'll wreck everything.  You won't be able to do anything."  Trump then said: "I don't think there's ever been an American President as powerful as I am."  Carlson replied, "Certainly not since FDR. Really, the only thing that could wreck it is war with Iran" (74-75).

Notice the subtle point in this exchange.  Carlson was warning Trump that going to war with Iran would expose the limits of his power because he would lose the support of his voters, and he would not be able to win the war.  Trump refused to accept this suggestion that his power was limited by saying that no President had ever been as powerful as he was.  Carlson answered by saying sure you're at least as powerful as FDR, but even so, you're not powerful enough to successfully fight a war with Iran without destroying your presidency.

In contrast to Carlson's warnings to Trump about the limits of his power, Benjamin Netanyahu flattered Trump by telling him how powerful he was as America's Commander-in-Chief, and then insisting that the most dramatic display of his power would be to join Israel in a war against Iran.

Ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Shah of Iran and established the Islamic Republic of Iran, when Trump was 32 years old, Iran has been a thorn in the side of the United States; and Trump throughout those years has complained that America has been humiliated by the failure of every President to defeat Iran.  Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House at the beginning of his second term, and he immediately began working on Trump to persuade him that he could be the first president powerful enough to defeat Iran in cooperation with Israel.

When Israel first launched its 12-day war of bombing Iran on June 12, 2025, the U.S. was officially not involved.  But Netanyahu knew that once Trump saw the apparent success of Israel's campaign on Fox News, he would not be satisfied to be a mere bystander to history, and he would have to jump into the war so that he could be the center of attention.  Specifically, Netanyahu needed Trump to drop "the big one"--the thirty-thousand-pound bunker-busting bomb that only the U.S. has.  When Trump finally decided to enter the fighting for one day on June 21 ("Operation Midnight Hammer"), 14 of these bunker-busting bombs were dropped on Iran's Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant and the Natanz Nuclear Facility.  This was the first time this bomb was used in combat.  Trump announced that Iran's nuclear program had been "totally obliterated."  

Trump also suggested that it was time for "regime change" in Iran.  On Truth Social, he wrote: "It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change.'  But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???  MIGA!!!"

When Trump was asked how helping Israel fight Iran could be consistent with his theme of "America First," he answered: "Well, considering that I'm the one that developed 'America First,' and considering that the term wasn't used until I came along, I think I'm the one that decides that" (194).  In other words, "America First" means whatever Trump says it means, and his followers will have to accept that.  

That's his ultimate power: he speaks into existence whatever he happens to want at any moment.  Haberman and Swan quote one senior administration official as saying privately that U.S. policy on any given issue is "whatever Donald Trump said last on the subject," which will then change "in twenty-four hours, or in two hours, or in one minute" (190).

Within a few months after "Operation Midnight Hammer," Netanyahu was back asking Trump to join him in a larger war against Iran.  On February 11, 2026, Netanyahu met in the Situation Room, a restricted space in the lower level of the White House, with Trump and a small group of senior advisors along with intelligence and military officials.  Netanyahu made an hour-long presentation that argued four points.  First, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, could be killed by an airstrike on his compound.  Second, Iran's military power--particularly, its ballistic missile program--could be crippled by airstrikes.  Third, an intense bombing campaign would provoke a popular rebellion to overthrow the regime.  And, finally, a new leader, such as Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah, could take power as a secular ruler who could overturn the theocratic government.

The next day, February 12, Trump had another meeting in the Situation Room.  Two senior intelligence officers briefed him on the U.S. intelligence analysis of Netanyahu's presentation.  They judged that the first two objectives--killing the Ayatollah and crippling Iran's ballistic missile program were achievable.  But the second two objectives--a popular revolution overthrowing the government and the installation of a new secular leader--were ridiculously unrealistic.

Trump suggested that for him achieving the first two objectives would be enough to justify going to war.  But Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned about two problems.  A major war against Iran would deplete stockpiles of American munitions and missile interceptors that had already been reduced by years of support for Ukraine and Israel.  This would make it difficult for the U.S. to engage in any future war--such as defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.  The second problem was that Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz and impede the shipments of oil.  Trump dismissed this because he assumed that Iran would surrender and not have the power to shut the strait.

On the morning of February 28, at 2:30 a.m., Trump announced the war on Iran ("Operation Epic Fury") with a post on Truth Social, with an eight-minute video.  He expected that the war would be over in a few weeks.

Of course, we now have seen that General Caine's two warnings have come true.  Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz has been its greatest weapon in defeating the U.S.  And the U.S. now has a severe shortage of munitions and interceptor missiles that will take many years to replenish.

The worst consequence is that Xi Jinping now sees an opportunity to invade Taiwan and to make other moves towards establishing China as the geopolitical superpower to replace the U.S.  Now that Trump has wasted U.S. military resources in the Iran war, while also breaking up the global alliances that have supported U.S. global power over the past seventy years, the U.S. cannot check the expansion of Chinese power.

TRUMP'S ASSAULT ON LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM

Trump's war on Iran illustrates his disregard for liberal constitutionalism because only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, and yet not only did Trump not get a congressional declaration of war, he didn't even consult with Congress about the war, or even announce the war before a joint session of Congress.

Trump's war on Iran also illustrates his scorn for liberal internationalism because he did not seek the support of NATO, the UN, or any nation other than Israel.  Nor did he try to justify the war under international law.

A few weeks before announcing the war, Trump was interviewed by the New York Times.  He was asked if there were any limits on his powers as Commander in Chief.  He answered: "Yeah, there is one thing.  My own morality.  My own mind.  It's the only thing that can stop me.  I don't need international law."  Notice that he does not appeal to morality in general but to "my own" morality.

Not only is Trump's power unconstrained by international law, but it is also unconstrained by constitutional law.  For example, I have written about how Trump has in effect denied the constitutional right to due process of law--the Fifth Amendment right that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Trump has the absolute sovereignty that comes from combining the executive, legislative, and judicial powers in his hands.  Trump makes laws by signing executive decrees.  Trump executes those laws that he has made by ordering executive officials to carry them out according to his directions.  Trump judges the laws by interpreting them for himself and deciding how they apply to particular cases and refusing to obey judicial orders that go against his will.  Trump is thus carrying out the Claremont Institute's Red Caesar Plan for America.

That violates the fundamental principle of liberal constitutionalism that to avoid tyranny governmental power must be limited by a system of countervailance with separation of powers and checks and balances between the branches of government, so that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition," as James Madison said in Federalist Number 51.

"THE MOST POWERFUL MAN THAT THE PLANET HAS EVER KNOWN"?

Trump's ambition, however, cannot be satisfied by the limited powers granted to the President in the American Constitution.  As he told Haberman and Swan when they interviewed him on March 16 of this year, it is not even enough for him to be the most powerful president who has ever lived, because he must be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known," which is what "a historian" had told him he was.  Haberman and Swan later found out that this "historian" was not a professional historian but the long-time caddie for the golfer Gary Player.

Trump had attended an event honoring Player.  Player's caddie asked to speak to the audience to say something about the President.  Later, the caddie sent Trump a two-page text of his speech.  Trump gave copies of this document to Haberman and Swan, and then he began reading from it.  The opening line was "Donald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known--by a long way."  The caddie historian went down a list of history's most powerful men--Alexander the Great, Caesar, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin.  None of them had the global power of Trump.

Haberman and Swan observe:

What was revealing was not really that Trump agreed with the thesis but the way he inhabited it: the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin, masters of state control through murder, torture, and detention, and Napoleon--and the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear.  He drew no distinction between those who built and those who destroyed, between those who liberated and those who enslaved.  What mattered was that they had had huge power--and that he had more (412).

When I read this, I was reminded of my argument that Abraham Lincoln in his Lyceum Speech in 1838 had warned about the "towering genius" of people like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon who would destroy a constitutional republic like America for the sake of the glory coming from having absolute power, and he predicted that someone like this--someone like Trump--would destroy the constitutional order.

Haberman and Swan conclude their book by agreeing with John Judis's argument that Trump is one of Hegel's "world-historical individuals" like Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon.  And thus they leave their readers with the impression that Trump can rightly be compared with such great men of history, and that he might even be right to claim to be "the most powerful man that the planet has ever known."

But this ignores the fact that while the power of people like Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon came from their extraordinary competence as political and military leaders, Trump's entire life has shown his incompetence leading to a record of failure.  His bragging that he has always be a "winner" who has never lost is a boastful fantasy that is all part of the con.

THE NARCISSITIC POLITICAL IMPOSTER AND HIS BANKRUPTCIES

Some years ago, I claimed that the fundamental argument in Trump's political campaign rhetoric depends on his myth of himself as the self-made multi-billionaire businessman.  This argument can be put into the form of a syllogism:

Major premise:  Because of stupid politicians, America no longer wins; and America will not win again until a successful businessman who knows how to win is elected president.

Minor premise: Donald Trump is unique in his business success and his shrewdness in knowing how to win, because he is a self-made multi-billionaire.

Conclusion:  Therefore, Americans need to elect Trump president.

Both of the premises are open to dispute.  I have challenged the minor premise by pointing to the evidence that Trump's business career shows many failures from his imprudent decisions, that he was saved from ruin by his father's life-long transfer of money to him, and so he is not the self-made billionaire that he claims to be.  He had a long string of bankruptcies that would have destroyed him were it not for the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to him from his father.  This started early.  By age 3, the young Donald Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today's dollars as an employee of his father.  By age 8, Donald was a millionaire. 

I have also suggested that Trump's financial imprudence as a businessman has been continued in his financial imprudence as a president who has promoted reckless increases in the federal budget deficits and the national debt, which contradicts his promise in his first campaign that he would balance the federal budget and even pay down the national debt.  Once he became president, he never again mentioned that campaign promise.

Trump has added to the national debt at a faster rate than any president in American history.  Before his first term as president, the national debt was under $20 trillion.  Now the national debt is approaching $40 trillion.  The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2026 will be over $2 trillion.  Under Trump, the government has been borrowing about $6 billion per day.  Trump is driving America to national bankruptcy.

That's why I call him narcissistic political imposter.  He boasts that he, and he alone, can lead America to greatness.  But since he lacks any competence for prudent governance, he is actually leading America into decline at home and abroad.  

"THE TERRIFIED LITTLE BOY"

In her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, Mary Trump has offered the best explanation for why her uncle is the man he is.  Donald is the product of his father's abusive parenting:

"Nothing is ever good enough.  This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.  He knows that he has never been loved" (198).

"Though Donald's fundamental nature hasn't changed, since his inauguration the amount of stress he's under has changed dramatically.  It's not the stress of the job, because he isn't doing the job--unless watching TV and tweeting insults count.  It's the effort to keep the rest of us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing--about politics, civics, or simple human decency--that requires an enormous amount of work" (199).

"Every time you hear Donald talking about how something is the greatest, the best, the biggest, the most tremendous (the implication being that he made them so), you have to remember that the man speaking is still, in essential ways, the same little boy who is desperately worried that he, like his older brother, is inadequate and that he, too, will be destroyed for his inadequacy.  At a very deep level, his bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long-dead father" (202).

"Donald withdraws to his comfort zones--Twitter, Fox News--casting blame from afar, protected by a figurative or literal bunker.  He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own.  But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy" (210). 

Is Donald Trump God's Chosen One--Like Cyrus?

Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Holding Up Stephen Strang's Book God and Donald Trump

Lance Wallnau Hears from God in May of 2016 that the 45th Chapter of Isaiah Identifies Trump as the 45h President, God's New Cyrus

If America is a Christian nation chosen by God, and if God providentially enters history to carry out his purposes, is it possible that the miracle of Donald Trump's election in 2016 was an act of God to save America from its decline into secularism?  Many American evangelicals say yes, and they point to the evangelical prophecies of Trump's victory, when almost no one thought he could win.

Although most of us might be skeptical of this, it is true that almost a third of the votes cast for Trump came from evangelical Christians, most of them in the states that were crucial for Trump's electoral college victory.  If many of these evangelical Trump voters were motivated by their belief that Trump really was God's chosen one, then it would seem that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We now have the story of how this prophetic vision of God's providential intervention changed American history in the new book by Stephen Strang--God and Donald Trump--which has been endorsed by evangelical politicians such as Mike Huckebee and Michelle Bachmann.  In the picture above, you can see Trump proudly waving his copy of the book at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  Strang is a leading Pentecostal evangelical who publishes Charisma magazine, and part of his story is how the Pentecostals were the first Christians to support Trump.  As early as 2003, Paula White Cain, a Pentecostal television minister, became Trump's spiritual advisor after he had seen her TV show.

Here is a video of Cain and other charismatic ministers laying hands on and praying for Trump in his Trump Tower office on September 30, 2015, six months before the first presidential primaries:

This appeals to the grandiose narcissism of Trump's chimpanzee personality, which has been a topic of my post here.

Christians like Strang who believe that Trump's election came from a miraculous intervention by God must make at least two kinds of arguments--an interpretation of the American founding and an interpretation of the Bible.

First, they must argue that the American founders established America as a Christian nation specially chosen by God to be under his providential care.  So, Strang refers to "Benjamin Franklin's surprising declaration during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when he said famously, 'God governs in the affairs of men'" (xiv).  And Strang says that the purpose of his book in telling the story of God's intervention in the election of 2016 is to confirm this idea "that God is involved in the affairs of men" (184).

Remarkably, however, Strang is silent about the circumstances of Franklin's declaration at the Constitutional Convention.  Franklin was proposing that the Convention should have daily prayers and Bible reading so that God would providentially intervene to help them write the Constitution.  The members of the Convention refused to even allow a vote on his proposal, and Alexander Hamilton quipped that they "had no need for foreign aid"!  I have written about this previously here.

Christians like Strang must also argue that identifying Trump as God's chosen one is consistent with the Bible.  Is there any evidence in the Bible that God would choose someone like Trump--who is not a Christian--to act as the savior of God's people?  Well, yes, as Lance Wallnau explains in the video above, God could chose Trump just as God chose the pagan Persian Cyrus as his "anointed one" or "messiah" to liberate the people of Israel from their Babylonian captivity.  In fact, God spoke to Wallnau and noted the connection between the 45th chapter of Isaiah and Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States.  In that chapter of Isaiah, God speaks to Cyrus as his "anointed one," although "you do not know me."  Although Cyrus does not worship Yahweh--he worships other gods--Yahweh can use him for his purposes.  Likewise, then, God could use Trump to bring America back to God even if Trump himself is not a believer.  And that is what many evangelicals decided: Trump's sinful character and lack of any clear belief in Christianity need not weaken his claim to be chosen by God to carry out God's plan for saving America from Hillary Clinton!

There is a problem here, however, that Strang briefly mentions and then passes over without resolving it (75-76).  As the evangelical Tom Horn has pointed out, God used the pagan leader Nebuchadnezzar as "the servant of the Most High God" to punish Judah by taking them into the very Babylonian captivity from which Cyrus would later liberate them (Jeremiah 25).  So if God is using Trump, we can't be sure whether Trump is to be America's savior (like Cyrus) or America's punishment (like Nebuchadnezzar).  And indeed many Christians who refused to vote for Trump worry that the Christians supporting Trump are showing a shameless lack of moral authority.  Is God punishing these Christians for their hypocrisy?

There is another problem for the Christian here: if Cyrus was the "messiah," does that deny the claim of Jesus that he was the fulfillment of these prophecies in Isaiah?  As I have indicated in a previous post, that's a problem for Handel's Messiah, which was an attempt to refute the deistic denial of providential prophecy.

And, of course, there is the fundamental problem with all claims of prophecy that they are stated in such vague and confused ways that they cannot be verified, or if some seem to be verified, they are mixed up with others that are falsified.

Consider, for example, this claim by Strang: "As far back as 2007, the late Kim Clement had prophesized, 'Trump shall become a trumpet. . . . I  will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet, and Bill Gates to open up the gate of a financial stream for the church.' The first has come true, but we'll have to wait and see about the second part" (69).

The first prophecy is ridiculously vague: "Trump shall become a trumpet"?  The second prophecy that Bill Gates will give his money to the church is false.

If you go to Kim Clement's Elijah's List for April 14, 2007, which is Strang's source, you will see that Clement issued hundreds of prophecies every year, most of them in vague language, and most of them have not been plausibly fulfilled.  Here is the passage from which Strang quoted an excerpt:

"I am God and you have called to Me, and many from this Nation has said, 'Enough--enough of religion, and enough of dead speech.'  The Spirit of God said, 'This is a moment of resurrection.'  For the Spirit of God says, 'Honor Me with your praise and acceptance of this that  I say to you.  This that shall take place shall be the most unusual thing, a transfiguration, a going into the marketplace if you wish, and into the news media.  Where Time magazine will have no choice but to say what I want them to say; Newsweek what I want to say; and The View, what I want to say.'"

"'Trump shall become a trumpet,' says  the Lord!  'I will raise up Trump to become a trumpet, and Bill Gates to open up the gate of a financial realm for the Church,' says the Spirit of the Living God!'"

It's been 11 years now since the Spirit of God prophesized that Time, Newsweek, and ABC's The View would become outlets for God's message.  How long should we wait for the fulfillment of this  prophecy?  Strang is carefully silent about this and many other dubious prophecies from Clement.

Many of us find it hard to take this stuff seriously.  But many evangelical Christians do take it seriously.  For example, Strang reports that during the 2016 election, Cindy Jacobs, a Charismatic prophet, mobilized tens of thousands of people to "prayer walk" through the seven critical states that helped to elect Trump (20-21).  These "prayer warriors" walked around courthouses and centers of towns praying for God's intervention in the election.  We cannot ignore the fact that many of the millions of evangelical Christians who voted for Trump could have done so with the belief that he was God's chosen one; and if so, that would mean that this belief in divine intervention could have been the deciding factor in giving the presidential election to Trump.

As an alternative to the view of God as a providential interventionist in the world, which creates these problems, we might consider returning to the deism of the American founders, whose deity was not the God of the Bible but Nature's God.  That's the topic for my next post.