Donald Trump is his own worst enemy, far worse than the lunatics, communists, RINOs, and Democrats he believes are out to get him. The damage done to Trump’s legacy, history will tell us, was not the work of his enemies, but the product of the President himself.
The President was called a narcissist by those who knew him well before he ran for President and even before his fateful encounter with E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. He did not just want to be in the press; he needed to be there. That need drove him to engage in things that often made him look ridiculous, crooked, or just plain stupid.
Consider him disguising his voice to give tips to reporters, usually in the hopes of prompting stories favorable to him. Many reporters were not fooled. Remember that scene in Home Alone 2, where Macaulay Culkin encounters Trump in the lobby of the Plaza hotel? The director did not want Trump in the movie. Trump required the cameo as a condition of filming in the hotel, which he owned at the time.
Some would describe these types of acts as buffoonery and harmless. But once Trump rose from several encounters with financial disaster in the real estate business and changed careers to entertainment, his weaknesses grew. Because his television show, The Apprentice, had a large audience (one that did not include this writer), he came to see himself as both famous and “great.” And with that “greatness,” he came to see himself as a wise leader.
Trump was not a wise leader the first time he won the Presidency in a brutally nasty campaign that leveraged racism and misogyny to defeat the much-better qualified Hillary Clinton. He did not expect to win. He declined to create a traditional transition team and thus did not hit the ground running. He hit it with a large splat, making dozens of personnel and policy mistakes in four years best summed up as chaotic. Sometimes it seemed he was firing a Secretary of Defense or Chief of Staff on Twitter weekly.
Trump ended his four years in the White House with acts that would best be described as self-destructive were it not for Trump not being destroyed. Convinced that it was impossible for him to lose the election, he sought to retain power through lawsuits, lying, and violence. His effort failed, but even as he retreated to Mar-a-Lago to lick his wounds, he was unable to handle the truth.
Trump’s four years in the wilderness spawned an anger that drives him today. It also landed him in a world of stress that accelerated his aging while eroding his judgment, minimal to begin with. As a result, and thanks to a group of power-hungry right wingers who privately do not like or respect Trump, he found a team of oligarchs willing to fund him and use him as a vehicle to maximize the return on their investments.
Trump’s new circle of political friends and advisors are different than those of his first administration. For the second time around, he found advisors who knew what keys to play on the piano to mesmerize conspiracy-believing white nationalists or who simply needed someone to sweep away the laws and regulations keeping them from enhancing their stacks of gold.
Trump seems to have had two principal criteria for selecting his cabinet and senior officials—celebrity and loyalty. He was more interested in how appointees look, how often they are in the press, than in their experience, integrity, or intelligence. Committed a felony? No problem. Wanna be ambassador to France? You got it.
That brings us to Trump 10 and a half months into his second term. He is an old man with “cankles” who frequently and publicly falls asleep at meetings and who, allegedly, has lost control of his bowels and “stinks.” But, more bizarrely, perhaps recognizing that he is unlikely to live forever, is anxious to create a legacy but knows that his words and actions will not be enough to save the perception that he was twice a miserably failing, dangerous President—a dark chapter in American history.
It is impossible to scroll through the news without reading about the ballroom, Trump finally getting a “Peace Prize,” this one conjured up by FIFA as a thank you for free advertising for the World Cup, and peace agreements that frequently include provisions that may stop conflicts but always seem to include terms to create business opportunities for Trump and his friends.
Trump is working hard to erase January 6 from the history books, but the video of police being attacked with flag poles repurposed as spears and pepper spray will not be erased by pardoning the thugs he gathered in Washington to do his dirty work. Nor will prosecuting James Comey or attempting to destroy the legacy of his predecessor, “Sleepy” Joe Biden do the trick.
If the Epstein scandal, allegations of war crimes, increasing evidence of grift, and what appears to be outright criminality by Trump, his family, and his business associates, don’t destroy Trump’s legacy, don’t forget that the Trump show still has almost three and half more years to go.
We have not seen the worst of Trump or Trumpism yet. Our only hope is Democrats will win the House (or House and Senate) next year, or for a combination of Democrats and Republicans to finally stand up and tell Trump the show is over.
J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, goldendoodles, and other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean is an advocate for democracy, sanity, and the rule of law.
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