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Stand back, everybody! There’s some new news coming down the news-pipe: The sitting president of the United States is cancelling appearances, lashing out at aides, and "has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources."
Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”
“Cocoon of bitterness” is a hell of a word-picture. It is, however, part of the natural life cycle of the malignant narcissist, a miracle of nature that we should all learn to cherish and appreciate. First, the incompetent blustering narcissist crafts an elaborate nest of self-flattery and bloviation. As plans go awry, it is redrafted into a one-man tent of furious denial; from there, it is fabricated into a Quonset hut of ranting bluster and incrimination; any wind strong enough to blow down the steel-cased hut will reveal naught but a graceful, well-appointed cocoon of resentment. It was all your fault everything went to hell, a muffled voice from within the cocoon mutters at anyone who comes near.
This lasts however long it lasts, and then the nasty manipulative bastard bursts forth, unrepentant and new, off to promote his new line of bottled water or mail-order steaks. Circle of life, and all that.
More to the point, Donald Trump retreating into his cocoon-slash-television means that at this point even the ceremonial duties of the presidency are being ditched. He went on a two-day trip to Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, then stayed in his room, tweeting, rather than attend the memorial at Aisne-Marne; the official excuse was that the United States was incapable of properly getting him there when faced with a light Paris rain. He was expected to at least lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery as a commemoration of Veterans Day; he stayed in the White House instead, not even bothering with an excuse for that one. He was rumored to have been planning to go visit the U.S. troops he dispatched to the southern border during his election-eve panic about a still-distant "caravan" of refugees, to show he at least gave a wee, minor little damn about at least those soldiers: Nope.
He's sending Mike Pence to Asia rather than making the expected trip himself, and he apparently didn't even meet with Jordan's King Abdullah, who was in Washington yesterday, instead passing him off to the secretary of state. The man's gone so deep into his cocoon that not even three scoops of ice cream are able to lure him out.
For nearly two years we have been treated to incessant insistence by Trump staffers that he is, in fact, secretly competent, despite all public evidence to the contrary. Staffers are sent out to explain what he "meant" by each one of his ridiculous rantings. Staffers are sent out to insist that flat-out lies by the sitting president are true, or at least not quite as false as they might appear. Staffers are sent out to explain White House policies after Donald appears at one of his rallies and projectile-vomits a string of nonsensical claims and phrases about bills he clearly doesn't understand or policies he clearly hadn't bothered to learn even the basic outlines of.
As his days have become more and more filled with “executive time,” the White House euphemism used to describe the many hours of each day Trump spends watching Fox News and tweeting reactions to whatever he sees, his staff has been apparently trying to goad him into engaging with work by creating something called "policy time", brief scheduled play dates for Donald and his staff to try to hash out a few, you know, actual policy decisions.
But there's not much they can do if the sitting president of the United States has decided he's going to abandon his day job and just go sulk in his cocoon. And, presuming this is the prelude to Trump finally recognizing that the majority of the American people are rejecting him, that he and his immediate family are in imminent legal jeopardy due to their election and pre-election actions, and that he is likely to leave office as a mocked and despised man, there's not much they can do about the outbursts that will come when he emerges from that cocoon, either.
