Trump’s inability to admit a mistake, apologize for it and move on, has been embarrassingly on public display this week. Instead of focusing on helping the victims of Hurricane Dorian and expressing strength and empathy, he has been compulsively tweeting in defense of his mistake about Alabama getting hit by the storms.
It is a cringing experience to listen to Trump whine, exposing his inadequacies, instability, and weaknesses. When he gets facts wrong about current or past events or makes errors when citing specifics related to the Constitution and how government works, he whines about being confronted on it. Additionally, when his actions or policies create damage or receive widespread backlash, he blames scores of people that are obviously not responsible for his incompetent blunders.
As a mental health professional for many years, my educated opinion is that these behaviors are classic signs of:
1) severe low self-esteem, 2) weak ego strength, 3) cognitive processing impairment, 4) pathological lying consistently with Anti-Social Personality Disorder 5) conscious, self-serving manipulation or 6) narcissism.
If a president has even one of these traits, his judgment about sensitive national or global issues would be severely impaired. Based on his behaviors, it appears Trump may possess several or all of these traits.
Unbeknownst to Trump, his whining is extremely emasculating. Real strongmen do not constantly whine and blame others, especially when the blame is clearly a strategy to distract from the truth and hide insecurities.
Trump’s favorite target for his whining is the media. If his polls go down, he blames the media accusing them of negative reporting about him. If he gets criticized for one of his cruel, self-serving policies, he blames the media for inaccurately reporting what he intended by the policy. If he loses a fight for something he wants to get done, he whines that the media never supports him, which he claims causes his failures.
Another whining target of his is the Democrats. He whines about their opposition to him and his policies. He blames them for his low poll numbers. He whines when he gets criticized for mistakes he makes, calling Democrats unpatriotic because they oppose what he is doing or saying.
He whines about not getting enough credit for the great job he thinks he is doing. He has whined about his belief that social media platforms are not conservative-friendly.
My theory about the whining is that he defaults to doing it because he doesn’t have the expertise to talk in-depth about policy and the complex issues facing our country. In replacement for having plans to address the national issues, he tweets, whines watch TV and comments on every piece of news, most of which are irrelevant to his job. The whining is also an attempt to be seen as a victim. Trump is so insecure he is willing to whine like a baby if it will get him attention.
Just as he emasculated all of his 2016 opponents, he has now emasculated the entire population of male Congressmen and White House Staff. When Trump whines, his enablers come in to defend him and soothe his anger and anxiety. They seem to be trying to keep him from cracking up in public. They are failing in their attempts to stop the train wreck of his performance as President.
Imagine what Trump’s impact would be if his whining came out of a 5’7″, 140 lb body, instead of a 6’2″, overweight hulk. Trump as the “strongman” is a fake narrative, as it is based on his size and loudmouth, not confidence and expertise.
We can only hope for Republican Senators to break with their undying devotion to Trump and break from supporting him if he continues lying and behaving in a clearly not just ” different” but dangerous, abnormal way.
