This RawStory article (here) begins as follows:
Appearing on MSNBC's "The Sunday Show," former U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal explained that Donald Trump has so many investigations and lawsuits hanging over his head that he can't effectively fight them all.
Speaking with host Jonathan Capehart, the legal expert suggested that the former president is fighting nothing less than a ''three-front war."
I suggest there are two other fronts he is fighting a war on. One is that he has to try to try to keep his sycophants not only from publicly abandoning him but ratting him out to judicial authorities to save their own skins. There may be little he can do to successfully engage in these battles because he is quickly losing capital to buy their loyalty.
The other front is something I have expertise in having been a psychotherapist for 40 years. This is Trump’s psychopathology, what is often called by mental health experts like myself and many others who have weighed in on the subject malignant narcissism (see Google search For Trump malignant narcissism). Even George Conway knew it two years ago:
By now just about every Kos reader knows what malignant narcissism is and that Trump is its poster boy.
You can see his psychopathology play out in his latest attempt to escape culpability for taking classified documents to Mar a Lago, that he could legally do this because he declassified them apparently in some exercise of presidential prestidigitation and megalomaniacal magic.
This is just another version of “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
While not as violent as Trump’s statement, this harkens back to one of Nixon’s most memorable comments from his interview with David Frost:
This is from a Nov. 22, 2016 article:
"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal," Nixon told his interviewer. Those words were largely seen by the American public -- which continued to hold the ex-president in low esteem -- as a symbol of his unbowed arrogance. Most citizens still wanted to believe that no American citizen, not even the president, is above the law. Folks clung to this idea even though the actual evidence was mixed: People boasted that "the system worked" when Nixon was forced to resign, on the brink of certain impeachment -- but the pardon that was issued to Nixon by then-president Gerald Ford weeks later suggested that presidential justice remains elusive.
Today, I suspect a more cynical nation wonders whether a president really is above the law. Donald Trump -- not yet the 45th president, but soon -- certainly played to that notion today, when the New York Times questioned why it's not a conflict of interest when he and his children are still running his global development firm at the same time that the world's leaders are looking to curry favor with the new chief.
“The law’s totally on my side," the president-elect told the Times. "The president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Translation: When this president does it, that means it is not illegal. Unlike Nixon, however, I'm starting to worry that Trump's going to get away with this.
The article concludes:
That's what should happen -- but won't happen, thanks to the blanket control that Trump's political party exercises over Congress and the majority of state legislatures. And it's becoming increasingly clear -- not in theory, but in actual practice -- that when Donald Trump does something, that means it is not illegal. Somewhere down there, Richard Nixon is looking up at us and laughing hysterically.
Of course the claim that basically anything Trump as president did couldn‘t be illegal because he was president (and still thinks he is) is the grandiose gurgling gasp of a drowning man. I’m not an expert in the law so I’ll leave consideration as to whether this defense will be effective to the lawyers. But if it is a futile tack to take as long as Trump pursues it he will be damaging himself.
Because of his psychopathology Trump can’t change even when his behavior is so self-defeating it could end him broke and or in prison.
Two years ago in another diary I likened him to the scorpion in the fable who is crossing the river on the back of a friendly frog and stings it thus drowning them both, he can’t stop himself because, and when the frog asks why he did it he tells the frog it’s in his nature.
The crucial difference between the fable and the real life situation Trump is currently in as his world comes crashing down is that he is both the scorpion and the frog.
Taking the analogy it a bit further:
Trump may be injecting a deadly poison into himself:
A scorpion’s venom is a mixture of compounds, including neurotoxins that affect the victim’s nervous system. Stings from dangerous species may cause paralysis, severe convulsions, cardiac irregularities, breathing difficulties, and even death. Antivenins (sic) are available in areas where dangerous scorpions live. Reference
Unfortunately for Trump if he is stinging himself there are no antivenins for malignant narcissism.
Footnote:
* As reported in The New York Times, “the claim is also irrelevant to Mr. Trump’s potential troubles over the document matter, because none of the three criminal laws cited in a search warrant as the basis of the investigation depend on whether documents contain classified information.”
The Poll:
The best legal route for Trump to take may be to admit he made a mistake, perhaps claiming ignorance and saying he was wrong and incorrectly thought he was within his legal rights to take any documents to Mar a Lago without going through a formal process for declassifying the secret ones. Do you think he could do this:?
