As the curtain opens to the second half of President Donald Trump’s term, Trump’s biographer expects Trump to do nothing useful or meaningful other than dance for cameras and struggle to remain relevant.
An ugly battle is underway in Trump’s head, said biographer Michael Wolff, speaking on the “Trump’s Brain” podcast with Joanna Coles. A media-dependent psychopath, who had convinced himself that the world loves him without question is suddenly now having to deal with nationwide humiliation and unquestionable rejection. And things are getting ugly fast behind his eyes.
“Trump now has this thing that has happened, an existential moment in his presidency and in his political career: Broad repudiation from every almost every aspect of the country and from his own party,” said Wolff. “It’s a kind of national waking up and saying ‘this guy is incompetent and loathsome and doesn’t deliver on anything.’ So now he’s got two more years in office. How does he react to that?”
While Wolff said saner presidents resort to the “politically tried and true method” of compromise, by admitting their defeat and targeting the reasons for that defeat, that’s not going to happen here.
“Remember in a traditional presidency you really are looking for the things that you can now accomplish with the opposition in charge. Accomplishment, when you’re the president, is usually measured in legislation that you can pass,” said Wolff. “But that’s not something that Trump is interested in. That’s not a measure that he acknowledges or accepts. So what is the measure? Well, the measure for Trump is the attention he receives and the persona he maintains.”
According to Wolff, Trump’s only goal all his life was to “always be a Donald Trump that is bigger and greater than ever before.” But, of course, this is a problem now in his newly diminished capacity with Democrats socking his policies and burying him in investigations over allegations of corruption and self-enrichment. That won’t stop him from trying to inflate himself, of course. Nothing ever does.
“I’m absolutely positive this not really a reversion, but an increase of this persona of ‘I am implacable. I give back always harder than I get. I am the UFC champion,” said Wolff.
Wolff said under these circumstances, with a president focused singularly upon himself to the cost of all else, the next American president can expect Trump’s Iran mess to be waiting for him at his door step.
– YouTube www.youtube.com
