You may have noticed President Trump likes to call people names. It is clearly a way to assert power, one of the instruments in the bully’s tool kit. But the habit also suggests that Trump sees people as inkblots. When he looks at them he doesn’t see what’s objectively there, individual humans. He sees what’s in his own head.
Often what he sees in others appears to be what he most fears might be true of himself. That is, his name-calling is a classic case of projection whereby people “deny their own unconscious impulses or qualities while attributing them to others.” So the name-calling offers a better glimpse inside his anxieties than a whole battery of Rorschach’s and MMPIs could.
He calls his hometown paper the “failing” New York Times, no doubt to minimize its power over his psyche, but also because he has had a long series of failures reported there. So if they are failures, it must mean he isn’t.
Failing is also undoubtedly a favorite insult because of the way this twig was bent by his father. He espaliered Trump into believing life is a binary proposition. You are either a killer or a loser. Since he can’t bear to believe he might be a loser, a failure, a dummy, a weakling, he brands others — particularly his opponents or detractors — wth those dismissive epithets. George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, James Comey, Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, the Daily Beast, the Times and many more are failures.
Weakness is also terrifying to Trump, who must always be the strongest ape in the jungle. And he sees it everywhere. The Republican National Committee is weak, so was the Obama Administration, as are Paul Ryan, Chuck Schumer, Ben Carson Jeff Sessions. And a close cousin to the weak are the lightweights like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.
Most of these people have in common not agreeing with Trump or supporting him, so they must be weak, lightweight failures. Similarly, those who call into question his intelligence, competence, correctness, behavior are obviously dumb. If not, then it might mean that they are right and he is dumb.
As a result, dumb is a large category for Trump. It includes a few from the political left — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mark Cuban, Frank Bruni, and Mika , but a lot more from the right — Morning Joe, David Brooks, The Club for Growth, Rich Lowry, Scott Walker.
Trump is also surrounded by a lot of dishonest, crooked, fakes, criminals and liars, This is comically revealing in a man who lies incessantly, and has spent much of his life in court for various scams. So, the least honest president in history has branded the following crooked — the Democratic Party, Iran, the FBI, NBC, ABC, CNN, the electoral process, Meet the Press, Mexico, Adam Schiff, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post..
Women, especially those who stand up to him or are not amenable to his brutish charms, are dismissed as weak, lightweight, insecure, neurotic and, especially, crazy. You’d have to be crazy not to adore him, so Oprah, Hillary, Kirsten Gillibrand, Meghan Kelly have come in for such dismissal. Women to Trump are playthings or balm to his ego or libido. Those unwilling to play the part must be unworthy of his attentions.
It is also noteworthy that in a list that goes on and on, Trump never calls anyone kind, decent, intelligent, honest, selfless, or humane. Such concepts have no place in his vocabulary. Losers are like that; killers aren’t. Thus those who work for him are rarely praised, more often bullied, berated, demeaned and disrespected. He has to show everyone he’s is charge, the big cheese, potent, powerful, worthy of unquestioning respect, obedience and loyalty.
If what comes out of Trump’s mouth is really a snapshot of what’s in his head, it must be a terrible place to live — terrified every day that people will find out he’s a fake, a fraud, a liar, a crook, a dummy, a lightweight, a loser, a crazy. When he was just a real estate conman and reality TV barker, the reviews were in the bank balance or the ratings, but as president he can’t hide from constant scrutiny by the press, public, opposition party, foreign adversaries and law enforcement. The critical reviews never end.
This is why Trump is so unhappy as president, so unsuited to the job, and envies autocrats. If anyone questions the intelligence, virility, power or wisdom of a Putin, Erdogan, or Xi, they are unlikely to live to tell the tale. And since the strong men control the media and the system of justice there’s no nasty editorials, mean tweets, embarrassing question or pesky indictments to worry about.
Trump has derived psychological comfort so far by living in a bubble bounded by Mar-A-Lago, campaign rallies with red state crowds, tame fake news media like Fox, and yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear, but as his support group shrinks through attrition, falling out of favor, disloyalty or indictment, he must feel reality beginning to bite. No more Hope Hicks to hold his hand, Kushner and Ivanka to delegate governing to, and when he messes with guns and trade, fewer friends in the NRA and on Wall Street.
The more he is left to his own devices and forced to listen to people telling him he is wrong or failing on issues such as Russian cyberwar, Korean missiles, immigration, healthcare, guns, the environment, economics, trade, the more likely he is to hunker down, reflexively ignore critics and do the opposite.
So if Putin is said to be playing him for a fool, he must embrace Putin. If tariffs and trade wars are insane, he must enact them. If guns are a problem, but due process gets in the way, take them away first and worry about legalities later. If Mueller has got the goods on him, eliminate him. If advisers are disloyal, dump them.
At the end Hitler’s general began to disobey his lunatic orders from the bunker — to blow up Paris, to fight to the last man, woman and child. Before too long, it may prove necessary for patriots of his own party, or the FBI, the armed forces or the courts to stop Trump from proving he’s not a dummy, a loser, a lightweight, a failure in ways damaging to the prosperity, well-being, and survival of the country and its people. Will they dare? Do they posses the means?