“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside.”—Sam Vaknin

It must be difficult being Donald J. Trump. Gifted a life of leisure and privilege, at the age of eight, he along with his four siblings and three of his father’s grandchildren were the recipients of a one million dollar trust fund which in today’s currency rate would equal four times the original bequest. Puffed up, proud beyond mere mortal’s imaginations, it is safe to say life has come easy to the Mad Don.

Yet, at the pinnacle of what most normal human beings would think the accomplishment of a lifetime, he sees only insults, threats, and effrontery at every turn. The man is not capable of normal human reaction to anything that the rest of us demonstrate as second nature.

A case in point is Twitter’s reaction to his well-known tendency to stretch the truth, if not outright prevaricate, by taking the unprecedented step of adding a Fact Check label to the president’s Tweets. Readers can now see the truth behind the lies he sends hurtling through the social media atmosphere. Not unexpected, his reaction was swift and unhinged as usual and totally beyond his limited power as president of the United States. What part of the Constitution does he think gives him the right to shut down private sector businesses because they want to offer the public the truth. It baffles the mind.

His response to the public’s reaction to his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is even more telling. Gabe Sherman in his column for Vanity Fair pulls off what little clothes the emperor had left on his body when he reported about Trump’s outrage at the effect the coronavirus has had on (wait for it) . . . him.

As he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. Vanity Fair

Forget the 100, 000 dead Americans. Forget the deep dive depression that the country is almost comically slipping into day by day. Forget any semblance of probity or self-awareness. Forget all of that because under this president fragile ego, it is all about him. Screw the rest of the world.

For Trump it is all about someone else that he can harangue and blame for his own shortcomings. He accused the Obama administration of leaving the country in the lurch by not preparing his administration with a pandemic game plan. Of course, he overlooked the sixty-nine page Obama Pandemic Playbook the former administration left behind. Not to be bogged down with the truth, in recent days he has focused his ridicule on among others like Joe Biden for wearing a mask to protect those who he comes in contact with while out in public. Something, Trump feels would somehow diminish his own manliness if his basket of deplorables saw him out about the country sporting a lifesaving mask.

A particularly attractive target recently has been MSNBC morning talk show host, Joe Scarborough. Mad Dog Donald has seized upon a tragic occurrence that happened nineteen years ago when a young woman, who worked in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach office when he was a congressman, fell after suffering a medical emergency and died when she passed out and hit her head on a desk in Scarborough’s office. Trump has repeatedly called for the “cold case” to be reopened and Scarborough’s involvement in the death be investigated. CNN explains it this way,

None of this is, of course, true. Trump is referring to the death of a woman named Lori Klausutis 19 years ago. As The Washington Post reported back in 2017 (when Trump first started making these unfounded allegations against Scarborough):

“Authorities determined 16 years ago that she died after losing consciousness from an abnormal heart rhythm and collapsed, striking her head. She was discovered in Scarborough’s office in Fort Walton Beach, lying on her back with her head near a desk, according to a 2001 police report.” CNN

While Scarborough is a player on the political front and can take what is thrown at him, Trump hasn’t given a second thought to the Klausutis family or the painful memories he dredges up every time he brings up the subject. This is typical Trump’s insensitivity on display once again as America has come to expect. It is savage fake ploy to attempt to turn the nation’s attention away from his failed presidency, and most recently, his dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

These are only a few of a swarm of recent examples that could be pointed out that define Donald Trump as a consummate liar, bully, grifter, and a small minded thug whose only goal in life is to uplift his own personae at the expense of others. As his poll numbers continue to slide, there is no guarantee that he will alter his ways in the hope that turning over a new leaf will make him look more desirable. This is a concept that has no relevance to Mad Donny. Why should he change? In his mind he is, to borrow a phrase from the Matrix movies, “THE ONE”. This is the only constant that he has taught America over the last three and a half years. Not that he is the one, but that he bleieves it.

It must be difficult to be Donald J. Trump. As he sees the love and respect he has for himself being tarnished at the hands of scientists, the legitimate news media, scholars, historians, and legal minds across the nation, his zone of comfort has to be shrinking every day. His claim of being “a most stable genius” has to be taking some serious shots to both his ego and his belief in himself. Why doesn’t America not love him for the superman that he is? Why do so many in the country work to tear him down and question his honesty? Why can’t the average American see the brilliance of his presence at the helm of our democracy even when he does everything he can do to bring it down at the aggrandizement of his own twisted myth he believes about himself?

At this point, any attempt to understand the president is a moot point. The only thing that matters is the election coming up in November. An election that in no way is decided at this point. With Russian interference, his basket of gun totting followers, the pandemic, his attack on mail in voting, and a packed judicial branch he and Mitch McConnell have constructed, all bets are off.

Wackodoodle of the Week

This week there was no doubt:

Woman with a hammer