Does Donald Trump really want to do this for another four years?

Is governing, rather than hanging out at Mar-A-Largo, yakking with his buddies, raving on his own radio network, what he wants to do with most, of not, all of his remaining years?

Or is there some kind of trauma or disorder that explains his free fall in recent weeks. A lot of people refuse to accept the trouble he’s in; a lot of people don’t dare believe it.

His first term has made a lot of enemies depressed and superstitious.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on trying to explain Trump rather than join the mobs adoring him or the throngs hating him. It’s almost impossible to feel neutral about him.

But I still believe it’s the journalist’s job to help people think and understand, not to grab a rifle and join the team.

Mobs always make me nervous, even when they are on the right side.

So I have a theory, detailed down below.

For about a month now, I’ve seen behavior in the President that is simply inexplicable in a rational politician.

As a former political writer, I met good politicians and bad ones,  honest ones, and crooked ones,  I never met one who seemed to set out so enthusiastically to self-destruct. It’s like watching a train wreck.

To me, he’s like one of those big, lumbering World War II bombers, tail on fire, spiraling down towards the earth and a big fiery crash.

A poll addict, Trump is disregarding every single poll that shows him moving farther and farther apart from the very people he most needs to win re-election. According to political reporters, he is increasingly bitter and depressed.

And he listens to no one. So he has no way to learn and change.

Lots of people aren’t buying the lies anymore; the old magic is going flat like an old tire. The strategy was to keep his base and expand it just enough to win. He’s tossed the playbook out the window, his troops are in despair.

Is he just evil? I don’t think so. That’s too simple.

People often rationalize his behavior by saying he is not a politician; he is a swash-buckling pirate, a business person, his behavior makes more sense to reporters and supporters that way.

Does he want to lose and go back to Mar-A-Largo to play golf? Maybe.

I’ve had 30 years of therapy for my emotional and mental health issues, I am no one to throw stones at anybody, nor am I qualified to make complex diagnoses of influential people.

But: It’s been a long four years.

On the Trump side, I know many reasonable and rational people who supported him and still do, but I also see how he draws the angry and disturbed and disaffected to him likes bears to honey.

In my narrow sphere, I learned that the energy I put out on my blog always comes right back to me, when I am angry, they are mad too.

In his public statements tweets, Trump practically begs the emotionally violent and disconnected to come to him and to assault people who don’t bow to him.

I have never bought the idea that Trump supporters are stupid bigots, but in recent months, I am more and more confused as to why and how people can overlook so much cruelty, hatred, and dysfunction and call it beautiful.

You have to really have some good blinders to believe the good he has done is worth the pain and suffering he has caused and is causing.

I’ve never come across a conspiracy theory that wasn’t dumb, but so many people scarf them up like the tablets from the Mount. Yet somehow, when all is said and done, I think they are overrated. I don’t really think they work as well as people fear.

But I can’t look at his bloodthirsty and robotic rallies without seeing a lot of unfortunate and troubling images in my mind. None of them are pretty or democratic. They will be the fuzzy newsreels of our time.

Why does he need to do that and to blow off 130,000 Pandemic deaths, and the agony and rage of black (and white) America? How can he ask 20,000 plus people to risk illness, and even death, to come to Tulsa for no apparent reason at all?

Because he wants to. That will have to do.

And why would they come? His rally is beyond selfish; it is something else.

People are afraid to believe that Trump is heading for a devastating defeat. Trumpism is a trauma for lots of people. TrumpWorry has become a disorder, I think, a public health issue, and increasingly, an addiction.

Whatever you call it, it is not healthy, a tamer version of the rallies.

I want to be honest; I am all too familiar with some of his symptoms, which I have worked long and hard to shed. My diagnosis was very different than his symptoms, but I recognize some of them all too well. You have to be far out there to be a book writer.

And you have to be knocked down, tortured and dismembered to heal.

After this week, even before John Bolton and Mary Trump, I was starting to believe he doesn’t want to win re-election. He doesn’t seem to care about government or policy, and he has a short attention span.

He’s also 74, and he looks like Hell.

I can almost picture him saying to one of his phone, pals, “Fuck this. I’m sick of all these bastards dumping on me and accusing me of things. They are all scumbags.   I can play golf, fly around in my planes, and get away from this awful place.  I can start my own TV and radio network and pay them all back. I’m never going to submit to them or play the game. I’m just going to be me, right up to the end. If they don’t like it, the Hell with them.”

Last night, he told  Sean Hannity that he doesn’t talk about the coronavirus because it is over, even as his health officials reported sharp rises in hospitalizations in 22 states.

That is a curious lie. And it will haunt him day after day. Why do it?

His behavior recently is over the top – the Pandemic he denies, his Bible-photo op using a church as a backdrop, the racial trauma he says will be “quick and easy” to fix, his insanely reckless Tulsa Rally, John Bolton’s ugly revelations about him, and the book I’m most eager to read, his niece Mary’s  Trump’s new book, Too Much And Not Enough: How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man.”

Wherever people are zigging,  he is zagging.

This is bad politics. His followers will never leave him, so why not add a few more to try to win an election we know will be close? He has nothing to lose by being rational.

What I’ve been going in recent weeks is to try to understand why this successful and even fearsome man – who did the impossible by becoming President in 2016 –  is behaving in such a destructive, politically insane way.

He just seems wholly unhinged and out of touch.  He goes out of his way daily to let us know that he does not think what most of us think and does not care what most of us believe.

Nor does he ever consider anyone in pain to be his problem unless they have sworn absolute loyalty to him.

As much as Trump rails against the media, the irony is that few reporters will actually be honest about what they think of him, and they see him daily and talk to the people around him more often than that.

I am not qualified to diagnose him,  and the cable news pundits always balk at diagnosing, it is considered inappropriate. But I am quite comfortable talking to people who are qualified to diagnose people, and we can all decide for ourselves why the President is behaving in this way.

His perspective and mental health are important to all of us, like him or not.

God knows I’ve talked to enough shrinks in my life, some of whom even knew Freud’s children.

The important thing for me is not to hate Donald  Trump; I’m just not wired to hate, at least not for long. I wish to understand him right now.

So I talked to some shrinks and did some research – merck, psychology today, the mayo clinic, Harvard – I’ve made some progress.

I’m not into the wishy-washy qualifying, so many political writers do: it’s still early, things can change, he’s turned things around before.

I don’t do qualifiers. My name is on everything I write. And if I make mistakes, I will own up to them and take responsibility, and you all will rub my nose in it.

Donald Trump is in big trouble, with a lot more trouble coming, and he has very little time to pull out of it now.

So check this list out for yourself. Below are the ten accepted professional medical signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I gleaned them from different medical and psychological sites online.

I don’t need to comment on them all; they speak for themselves.

And every one of them relates directly to Donald Trump and his behavior and explains in one way or another every one of his mistakes.

I believe he is deteriorating now, more and more each day, each week. A part of him is giving up on his exhausting way of living and governing.

This is a person who can’t bear to be a loser, even though we all sometimes lose in life. I believe he would rather fly that plane right into the ground than be seen to fail.

Unless he can convince himself that he is doing it himself.

He is wearing us out, but of equal importance, he is wearing himself out. What follows is a list of the nine most common symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

If this were a parlor game, the challenge would be to match these symptoms with examples of the President’s behavior. I tried it once at the bottom.

1. Lacks Empathy. An individual with narcissistic personality disorder typically lack empathy, the ability to understand and feel what others are feeling.
2. Sense Of Entitlement. People with NPD expect – demand – to be admired excessively and constantly, even if their actions do not warrant approval or admiration. When an NPD person’s self-esteem is threatened, he or she becomes angry and lashes out.
3. Believe They Are Superior. They believe their emotions and decisions are rational and always justified, even if they are irrational, and also if they condemn the same feelings in others. People with NPD believe they are entitled to special treatment while denying it to others.
4. Issues With Handling Criticism. People with NPD need other people to validate their sense of worth and superiority. If they are criticized in any way, it can cause a severe and intolerable blow to their pride and sense of worth. With NPD, the inability to handle criticism often stems from a failure to see themselves as having any flaws. NPD causes stagnation in one’s ability to solve problems and leads to continuous difficulties with co-workers, employers, or personal relationships. There is no one worth listening to.
5. Often Takes Advantage Of Others. This is one of the most significant warning signs of NPD – someone who takes advantage of others. NPD causes extreme duress, unhappiness in the person who suffers from it. But it can also cause harm to the people around him, or, insecurity and the need for validation can become toxic, and manifests itself in manipulative and insensitive behavior. People with NPD have trouble respecting boundaries or even understanding why limitations exist.
6. Monopolizing Conversation – a symptom of NPD – occurs when someone dominates a conversation and doesn’t allow the other person to be an equal participant. They expect to be listened to, but they are unable to attend to others. (What did they do to Anthony Fauci?)

7. Exaggerates Talents And Achievements. Narcissists exaggerate their talents and achievements. They often lie or fabricate stories entirely,  and they amplify and elevate their level of perceived importance to famous or other talented people. They often claim to be good friends with influential people, and often don’t even realize they are lying when they exaggerate or fabricate. It is the reality to them. (“I’m like really smart, I am a stable genius.”)

8. Believe Others Envy Them.  NPD sufferers may experience intense feelings of envy themselves while believing themselves to be the envy of others. They think they are more talented and revered than those around them, or whose who compete with them or preceded them. They will often lash out at the people they envy, sometimes obsessively.

9  Acts Demeaning And Intimidating. A symptom of narcissism is behavior that is cruel, demeaning, or intimidating. They respond to concerns or requests regarding their behavior in condescending, belittling, or judgemental ways; they are simply not able to process or comprehend the perspective of another person.

10. Lives in a fantasy world that supports the delusions of grandeur. (Makes West Point cadets all come out of quarantine to listen to a speech in which he says nothing; and can retreat to a palace, Mar-A-Largo.)

The Merck Manual for Professionals In Health Care says, “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity characterizes narcissistic personality disorder, along with a need for adulation and lack of empathy.

Because patients with narcissistic personality disorder have difficulty regulating self-esteem, they need praise and affiliations with special people or institutions; they also tend to devalue other people so that they can maintain a sense of superiority.

The treatment is psychodynamic therapy, and sometimes, medication.

I will be honest. I look at people who are ill differently than people who are not. As destructive as they might be, people who suffer from these kinds of disorders cannot help themselves.

Their only way out is to get help, and Donald Trump has made this disorder work for him his whole life. Why would he quit now and turn himself over to a therapist?

He has achieved everything he wanted to achieve.

Untreated, a person with this disorder can deteriorate, especially as they age and become paranoid and histrionic.

Okay, I feel I have a better understanding of what is happening now. I’m not a shrink, as much as I owe them, and everyone can and should make up their mind.

If he does suffer from this order, then it is quite possible he would behave in a self-defeating way since he really can’t comprehend being a loser, and in his own mind, would be a winner in defeat:

Either he was robbed and cheated, or he will happily take up the role of the wronged martyr.

To me, every symptom was like a puzzle piece in the right place. It was startling to see.

It is starting to make sense to me.