In his New York Times OpEd this morning, “Does Donald Trump Want to Be Impeached? Four reasons the president might welcome articles of impeachment” Ross Douthat offers three strategic reasons in answer and one psychological one.
- First, if the Democrats impeach him they will be doing something unpopular instead of something popular. Maybe the polls showing impeachment’s unpopularity will alter as the Ukraine story develops.
- Second, Trump is happy to pit his overt abuses of power against the soft corruption of his foes. This is an aspect of Trumpism that the president’s critics find particularly infuriating — the way he attacks his rivals for being corrupt swamp creatures while being so much more nakedly compromised himself.
- Third, an impeachment battle would give Trump a last chance to solidify his hold on the souls and reputations of his possible Republican successors. To understand what I mean, consider Jonathan V. Last’s explanation (“In order for Trump to get better odds, something needs to change. An impeachment fight—or even a fight about impeachment—could be that something.”) of why so few Republican elected officials are likely to break with Trump, no matter how Nixonian his straits become…
Only with number four does he get to Trump’s psychopathology, though not in so many words. The emphasis is mine.
Because the circus is the part of politics that he fundamentally enjoys. Throughout the Mueller investigation my Twitter feed was alight with liberal and NeverTrump fantasies about how Trump must be bed-wetting, flop-sweat terrified by the tough G-man’s investigation. And maybe at times he was. But I’m pretty sure that when he ranted on Twitter about the “Twelve Angry Democrats” and “WITCH HUNT” and “NO COLLUSION,” he was more engaged, more alive, more fully his full self than at any point during the legislative battles over tax reform or Obamacare repeal.
And Robert Mueller’s was a legal investigation, with the power to actually put people in Trump’s inner circle in prison. A merely political trial, where the worst-case scenario is a political martyrdom that Sean Hannity will sing of ever after, seems to offer Trump a much lower-stress variation on that experience. Why, the nicknames for the impeachment managers alone will be a Trumpian banquet, a veritable feast!
I basically wrote the rest of this column yesterday. If you missed it here it is again:
Hardly a week goes by when I don’t see indications and examples of Trump’s psychopathology in his behavior. Those of you who follow my columns in Trumpology: The psychological study and analysis of Donald Trump know how frequently I write about this subject.
Politico Magazine published an article that is worth reading.
EXCERPT: But those who know him best say this is merely the latest episode (Whistlegate) in a lifelong pattern of behavior for the congenitally combative Trump. He’s always been this way. He doesn’t stop to reflect. If he wins, he barely basks. If he loses, he doesn’t take the time to lie low or lick wounds; he invariably refuses to even admit that he lost. Regardless of the outcome—up, down or somewhere in between—when one tussle is done, Trump reflexively starts to scan the horizon in search of a new skirmish.
“If he’s not in a fight, he looks for one,” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me this weekend. “He can’t stop.”
“He’s always in an attack mode,” former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell said. “He’s always got adversaries.”
“He does love a confrontation—there’s no question about it,” added Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive. “Trump thinks he’s always going to win—he really does believe that—and he fights very, very, very dirty.”
“A street fighter,” Louise Sunshine, another former Trump Organization executive, once told me.
Trump, of course, has said all of this himself, and for as long as people have been paying him any attention. For decades, he has been redundantly clear. “I go after people,” he has said. “… as viciously and as violently as you can,” he has said. “It makes me feel so good,” he has said.
In another Politico article (Trumpism without Trump) Trump’s psychopathological narcissism, also known as malignant narcissism, was referenced:
Trump is all id, the oldest and most primitive part of our brain, concerned only with the evolutionary basics: sex, sustenance and survival. His brain is not filtered by our social and emotional brain, much less by the rational, pre-frontal cortex. He has no Jeb Bush brain to digest facts and figures, issues and policy. Instead, Trump is a predator. When something enters his world, he either eats it, kills it or mates with it. That is all his predatory instincts can do.
The president’s primitive nature is the root of his narcissism. Trump’s immediate and voracious appetites allow no concern for others or understanding of tomorrow. He reacts instinctively, not emotionally, morally or intellectually. He is insensitive to truth and incapable of discipline or strategy.
John Gartner, Ph.D., wrote in Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump (2018):
“Trump suffers from malignant narcissism, a diagnosis [that is] far more toxic and dangerous than mere narcissistic personality disorderbecause it combines narcissism with three other severely pathological components: paranoia, sociopathy, and sadism. When combined, this perfect storm of psychopathology defines the ‘quintessence of evil,’ according to Fromm, the closest thing psychiatry has to describing a true human monster.”
Trump’s narcissism is mixed with characteristics of anti-social personality disorder (SOCIOPATHY) — which is the definition of malignant narcissism (Psychology Today article). The following is from Wikipedia.
Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism.[1] Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.[2]
Malignant narcissism is a hypothetical, experimental diagnostic category. Narcissistic personality disorder is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), while malignant narcissism is not. As a hypothetical syndrome, malignant narcissism could include aspects of narcissistic personality disorder(NPD) alongside a mix of antisocial, paranoid and sadistic personality disorder traits. The importance of malignant narcissism and of projection as a defense mechanism has been confirmed in paranoia, as well as "the patient's vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression”. Wikipedia
Malignant narcissists are “always ready to raise hostility levels, (they) undermine families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate...”
Those who can observe him objectively see that he has no empathy and has signs of near clinical paranoia. He goes out of his ways to demonize of the press, minorities, immigrants, and anyone from political rivals to celebrities. Anti-social personality is a diagnosis that describes Trump because he constantly lies, violate norms and laws, exploits other people, and shows no remorse. As a sadist he takes pleasure in harming and humiliating other people.
Trump is basically an addict. He needs his fix of bullying.
As far as his being ambivalent to the point of at times relishing the prospect of impeachment goes it is clear that being engaged in a fight which enables him on a daily basis to be the archetypical bully will satisfy his inner need to exercise his sadism.