How Trump sabotages himself to preserve his ego

Donald Trump is caught up in his own delusion, trapped in his own unending spin cycle.

It seems baffling that he should opt out of a second debate with Joe Biden, simply because it’s a virtual event. Is it because he’s afraid he won’t be able to control the debate with his blustering and bullying? That’s part of it. But he should be able to see from his declining poll numbers after their first encounter that such an approach hurt him.

What about claiming that COVID isn’t dangerous right after it put him in the hospital? Is he really that dense?

And why on earth would he pull the plug on economic stimulus talks just when it looked like the two sides were making progress? Doesn’t he realize that an economic boost in the final days before the election will boost his stock with voters?

Or does he actually want to lose?

That prospect has been floated by a number of pundits scratching their heads over Trump’s recent series of rapid-fire salvos, all of which found the same target — the foot in which he shot himself.

His moves have been so counterintuitive that people have started to suggest the steroids he’s been taking have addled his brain.

It’s possible. But his recent maneuvers aren’t out of character; they’re merely amplified versions of the B.S. he’s been spewing for years.

Life of denial

Which brings me to something his niece, Mary Trump said: He’s only going to get worse.

Worse at what?

At facing reality, especially where it concerns himself. Trump has been so obsessed with winning that he’s become an expert in convincing others — and most importantly, himself — that he’s winning when he’s actually doing the opposite. White supremacists’ favorite president is adamant that he’s more of a friend to Black Americans than any president this side of Honest Abe. He’s repeatedly insisted that the world’s worst COVID response is actually the best, and he’s gotten Mike Pence and others to parrot this 1984-style upside-down version of the truth.

As Mary Trump has said, he’s never been held accountable for his own actions. He’s gotten away with numerous bankruptcies, with appalling treatment of women, with racist statements, you name it. And then, in 2016, the reality of a Trump election victory — a reality that virtually no one saw coming — converged with Trump’s hoped-for reality in an uncanny perfect storm of fact and delusion.

Since then, his ability to survive impeachment, a hush-money-to-a-porn-star scandal, the longest government shutdown ever, a viral pandemic and, now, his own infection with that very same virus... all that has only reinforced his certitude that he’s immune to the rules of conduct — the rules of life — that govern everyone else. His delusion has become so inflated that this clinically obese 74-year-old said, in an interview, “I’m a perfect physical specimen, and I’m extremely young.”

All of which is obviously false to anyone who looks at the guy.

Winning, not winning

But not to Trump. His self-image has become so dependent on “winning” that he truly believes he’s winning all the time. Catching a potentially deadly virus becomes a blessing in disguise. Allowing that virus to kill 210,000-plus Americans is an unparalleled success story. A lightly attended inauguration is somehow the largest ever. A catastrophic debate performance is a decisive victory. He’s doing “very well” in polls that consistently show his approval rating is underwater. The list goes on and on.

So, if he thinks it’s a good idea to torpedo stimulus talks, or to drop out of a debate, or to go without a mask, it must be a good idea. Not based on any objective criteria, but simply because he believes it. If he changes his mind (as he did on the stimulus issue), it’s not because he thinks he was wrong; he’s not thinking at all. This isn’t your standard political flip-flop. It’s just an instinct for self-preservation that immediately expunges any record in his own mind that he ever thought anything else in the first place.

Trump believes in his own “gut instinct” the same way some people believe are sure they’ll win the lottery with their lucky numbers.

Or are sure they’ll hit a home run because they’re wearing their good-luck socks.

Or believe they can protect themselves by knocking on wood. Or crossing their fingers.

Or just know that burning a green candle will bring them money (because money’s green, y’know).

Or that if they find a penny and pick it up, all day long they’ll have good luck.

Despite not having any evidence that any of this is true beyond their own wishful thinking. The common thread in all of this is that people keep right on believing these things even though there’s no empirical proof that any of them are true — and even in the face of proof they’re not.

“My gut,” Trump says, “tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

This isn’t just bluster; he really believes it. No wonder he disdains science.

Power of placebo thinking

Positive thinking can have a positive effect... but only in the same sense that taking a sugar pill can lead to some marginal (if temporary) improvement in a sick patient. If you have hope, you’ll work harder to achieve the thing you hope for. A placebo can give you that hope, and in doing so, can help motivate you. But it’s the work you do when spurred by that hope, not the placebo, that’s responsible for any progress you make.

Mr. Trump, an adherent of Norman Vincent Peale’s “positive thinking” message, became a placebo unto himself. And he sold that placebo to admirers desperate for hope — people who would keep right on picking up pennies, playing lucky lotto numbers, and burning green candles until hell froze over, even though they never get rich from any of it.

But here’s the key thing: Trump’s taking his own placebo, too. And he believes it just as much, if not more than the desperate souls he’s convinced to enroll in Trump University or gamble at one of his now-bankrupt casinos.

He doesn’t believe in scientists, or doctors, or military experts, or political strategists — he believes only in himself.

When he’s wrong, he tells himself he’s right (and surrounds himself with people who too scared to do anything else). When he makes a mistake, he tells himself it’s perfect. No matter the stakes. No matter the costs.

Endless loop of lunacy

In light of all this, is it really surprising that he should make inexplicably stupid decisions with regard to an economic stimulus or a debate or even his own health? He’s not just a pathological liar. It goes beyond that. He lives in a fantasyland where his warped conception of reality is all he knows how to believe. He’s so completely conditioned to follow his own wishful thinking that he can’t even recognize objective evidence — and he wouldn’t know what to make of it if he did.

It’s as foreign to him as the internet would be to a medieval monk.

Why did Trump believe it was a good idea to drop out of the second debate? Because he believed it was a good idea to drop out of the second debate. It’s as simple as that. There’s no master strategy, no art of the deal, no nothing going on behind the scenes. It, and virtually every other action Trump takes, is the product of circular reasoning by a mind caught in the endless loop of its own self-delusion.

It must be lonely in there.

It sure is scary out here.

Stephen H. Provost is a journalist with 30 years of experience at daily newspapers, and the author of two books examining the Trump presidency: Political Psychosis and Media Meltdown in the Age of Trump.

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Featured photo: Trump in Arizona, 2018, by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 2.0 license

Secondary photo: Humpty Trumpty wall mural, 2017, New York, by aesthetics of crisis, Creative Commons 2.0 license