The 5 Traits That Explain Trump
There are five basic personality traits that Donald Trump displays that explain every action he takes, every word he utters, every tweet he twitters, every position he maintains, and every flip he flops. They overlap in their effect, and reinforce one another into the model of duplicity, stupidity, arrogance and incompetence that infests the White House now. Everything Trump does reflects this personal pathology, a toxic cocktail betraying a diseased brain.
He is a narcissist
Professionals often differentiate between grandiose narcissists, who really believe the world revolves around them, and covert narcissists, who think their natural gifts deserve to have the world revolve around them, but are actually compensating for a glaring shortcoming known but to them which, if revealed, threatens their social standing. I believe narcissism is narcissism, and the flavor depends on whether you’re talented and introspective enough to realize the outer shell is, indeed a shell projected to others whose approbation is locked into your idea of self-worth, or whether the outer shell is all there is.
Trump is the grandiose type; other than the shell, there is no “there” there. In fact, like so many on the Right these days, introspection would kill him via suicide. If they had the gene to process irony, they would collapse under the weight of their own shame. But Trump’s projection is not a defense mechanism, not even subconsciously. It’s unwarranted, overweening arrogance, completely oblivious to his own hubris.
It’s why everyone else in the world who criticizes him at all is clearly lying, in his eyes. There is nothing in him that can admit of his being anything other than magnificent. It is also what justifies all his criminal behavior and his reflexive lying. Trump believes an act is “good” simply because his doing it makes it good. A “fact” is “true” simply because he stated it, and “how dare you call ME a liar.”
He has attention deficit disorder
Trump’s tragi-comically short attention span can be so debilitating that, at times, he cannot even finish a sentence. He digresses into a series of dependent clauses, or asides, or equivocations, and trails off into weak, open-ended finishes, or simply switches without segue into a new, unconnected thought.
Like many ADD folks, he CAN concentrate for an extended period of time on something that interests him. As far as we know, only one thing truly interests him: himself. So the hours he spends “working” is often just spent reading things about himself. The one briefing book he will peruse until dog-eared is the one prepared twice a day full of glowing encomiums about himself, and pictures of himself looking god-like if there aren’t enough good things written about him.
He demonstrates the Dunning-Kruger effect
Trump is deeply, intensely and sincerely stupid. Part of it is genetics, but his worldview of unmitigated superiority feeds into this as well. It cannot conceive of himself as someone who could be stupid. In addition, he is ignorant. His ADD prevents him from remedying this, because he can’t concentrate long enough to read in-depth analyses (let alone understand them) so he captures the world in sound-bites from TV, and briefings must have pictures and maps – he likes maps. His speech patterns betray this, as well. Very often, the words he uses to define a concept are really verbal cues about the concept, rough trigger words that, in normal people, set off a chain of other associative ideas. For Trump, the thumbnail IS the picture.
The Dunning-Kruger effect essentially says that some people are so dumb, they can’t conceive of how dumb they are. Their brains cannot conceive of a world more complex than they can understand, nor of any valid points of view other than their own. Any factoids Trump does manage to learn (“France is America’s oldest ally!”) must be little-known facts, that a lot of people don’t know (not just himself.)
He’s an authoritarian
The idea of the authoritarian mindset was developed post-WWII in an attempt to understand not just fascist leaders, but the followers of such leaders, as well. The characteristics of authoritarians include a Manichaean worldview, a personal, cultural and ethnocentric superiority complex, a difficulty in dealing with uncertainty, and thus a yearning for a clear, simple and direct chain of command. It roots and cloaks itself in a patina of morality, moral certainty, moral absolutism.
“Disgust” is a common conceptual framework for the “Other,” a set of racial, or sexual, or religious, or political boogeymen who are to blame for everything, and who dirty the body politic, or infest the homeland. Listen to how he often expresses disgust, especially for women and their bodily functions (Hillary was in the bathroom!) Female uncleanliness and ritual impurity has long been a trick used by authoritarian males to assert unwarranted dominance.
Trump has to keep up the glamour and prestige (in the magical senses of those words) of being the ultimate authority. It’s why he has the ironclad non-disclosures and insisted on always being called “Mr. Trump” by all his employees.
He’s a eugenicist
Being a grandiose-type narcissist, not only is he the most wonderful example of a human being, but history and nature conspired to make him so! Trump truly believes that he is a product of superior genes and that, by extension, so are all of his children. Also by whatever passes for logic in that mush melon of a head of his, white breeding is superior to non-white breeding, and rich breeding is superior to poor breeding. European breeding is superior to most, and European-American breeding is superior to all.
Therefore, if you are part of the Other, if you don’t share the characteristics of Trump, the apotheosis, in his diseased brain, of a man, then you DON’T deserve health care, nor regular food, nor clean water nor adequate shelter. If you had any worth at all, you could pay for these things yourself, and people who are not Trump-like actually are criminal sub-humans, undeserving of existence. The less you are like Trump, the less you are TO Trump, unless you bend the knee to him, and sing his praises; then, you are merely the exception that proves the rule, the sole credit to your Otherness.
These five personality pathologies clearly interconnect with and reinforce one another. Together, they comprise a man so fatally flawed, and so blind in his own hubris, that he is beyond the pale of normal comprehension, which is why so many people have asserted so bootlessly for so long that, WAIT! He soon will pivot to “normal.” WAIT! He’s gonna be “Presidential” now. WAIT! Reince Priebus, General Kelly, Ivanka and Jared, Somebody, Somehow, Somewhere will rein him in. All those folks are still WAITing, because abnormal psychology is Trump’s normal setting.
We who saw through him from the start? Sadly, we are not surprised by any of his behavior.
But we are, rightfully and righteously, disgusted.
Do not confuse ADD (ADHD) with dementia. Trump was able to put together coherent sentences some years ago, but is no longer able to. He exhibits symptoms of dementia….ADHD, not so much.
1I have ADD: the thoughts go so fast sometimes I have trouble keeping up with myself, the difference being I have actual thoughts rather than inchoate phrases. His dementia may be something else again, but the ADD I can recognize the effects of.
Had a lot of ADD with this one, each trait was written almost concurrently- hopping back and forth to sentence fragments as another thought or phrase occurred to me.
2I echo Opinionated Hussy. He might also have ADD, but the clear deterioration of his speech formation and vocabulary indicates some form of dementia or cognitive loss.
3Primo, thank you for this very interesting post; you apparently spent considerable time on it. I’m sorry you have to cope with ADD. Having a son with ADHD, I’m familiar with the problems you faced.
What I don’t understand is why his grown children aid and abet Trump the way they do. Is it the money, or do they think he is somehow normal? I understand he didn’t really spend any time with the boys until they were grown, but seems to have spent more with Ivanka.
4And don’t forget the confused old man who can’t find the car waiting at the bottom of the stairs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIgRDMq_IJ0
5Dunning Krueger says in effect that ‘some people are so ignorant, they have no ability to recognize or understand competence, and being ignorant of what competent is, readily ascribe it to themselves.’
The thing about DK is that once people learn how to evaluate competence, their understanding of their own competence rapidly adjusts itself downwards. W/ Trump’s other defects, this isn’t possible.
6IMO, he is also dyslexic.
I always found it odd that his remaining siblings never campaigned with or for him.
7Crone: Maybe his remaining siblings aren’t in the will.
8A very interesting analysis, Primo. I would suggest that Trump also suffers from ODD, or Oppositional Defiance Disorder.
9When his advisors suggest an agenda, an outline of talking points or topics to be avoided, he does the opposite. This often
accompanies ADD or ADHD. It can also be seen in his refusal to accept facts when confronted or corrected.
Good point, Crone. And if his father has been arrested for Klannish shit, what about his grandfather? His relatives in Germany and the US? His siblings don’t want much to do w/him.
10What’s up?
ps primo great post and always love some gertrude stein thrown in
What baffles me is the fact that his parents had pots of money, supposedly he had/has pots of money, yet here he is, 71 years old, with treatable disorders apparently unacknowledged, unaddressed, and untreated. What is up with that?
I have taught students with these conditions, and once an adult begins to suspect there is a problem, staff and personnel get busy right away. Meetings with parents, diagnostic consultations, counseling, doctor visits, after school programs – the whole 9 yards to help children cope with their condition. No mountain too high, no valley too deep to get the necessary help for these children. So I am sincerely not understanding why something wasn’t done for him at an early age.
Even if his parents didn’t want to medicate him, they could have afforded top-notch world class psychiatric care for him. I’ve never been in his presence, never watched his show, The Apprentice, but from a distance it seems as if he has been allowed to simply wallow in his issues. When he could have been helped, they did nothing or weren’t able to do anything.
Horrifying to think he has control over the military and our nuclear weapons.
11@ Crone: There doesn’t seem to be a lot of family feeling among the Trumps. Back in 2000, Fred III, son of Trump’s late brother Fred, contested his grandfather’s will—at which point Trump and his remaining siblings cut off the healthcare that was paying for Fred III’s critically ill, 18-month-old son. It certainly wasn’t that they didn’t have the money to continue, but they appear to be a bunch of spiteful, vindictive SOB’s–just like their more famous brother.
12This seems to me to not be a this or that answer.
I have watched diagnosed dementia reduce my two parents and my mother-in-law to mental jello. Although I am not medically qualified, the parallels between Drumpf and my now deceased relatives is striking. I am out on the thinnest part of the limb saying Drumpf has dementia, but I saw it is so, without a doubt.
I suspected when Drumpf’s tv show was on that he was on the Asperger’s syndrome continuum. My oldest boy’s first UNT room mate suffered from Asperger’s and dealing with his spoken outbursts proved challenging. And Drumpf’s gruff, abrupt incoherent verbalizations so resemble the room mate. Drumpf almost surely suffers from one or more of those conditions as well.
I almost agree with Marguerite Hill above as to “unacknowledged, unaddressed, and untreated”. Can’t say Drumpf hasn’t medicated for all this but his decision to run for POTUS with all this mental thunder and lightning going on is the ultimate in “unacknowledged”.
13I am so used to Orange Whore’s 3rd grade words that I was astonished to hear this in his scripted Monday presser: “egregious.” Yes, he said it and he pronounced it correctly. Astonished.
14Excellent post. Everything said is a reason traitor trump should be in a secure facitlty where he cannot do more harm. This is a game to him. He has always played people against one another. Now it’s nations. He must be removed and now. His ego and demented mind won’t allow him to believe he can do anything wrong.
15…And then there are the disturbing characteristics.
16According to my battered copy of the DSM, anyone can have more than one symptom of different disorders. Just hope that Kelly and the rest of the brass realize who and what they are dealing with and have one helluva Plan B.
17I am older than the Republican POTUS. In those days nobody ever heard of most of these learning styles. Two of my kids were dyslexic. School said it was because they were left handed.
Trump was sent off to military school. Tells me the family could not make him mind.
Other Jean, thanks for the info on the contested will and the sick baby. Those Trumps are some chicken shit humans.
18The first rule of Dunning-Kruger club is not knowing you’re in Dunning-Kruger club.
19Good analysis. We need impeachment proceedings just as soon as possible—the founders of this country could never have intended for us to be under the rule of somebody this dangerously deranged.
20Thanks! So much wrong with this guy.
21Every harmful human fault that I try to rid myself of, I see glaring in Trump.
And yes he can’t change due to the nature of his many afflictions but they are guaranteed to get worse… as we are sooo horribly seeing.
Kevin Graves –
ZING!!
22