Michael, in your close reading of this transcript, you've accurately articulated the patterns of Trump's mind...the deep-seated, unconscious beliefs that organize all his thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I'm psychoanalytically trained in infant and early child development. Knowing something of the emotional deprivation Donald experienced in his first two years of life, and the emotional abuse from that time forward, no child could have developed a good feeling about his intrinsic self in a family with such an emotionally absent mother and verbally abusive father.
The patterns you describe map onto a deprived infant's experience of himself and the world. He's the center of the world; mother SHOULD orbit around him. To an infant, as to Trump, that's just logical. (Every infant needs a caregiver whose primary preoccupation is with that helpless baby.) Babies need others to FUNCTION for them. Other people only matter to an infant when they can serve that baby's needs. Otherwise, they are irrelevant, or even harmful, from the baby's point of view. To Trump, other people, institutions, etc. are only relevant in so far as they serve HIS purposes. If they comply with his demands they are "good,' if they don't, they are "bad" or even mortal enemies out to destroy him. Just like a chronically neglected baby, he can become enraged easily and can't tolerate not being the supreme center of attention.
When Trump talks about "the country," he means himself. HE feels threatened, not the country. HE feels damaged, not the country. Every other country is short-changing the U.S., meaning HE'S been short-changed by a bad mommy and dad. They owe the U.S. big time, means that HE feels entitled to something he never got. In his mind, his needs are the ONLY things that matter, and those who don't see it that way have no place in his mind and may not even deserve to exist. He once told Bob Woodward, as if telling him a secret, that "Everything is Mine."
It may be really hard to believe that an adult man could be functioning at the developmental level of an infant/toddler. But profoundly neglected children can turn out that way. If you look at the world Trump creates around him, you'll see Trump at the center doing very little except enriching himself, denigrating others, and giving orders. They have to psychologically and literally function for him, the way a baby needs others to do. They are the target of his intense wrath, his narcissistic rage, when they display ANY autonomy or differ with him in any way. If they do, as Mike Pence did, then "maybe [Pence] deserved to be hung."
The reason millions of us keep trying to understand the latest thing he's done or said, is because we don't understand the deep-seated core of his lived experience. His development became arrested at the earliest stage. Freud said that "we don't understand other people ("hysterics") because we don't have their memories."
The struggle most of us have is that Trump's mind is so different from anything we've ever experienced in an adult man. We've never seen a man with absolutely NO CONSCIENCE, no moral compass beyond what's good for him. If it aggrandizes him then it's good, and everyone else ought to see it that way too. He's DANGEROUS precisely for this reason, and he doesn't mind ignoring the pesky laws and courts that would restrain him, just as he ignored his parents who weren't worthy of his respect. As he did as a child, he just regroups and makes an end-run around them. It might even enhance his sense of self to see others frustrated when they can't contain him. At least he's not being ignored; now HE has the upper hand.
It helps if we understand the principles that shape Trump's mind, so we can predict his behavior. There are no internal limits on what he'll do, no matter what kind of opposition he gets or who gets hurt. He is DRIVEN to behave this way, so it's up to all of the adults still left in America and the world, to set limits and be firm, when and where we can...with laws and non-cooperation. We are literally in a war, not just with Trump's infantile mind, but with the megalomaniacal cabal of co-conspirators he's welcomed into the White House.
It's been ten years in the making but more and more, we're getting our democratic back up. This piece goes a long way toward helping us recognize what we're dealing with.
Please post this as a separate note. It deserves much more attention than it will receive here, buried as a comment on someone else's Substack article. It really needs publication as an op-ed piece in The New York Times or other major newspaper. Brilliant analysis!
SO good. Fascinating. It makes sense and the pieces of the puzzle we're experiencing come together in this analysis. Side note and my ah-ha moment: When people describe Trump as a toddler, they're not wrong. Thank you.
He may have been a profoundly neglected, infant or toddler, but his siblings didn’t turn out to be sociopaths or narcissistic people at least that we know of. I think the bottom line with your description here is that he has no place at all where he is, he is not emotionally or mentally equipped for it.
Man, what a nice compliment piece to Michael ‘s post. Now, if someone could just determine what’s next in this sicko’s agenda to counteract it before the speed of execution we might get somewhere.
Frank, I would say that all you need to know is a few principles that drive him from within:
1) “Everything for ME…Nothing for you.”
2) “Retribution is my super power.” ANYONE who disagrees with, or obstructs me, is the enemy and deserves to be wiped out; physically, financially, or any way that I can.”
3) “EVERYTHING IS MINE.” (He actually said this to Bob Woodward in an interview some years ago. It reveals the core impulse behind all of his actions, from grabbing women by their private parts, grabbing the White House from the rightful winner of the 2020 election, to grabbing Greenland or anything else he impulsively wants.)
You can predict what he’ll do simply by ready the history of the Third Reich and knowing a few things that he’s already done: grabbing brown people off the street and sending them to torture prisons in El Salvador, etc.
This issue now is, how do we protect ourselves, defensively or offensively.
Agreed. But I’m thinking that the traits you both have identified could be used constructively by those with deep intelligence skills (as in national security intelligence) that could apply them in game theory to plan out ways to defeat these narcissistic impulses before they turn into catastrophes. There are many on Substack alone that come from backgrounds in these areas who can put their skills to use to advise our soon to be former allies to counteract the harm this cretin is predisposed to inflict on liberal democracies throughout the world.
Explains why so many people seem to reach for the 'it's like dealing with a two year old' instinctively. If you can put aside the enormous harm being done by Trump, on a human level, this is incredibly sad. He must live with some pretty serious pain when he's alone. I wonder if that's one of the reasons he bleats while everyone else is sleeping and that 100+ bleat session happened when he could see so many others revelling in the love of their families and good friends at Christmas?
Very helpful insights, thank you. As a side note, as I read the transcript, I noticed how frequently Trump said he was disappointed (e.g., he didn't get the recognition he deserved, or someone did not think or act the way he expected) -- but he's always disappointed in the other guy, never himself.
Also, it seems that he acknowledges authority in the abstract (e.g., Supreme Court, pending tariff decision) but when an outside decison or situation does not go his way, he shrugs and simply finds another way to reach his goal. No scruples or self-restraint.
As you pointed out, Trump's narcissism is pervasive, and (as Michael pointed out), reading the whole interview interview provides insight into how his extremely myopic self-centered experience of the world frames his responses. Scary, but he actually starts to sound logical. Scarier still is his lack of self-doubt!
What this all fails to acknowledge is that these institutions and norms and yes, even laws themselves, were always voluntary. But the wise amongst the powerful volunteered themselves in exchange for the many to do the same.
When the powerful reject the legitimacy of governance and the primacy of law, the many will follow suit. And the powerful will bear the harshest consequences of it, as they are the most visible and always had the most to lose.
Democracy and the rule of law are not a gracious gift handed down by a benevolent group of old, commoner-loving patriots. They are a framework for understanding and capitalizing on the reality of society that has always existed: governance is granted by the consent of the governed. Social stability can only exist when there is institutional trust.
This man’s efforts to undermine it all is not some clever unmasking of the fact that the rules are all made up. It’s a fatal misunderstanding of the fact that the rules are there to protect all of us from our natural tendencies.
We listen to the opposition because when they’re talking they’re not plotting. When they’re debating, they’re not resorting to violence. Money, itself, (which this man seems endlessly motivated by) is the same sort of fiction. And it’s just paper once the world starts burning.
This is frightening…and I’m beginning to believe there will be a civil war. How does it stop? If the House changes rule in 2026 do they overrule law and get rid of him? He is in poor health…can Vance carry this mission on?
Wars aren't fought over politics. They're fought over resources, religion, ethnicity, and geography. And by all that I mean resources. As long as the people are fed you're fine. But keep an eye on the economy, and exercise all of the peaceful mechanisms you still have while they still work:
Have difficult conversations with people you disagree with.
Campaign for people and policies you believe in.
And vote in every election.
Work for the best. Hope for the good. Plan for the worst.
Many people have drawn on George Orwell's 1944 for parallels. I have yet to see anyone mention Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here.
From the blurb on the back of my 2017 Penguin Books reprint: "A vain, outlandish, anti-immigrant, fear-mongering demagogue runs for President of the United States - and wins... Buzz Windrip, who promises poor, angry voters that he will make America proud and prosperous once more, but takes the country down a far darker path."
Here I am! Last year, I began by getting Ernst Fraenkel's "The Dual State" to try to understand, but it wasn't enough: I needed a closer connection to the American situation. So I added Lewis, reading it, studying it, marking the passages that struck me. It gave me, so to speak, a sense of despair. The process he describes was too slow compared to Trump's velocity: another era, another communication. Ninety years after Lewis, everything happened in a few months.
How does the passage you quoted end? "Newspaper editor Doremus Jessup can't believe it will last—but is he right? This cautionary tale of liberal complacency in the face of populist tyranny shows it really CAN happen here."
One year into Trump’s second regime, we face an escalating fascist threat: raids on our communities, troops occupying our cities, attacks on immigrants, families torn apart, mass surveillance, and terror used to keep us silent. It is time for our communities to escalate as well.
2025 was a year of marches that showed our collective strength. And as the threats grow, our movement must evolve and escalate. Trump and his allies have already made clear that a second term would bring a deeper wave of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and violence than the first.
On January 20, we call on our communities to organize teams, call your neighbors and classmates, and turn your back and walk out on fascism. Host mutual aid planning meetings, organize public service, but walk out to block the normal routines of power, and make the stakes real. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.
This is somewhat ground breaking. I liken it to getting a chance to sit down with the devil himself for an honest exchange over coffee about what it's like to live in his head. People around the world who know better will view this as groundbreaking intelligence. To be able to get a coherent look into his thinking pretty much breaks down all the attempts by the opposition to paint him as stupid, dumb, and unable to count 2+2. In this telling, one gets an understanding of what's really under the hood. It's like getting a complex sports car tear down to see what makes it work as a sports car. Few really understand what really goes on, and this telling here in this piece is a goldmine of Intel. Bravo sir for breaking all this down into understandable pieces of this very complex puzzle.
Michael, your conclusion agrees with my own assessment of Trump. I predict that he will rush into more shock and awe actions on the world stage, including a military takeover of Greenland. He will find some general willing to undertake the action. And who's going to make him give it back?
In addition to applying these new realizations in our contextual thinking about Trump, we may need to add a legion of psychics in order to keep up with his (or his regime’s) ‘catch me if you can’ methods.
I prefer your method of looking at this from a different perspective. I literally hate what he says and does, but if you know how his mind works, you can hopefully see what's running underneath. Now, having said that, I understand how he's thinking of the processes that are in place and how he looks at them, BUT the outright, in plain sight, lies he and his minions use to declare black is white when we're all looking and hearing the same thing, appalls me to the core. Yes, I know... he gets his results in the end because it takes time to refute and prove and he still gets his result. The fly in that ointment is there is no penalty to pay! If he was subject to consequences/penalties for his actions AND for his attempts to forego those penalties by wasting time to prove the already proven, ... AND WITHOUT THE SUPREME COURT'S IMMUNITY, I think he would have a different feeling for laws and consequences. Why in the world would anybody, let alone a narcissist drunk on power, not take advantage of anything and anyone just as he's doing? Really...! Why not? Why change what's working. I think we're the idiots in the room!!!
Doing damage before anyone can stop it is a PERFECT offense against an old, sclerosis, calcified opposition that find its way put of a wet paper bag, too rigid to respond with alacrity and power.
I admire the work you've invested in this and I don't disagree with any of your conclusions. My problem is that Trump's character -- or lack of it -- had been in plain sight for as long as I can remember. He's never been, or pretended to be, anything but the corrupt, impulsive, dishonest piece of shit he is now. Shame on us for finding any of this new or even remotely surprising.
lol Bill I was thinking of you when I put in the disclaimers that this will likely seem like a futile exercise to some….cant really argue with your point ….just that I’m somehow compelled to do this. Ah well….so it goes.
Michael, I thought your article (analysis of the NYT interview) was superb. As Trump's actions become ever more disruptive and dangerous, I hope you will continue to help us understand them. Thank you.
Bill, IMO Trump filters information, keeps the info he likes (discards the rest), makes stuff up as he goes along ... then believes in his own ill-informed, superficial, delusional, self-serving ideas. If you accept all that, his responses to the NYT (and other) interviewers are actually honest. As "Observer" commented above, his is a distorted reality, misaligned with objective reality and common morality, but (imo) not necessarily a dishonest one. Anyway, food for thought.
This is basically the authoritarian playbook since Hitler. It works. Just overwhelm the system, and work faster than they can stop you. He's a dummy about a lot of things, but they all seem to learn those basics pretty quickly. And for what it's worth, I suspect ALL the authoritarians in the world are psychologically damaged in some way from childhood, and are acting out.
I find it remarkable that the insights drawn here to what Trump thinks is governance are far deeper and more telling, and frightening, than what the New York Times has extracted from its own 23,000 word interview with Trump.
Thanks for this valuable summary of the president's approach. Some of his dispositions remind me of US business people I chatted with about their methods decades ago. When discussing legality of action, one said that businesses have lobbyists so that by the time the government could find illegality in a business practice, your lobbyists have changed the laws so that the company's actions are then legal. Speed. Competition requires speed and therefore risking illegality to win the race. Several who worked internationally would complain that they were unable to bribe international counterparts when competitors could. Again, legality seen as a threat to profit making. A Price Waterhouse exec who gave a guest lecture in an economics class I once took responded to an ethics question related to investing, "Christianity is an interesting idea. It's just never been tried." The focus on speed and results? Survival. To survive is to grow faster than anyone else. Profits uber alles. At the same time --- also decades ago, those with factories in China complained in conversations about the fact that on the factory floors regulations were whatever the latest government inspector said they were. This meant that everything had to ground to a stop or production reduced in output. Profits were a problem, planning was compromised in that chaotic environment. Others who had worked in China complained about the vicissitudes of banks and financial policies in the same way. Chaotic. Unpredictable. In China then, this was only tolerated because of expectations for long term profits. First in, first to win and dominate a market. Speed. (Ford, I think, saw China profits sustain the company recently. So it worked for them to endure the chaos. You had to be a huge company to absorb the losses to endure in this way.) Speed, violate and manipulate laws to compete --- to ensure profits. To win. You have to win, to expand, to survive. I've read that this ethics free approach to business is one swing of a pendulum, but this president's pendulum is stuck in that ethos. And the USA is not a business.
To understand Trump, this is an important read. To create strategy to counteract his damaging policies, this is crucial information. Very helpful and fascinating as well to read about how his twisted brain works.
Michael, in your close reading of this transcript, you've accurately articulated the patterns of Trump's mind...the deep-seated, unconscious beliefs that organize all his thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I'm psychoanalytically trained in infant and early child development. Knowing something of the emotional deprivation Donald experienced in his first two years of life, and the emotional abuse from that time forward, no child could have developed a good feeling about his intrinsic self in a family with such an emotionally absent mother and verbally abusive father.
The patterns you describe map onto a deprived infant's experience of himself and the world. He's the center of the world; mother SHOULD orbit around him. To an infant, as to Trump, that's just logical. (Every infant needs a caregiver whose primary preoccupation is with that helpless baby.) Babies need others to FUNCTION for them. Other people only matter to an infant when they can serve that baby's needs. Otherwise, they are irrelevant, or even harmful, from the baby's point of view. To Trump, other people, institutions, etc. are only relevant in so far as they serve HIS purposes. If they comply with his demands they are "good,' if they don't, they are "bad" or even mortal enemies out to destroy him. Just like a chronically neglected baby, he can become enraged easily and can't tolerate not being the supreme center of attention.
When Trump talks about "the country," he means himself. HE feels threatened, not the country. HE feels damaged, not the country. Every other country is short-changing the U.S., meaning HE'S been short-changed by a bad mommy and dad. They owe the U.S. big time, means that HE feels entitled to something he never got. In his mind, his needs are the ONLY things that matter, and those who don't see it that way have no place in his mind and may not even deserve to exist. He once told Bob Woodward, as if telling him a secret, that "Everything is Mine."
It may be really hard to believe that an adult man could be functioning at the developmental level of an infant/toddler. But profoundly neglected children can turn out that way. If you look at the world Trump creates around him, you'll see Trump at the center doing very little except enriching himself, denigrating others, and giving orders. They have to psychologically and literally function for him, the way a baby needs others to do. They are the target of his intense wrath, his narcissistic rage, when they display ANY autonomy or differ with him in any way. If they do, as Mike Pence did, then "maybe [Pence] deserved to be hung."
The reason millions of us keep trying to understand the latest thing he's done or said, is because we don't understand the deep-seated core of his lived experience. His development became arrested at the earliest stage. Freud said that "we don't understand other people ("hysterics") because we don't have their memories."
The struggle most of us have is that Trump's mind is so different from anything we've ever experienced in an adult man. We've never seen a man with absolutely NO CONSCIENCE, no moral compass beyond what's good for him. If it aggrandizes him then it's good, and everyone else ought to see it that way too. He's DANGEROUS precisely for this reason, and he doesn't mind ignoring the pesky laws and courts that would restrain him, just as he ignored his parents who weren't worthy of his respect. As he did as a child, he just regroups and makes an end-run around them. It might even enhance his sense of self to see others frustrated when they can't contain him. At least he's not being ignored; now HE has the upper hand.
It helps if we understand the principles that shape Trump's mind, so we can predict his behavior. There are no internal limits on what he'll do, no matter what kind of opposition he gets or who gets hurt. He is DRIVEN to behave this way, so it's up to all of the adults still left in America and the world, to set limits and be firm, when and where we can...with laws and non-cooperation. We are literally in a war, not just with Trump's infantile mind, but with the megalomaniacal cabal of co-conspirators he's welcomed into the White House.
It's been ten years in the making but more and more, we're getting our democratic back up. This piece goes a long way toward helping us recognize what we're dealing with.
Please post this as a separate note. It deserves much more attention than it will receive here, buried as a comment on someone else's Substack article. It really needs publication as an op-ed piece in The New York Times or other major newspaper. Brilliant analysis!
SO good. Fascinating. It makes sense and the pieces of the puzzle we're experiencing come together in this analysis. Side note and my ah-ha moment: When people describe Trump as a toddler, they're not wrong. Thank you.
This is brilliant….ty
He may have been a profoundly neglected, infant or toddler, but his siblings didn’t turn out to be sociopaths or narcissistic people at least that we know of. I think the bottom line with your description here is that he has no place at all where he is, he is not emotionally or mentally equipped for it.
Man, what a nice compliment piece to Michael ‘s post. Now, if someone could just determine what’s next in this sicko’s agenda to counteract it before the speed of execution we might get somewhere.
Frank, I would say that all you need to know is a few principles that drive him from within:
1) “Everything for ME…Nothing for you.”
2) “Retribution is my super power.” ANYONE who disagrees with, or obstructs me, is the enemy and deserves to be wiped out; physically, financially, or any way that I can.”
3) “EVERYTHING IS MINE.” (He actually said this to Bob Woodward in an interview some years ago. It reveals the core impulse behind all of his actions, from grabbing women by their private parts, grabbing the White House from the rightful winner of the 2020 election, to grabbing Greenland or anything else he impulsively wants.)
You can predict what he’ll do simply by ready the history of the Third Reich and knowing a few things that he’s already done: grabbing brown people off the street and sending them to torture prisons in El Salvador, etc.
This issue now is, how do we protect ourselves, defensively or offensively.
Agreed. But I’m thinking that the traits you both have identified could be used constructively by those with deep intelligence skills (as in national security intelligence) that could apply them in game theory to plan out ways to defeat these narcissistic impulses before they turn into catastrophes. There are many on Substack alone that come from backgrounds in these areas who can put their skills to use to advise our soon to be former allies to counteract the harm this cretin is predisposed to inflict on liberal democracies throughout the world.
Explains why so many people seem to reach for the 'it's like dealing with a two year old' instinctively. If you can put aside the enormous harm being done by Trump, on a human level, this is incredibly sad. He must live with some pretty serious pain when he's alone. I wonder if that's one of the reasons he bleats while everyone else is sleeping and that 100+ bleat session happened when he could see so many others revelling in the love of their families and good friends at Christmas?
Very helpful insights, thank you. As a side note, as I read the transcript, I noticed how frequently Trump said he was disappointed (e.g., he didn't get the recognition he deserved, or someone did not think or act the way he expected) -- but he's always disappointed in the other guy, never himself.
Also, it seems that he acknowledges authority in the abstract (e.g., Supreme Court, pending tariff decision) but when an outside decison or situation does not go his way, he shrugs and simply finds another way to reach his goal. No scruples or self-restraint.
As you pointed out, Trump's narcissism is pervasive, and (as Michael pointed out), reading the whole interview interview provides insight into how his extremely myopic self-centered experience of the world frames his responses. Scary, but he actually starts to sound logical. Scarier still is his lack of self-doubt!
What this all fails to acknowledge is that these institutions and norms and yes, even laws themselves, were always voluntary. But the wise amongst the powerful volunteered themselves in exchange for the many to do the same.
When the powerful reject the legitimacy of governance and the primacy of law, the many will follow suit. And the powerful will bear the harshest consequences of it, as they are the most visible and always had the most to lose.
Democracy and the rule of law are not a gracious gift handed down by a benevolent group of old, commoner-loving patriots. They are a framework for understanding and capitalizing on the reality of society that has always existed: governance is granted by the consent of the governed. Social stability can only exist when there is institutional trust.
This man’s efforts to undermine it all is not some clever unmasking of the fact that the rules are all made up. It’s a fatal misunderstanding of the fact that the rules are there to protect all of us from our natural tendencies.
We listen to the opposition because when they’re talking they’re not plotting. When they’re debating, they’re not resorting to violence. Money, itself, (which this man seems endlessly motivated by) is the same sort of fiction. And it’s just paper once the world starts burning.
This is frightening…and I’m beginning to believe there will be a civil war. How does it stop? If the House changes rule in 2026 do they overrule law and get rid of him? He is in poor health…can Vance carry this mission on?
Wars aren't fought over politics. They're fought over resources, religion, ethnicity, and geography. And by all that I mean resources. As long as the people are fed you're fine. But keep an eye on the economy, and exercise all of the peaceful mechanisms you still have while they still work:
Have difficult conversations with people you disagree with.
Campaign for people and policies you believe in.
And vote in every election.
Work for the best. Hope for the good. Plan for the worst.
Many people have drawn on George Orwell's 1944 for parallels. I have yet to see anyone mention Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here.
From the blurb on the back of my 2017 Penguin Books reprint: "A vain, outlandish, anti-immigrant, fear-mongering demagogue runs for President of the United States - and wins... Buzz Windrip, who promises poor, angry voters that he will make America proud and prosperous once more, but takes the country down a far darker path."
Here I am! Last year, I began by getting Ernst Fraenkel's "The Dual State" to try to understand, but it wasn't enough: I needed a closer connection to the American situation. So I added Lewis, reading it, studying it, marking the passages that struck me. It gave me, so to speak, a sense of despair. The process he describes was too slow compared to Trump's velocity: another era, another communication. Ninety years after Lewis, everything happened in a few months.
How does the passage you quoted end? "Newspaper editor Doremus Jessup can't believe it will last—but is he right? This cautionary tale of liberal complacency in the face of populist tyranny shows it really CAN happen here."
Oops and of course I meant 1984...
And of course I actually READ 1984... the mind works and the memory elaborates!
PLEASE JOIN the first step toward a general strike. The Women's March is calling on everyone to leave work at 2:00 PM on January 20.
Sign up OR create an event !!!
https://www.freeameri.ca/
FREE AMERICA WALKOUT
One year into Trump’s second regime, we face an escalating fascist threat: raids on our communities, troops occupying our cities, attacks on immigrants, families torn apart, mass surveillance, and terror used to keep us silent. It is time for our communities to escalate as well.
2025 was a year of marches that showed our collective strength. And as the threats grow, our movement must evolve and escalate. Trump and his allies have already made clear that a second term would bring a deeper wave of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and violence than the first.
On January 20, we call on our communities to organize teams, call your neighbors and classmates, and turn your back and walk out on fascism. Host mutual aid planning meetings, organize public service, but walk out to block the normal routines of power, and make the stakes real. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.
★ We walk away from fascism. ★
★ We walk towards a Free America. ★
★ We fight for a future that belongs to us all. ★
★ Everybody in, nobody out. ★
★ Welcome to the Free America Walkout ★
What's missing from Trump's strategy is the ability to avoid mistakes by listening to adverse information.
This is somewhat ground breaking. I liken it to getting a chance to sit down with the devil himself for an honest exchange over coffee about what it's like to live in his head. People around the world who know better will view this as groundbreaking intelligence. To be able to get a coherent look into his thinking pretty much breaks down all the attempts by the opposition to paint him as stupid, dumb, and unable to count 2+2. In this telling, one gets an understanding of what's really under the hood. It's like getting a complex sports car tear down to see what makes it work as a sports car. Few really understand what really goes on, and this telling here in this piece is a goldmine of Intel. Bravo sir for breaking all this down into understandable pieces of this very complex puzzle.
Michael, your conclusion agrees with my own assessment of Trump. I predict that he will rush into more shock and awe actions on the world stage, including a military takeover of Greenland. He will find some general willing to undertake the action. And who's going to make him give it back?
The Europeans are now acting to make us pay a price with blood and treasure. Read the Concis.
Excellent piece. Thank you for your insightful read.
In addition to applying these new realizations in our contextual thinking about Trump, we may need to add a legion of psychics in order to keep up with his (or his regime’s) ‘catch me if you can’ methods.
I prefer your method of looking at this from a different perspective. I literally hate what he says and does, but if you know how his mind works, you can hopefully see what's running underneath. Now, having said that, I understand how he's thinking of the processes that are in place and how he looks at them, BUT the outright, in plain sight, lies he and his minions use to declare black is white when we're all looking and hearing the same thing, appalls me to the core. Yes, I know... he gets his results in the end because it takes time to refute and prove and he still gets his result. The fly in that ointment is there is no penalty to pay! If he was subject to consequences/penalties for his actions AND for his attempts to forego those penalties by wasting time to prove the already proven, ... AND WITHOUT THE SUPREME COURT'S IMMUNITY, I think he would have a different feeling for laws and consequences. Why in the world would anybody, let alone a narcissist drunk on power, not take advantage of anything and anyone just as he's doing? Really...! Why not? Why change what's working. I think we're the idiots in the room!!!
Doing damage before anyone can stop it is a PERFECT offense against an old, sclerosis, calcified opposition that find its way put of a wet paper bag, too rigid to respond with alacrity and power.
I admire the work you've invested in this and I don't disagree with any of your conclusions. My problem is that Trump's character -- or lack of it -- had been in plain sight for as long as I can remember. He's never been, or pretended to be, anything but the corrupt, impulsive, dishonest piece of shit he is now. Shame on us for finding any of this new or even remotely surprising.
lol Bill I was thinking of you when I put in the disclaimers that this will likely seem like a futile exercise to some….cant really argue with your point ….just that I’m somehow compelled to do this. Ah well….so it goes.
Michael, I thought your article (analysis of the NYT interview) was superb. As Trump's actions become ever more disruptive and dangerous, I hope you will continue to help us understand them. Thank you.
Like I said I admire your having done this, and I don't think for a moment that any of what you found was a surprise to you!
Bill, IMO Trump filters information, keeps the info he likes (discards the rest), makes stuff up as he goes along ... then believes in his own ill-informed, superficial, delusional, self-serving ideas. If you accept all that, his responses to the NYT (and other) interviewers are actually honest. As "Observer" commented above, his is a distorted reality, misaligned with objective reality and common morality, but (imo) not necessarily a dishonest one. Anyway, food for thought.
This is basically the authoritarian playbook since Hitler. It works. Just overwhelm the system, and work faster than they can stop you. He's a dummy about a lot of things, but they all seem to learn those basics pretty quickly. And for what it's worth, I suspect ALL the authoritarians in the world are psychologically damaged in some way from childhood, and are acting out.
I find it remarkable that the insights drawn here to what Trump thinks is governance are far deeper and more telling, and frightening, than what the New York Times has extracted from its own 23,000 word interview with Trump.
I would like to see the New York Times publish this Opinion Piece which showcases Michael’s deeper analysis of this interview!
Thanks for this valuable summary of the president's approach. Some of his dispositions remind me of US business people I chatted with about their methods decades ago. When discussing legality of action, one said that businesses have lobbyists so that by the time the government could find illegality in a business practice, your lobbyists have changed the laws so that the company's actions are then legal. Speed. Competition requires speed and therefore risking illegality to win the race. Several who worked internationally would complain that they were unable to bribe international counterparts when competitors could. Again, legality seen as a threat to profit making. A Price Waterhouse exec who gave a guest lecture in an economics class I once took responded to an ethics question related to investing, "Christianity is an interesting idea. It's just never been tried." The focus on speed and results? Survival. To survive is to grow faster than anyone else. Profits uber alles. At the same time --- also decades ago, those with factories in China complained in conversations about the fact that on the factory floors regulations were whatever the latest government inspector said they were. This meant that everything had to ground to a stop or production reduced in output. Profits were a problem, planning was compromised in that chaotic environment. Others who had worked in China complained about the vicissitudes of banks and financial policies in the same way. Chaotic. Unpredictable. In China then, this was only tolerated because of expectations for long term profits. First in, first to win and dominate a market. Speed. (Ford, I think, saw China profits sustain the company recently. So it worked for them to endure the chaos. You had to be a huge company to absorb the losses to endure in this way.) Speed, violate and manipulate laws to compete --- to ensure profits. To win. You have to win, to expand, to survive. I've read that this ethics free approach to business is one swing of a pendulum, but this president's pendulum is stuck in that ethos. And the USA is not a business.
To understand Trump, this is an important read. To create strategy to counteract his damaging policies, this is crucial information. Very helpful and fascinating as well to read about how his twisted brain works.