To answer question in the title, your will find a link to this article by Robert S. Becker in the progressive website Nation of Change: Trump’s eight worst systemic train-wrecks, Trials matter, convictions/penalties too, but radioactive fallout outlives the outlaw. Number three on the list of eight has the reference to malignant narcissism, below, but all of the listed train-wrecks are worth reading about.
3) The assault of Trump’s malignant narcissism against any rules, laws or Constitutional constraints he deemed in his way. At least Nixon was lawyer-enough to appreciate what breaking the law meant – thus his more tactical, insular disruption. Being our first anti-president, Trump not only scoffed at the law, but undercut the concept of law, as the basis for justice, in turn the basis of civilization. That’s why smarter fascists elsewhere force statutory changes before they do their worst, then bragging, “I only enforce the law.” Nazis passed racist legislation before scapegoating, then murdering countless “enemies of the state.”
Enabled by the dishonorable GOP, Trump’s four years was a virtual rampage, answering to neither laws nor judges, Congress nor the majority. Thus, the systemic threats to law and order surpassed personal violations but invoke the appalling fiction that the concept of law itself is optional, even arbitrary in a democracy, especially if no one should be above the law. What campaign pitched lawlessness and disorder?
In June of 2016 author Robert S. Becker didn’t use the term malignant narcissism in his Salon article
“Narcissist in chief: The danger of having Donald "Citizen" Trump in the White House — Fortress narcissists like Kane and Trump don't learn from failure — that makes their power very dangerous” but he very easily could have though the term hadn’t come into common usage back then. Now if you Google Trump malignant narcissism (here) you will find what seems to be an endless number of articles. In all modesty, if you Google me, Trump, and malignant narcissism you’ll find numerous stories I posted on Daily Kos.
As far as I can determine Duty of Warn founder Dr. John Gartner first introduced the term in the mass media regarding Trump in his May 2017 USA Today article “Trump’s malignant narcissism is toxic.”
Consider these excerpts from the Becker 2016 essay comparing Trump to the character in the Orson Wells classic movie “Citizen Kane”:
I have to tell you,” per Trump’s verbal tics, “believe me, folks:” it’s a snap to link Citizen Trump, the most undisciplined, narcissistic politician in memory, with Charles Foster Kane, the impulsive, narcissistic target of satire in Orson Welles’ classic “Citizen Kane.” Equally propelled by huge inheritances, both yearn desperately for fame and adoration, presume limitless “genius” when trusting their flawless gut, and proclaim only their magic wands can save multitudes from greedy elitists. Of course, both figures are by and large fabrications, though the Kane character is smarter, funnier and more aware of irony. The unobservant Trump, whose tunnel vision seems filled with mirrors, adores the Kane figure and the movie.
Yet modern research proves that fortress narcissists can’t and/or won’t learn from failure: they double down when thwarted, convinced the envious, inferior world is out to punish its special heroes. Corrective “lessons” are for losers, Trump might mumble. Buoyant narcissists resist all criticism, reducing slights to mean-spirited propaganda. Indeed, the potent narrative in “Citizen Kane” depicts what calamities accrue when the insular (anti) hero defies the fates (known also as outside reality) and dies unloved.
I think that everything Trump has done in the past, for his entire adult lifetime up to and including what he did around the January 6th insurrection, is consistent with his being a malignant narcissist. I think that his future behavior is predictable by understanding the psychopathology of a malignant narcissist. Like the scorpion in the fable he stings the frog because it’s in his nature. We can only hope that one of these days, hopefully soon, Trump will suffer the same fate as the scorpion, and let’s hope that since we’re the frog, we won’t go down with him.