No One Matters to Trump But Trump
His self-serving treatment of last week’s elections shows his disregard for his party.
ON TUESDAY NIGHT, Fox News kicked off its 10 o’clock hour with a gloomy update: Democrats had swept the elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City. But Donald Trump had an answer. At 10:05, he posted his retort on Truth Social: “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters.”
Any other president might have had the grace to praise his party’s candidates or at least keep his mouth shut. Not Trump. He viewed the GOP’s debacle as an opportunity to promote himself.
Fourteen minutes later, as more bad returns poured in, Trump touted the performance of the person he really cared about. “JUST OUT,” he announced. “The 60 Minutes interview of Donald J. Trump, on CBS, Sunday night, was the highest rated 60 Minutes IN YEARS!”
This is a big and growing problem for the GOP: Trump doesn’t really care about his party. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
The president’s critics have often diagnosed him as a narcissist. But his supporters, too, have felt the sting of his indifference. Two months ago, on the morning after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a reporter outside the White House told Trump, “My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half?”
“I think very good,” Trump replied nonchalantly, turning to a subject that interested him more. “And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks. They’ve just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.”
This pathological solipsism makes Trump incapable of patriotism. He thinks America without him is worthless. On September 23, he stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly and declared that in the years between his presidencies, the United States was “a laughingstock all over the world.” A week later, in a speech to American generals and admirals, he boasted that Vladimir Putin and the king of Saudi Arabia had told him America was “a dead country” before his election but was now, thanks to Trump, the “hottest country in the world.”
In his interview with 60 Minutes on October 31, Trump bragged that Chinese President Xi Jinping had promised not to invade Taiwan “while President Trump is president.” Whatever happened to Taiwan after Trump left office was, implicitly, not his concern.
IN LAST TUESDAY’S ELECTIONS, Trump’s regal apathy made him all but useless to his party. He never campaigned in person for Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee for governor of New Jersey. He never even endorsed Winsome Earle-Sears, the party’s nominee for governor of Virginia. But Trump had plenty to say about himself. Two days before the election, he posted, “I’M GETTING READY TO WATCH PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP (ME!) ON 60 MINUTES.”
On Wednesday morning, hours after the Democratic sweep, Republican senators went to the White House for a breakfast with Trump. He used the occasion to distance himself from the losers. In fact, he bragged that the party’s losses underscored how special he was. He repeated what he had written on Truth Social: that according to pollsters, “the biggest factor” in the GOP’s defeats was “that I wasn’t on the ballot.” Trump said he wasn’t sure the pollsters were right, “but I was honored that they said that.”
Later that day, in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Trump further distanced himself from Earle-Sears. “I didn’t think that Virginia was going to do very well,” he explained. He told Baier that he “didn’t endorse her” because “my endorsement means a lot to me.” By withholding his support for the nominee, Trump undercut his party. But he protected what mattered more to him: his win-loss record as an endorser.
Also on Wednesday, speaking to business executives in Miami, the president returned to his theme that America without him was a joke. He scoffed that prior to his election, foreign governments “were laughing at our country.” But now, thanks to him, “We’re respected by everybody,” he clucked, pointing to the way foreign leaders fawned over him. “You see the way I get treated.”
Meanwhile, Trump was getting the same royal treatment at home. On Thursday, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he noted that his administration’s new website to connect consumers with low-cost prescription drugs would bear the name TrumpRx.gov. “They want to use my name,” he said, pretending he had nothing to do with the idea. “It’s got my name on it.”
In his Oval Office remarks, the president again cited his party’s election defeats as evidence of his superiority. Republican leaders in Congress were telling the press that the defeats were predictable because the states and cities that had voted on Tuesday leaned Democratic. Trump discounted that excuse. “They weren’t very Democrat when I ran a year ago, ’cause I did well in those areas,” he crowed.
On Friday, as he hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the White House, Trump lauded his fellow authoritarian and dissociated himself from the GOP’s losing candidates. “I was not much involved” in the elections, he told reporters. “I didn’t support Virginia, the candidate. Didn’t do a lot of support for the other candidates. . . . I wasn’t involved in that stuff too much.”
Regardless of whether he truly wasn’t invested in the elections, it’s clear that he’s quite interested in putting his name on the new stadium of the Washington Commanders. On Saturday, ESPN reported that Trump, through intermediaries, was lobbying the team’s owners to name the stadium after him. Far from disputing the story, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was a lovely idea.
This is the legacy Trump wants. Through fiat or coercion, he’s trying to engrave his name on the Kennedy Center, visas, savings accounts, and anything else he can soil. But his real legacy will be all the people he betrayed or neglected in pursuit of his vain and vulgar notion of immortality. And that includes his party.
I met a doctor, a physician, last week. He's about my age (mid 70s, gulp), and about to retire from caring for seriously disabled veterans, in his words, "quadriplegics, amputees, burn victims," people who need help but are practically invisible to the rest of the US.
I asked this guy if he remembered news, fundraising photos of the little Biafran kids from the end of the '60s, sitting on the ground in circles scooping their little bowls of rice into their mouths with their fingers. He did, "I do. They had protruding ribs, distended bellies, wide sad eyes." I told him that was my house inside Chicago in the early '60s too, a couple times a month, white rice with a little milk and lots of sugar, eaten with fingers. We were invisible, embarrassed too.
Yes, Trump's got serious personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder (the only himself bit), and anti-social personality disorder, sociopathy (the no empathy bit).
Trump stopped and withheld food from hungry kids as a political weapon.
Trump's got dementia, and lots of other serious physical problems. He lies about it, has his doctors and staff lie about it all too. Trump is dying, probably won't finish this term. When Trump croaks there will be more celebration than sorrow. Trump will be erased purposely.
I do not get the amorality, spinelessness, and cowardice of other Republican elected officials, though.
I do remember that the evil flying monkeys stuck by the Wicked Witch until Dorothy melted her. When the monkeys were set free, they were happy, they rejoiced. Trump's dying too.
I hope the Commanders do name their new stadium after him, Felony Field. Put it in big gold letters behind black bars.