Trump Is Obsessed With Being a Loser
His electoral defeat has pulled him into a deep, dark place. He wants to pull the rest of us into it as well.
By Peter Wehner
The Atlantic
FEBRUARY 7, 2022, 6 AM ET
About the author: Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.
Donald trump has made clear time and time again that, in his view, the worst thing that can happen to a person is to be judged a “loser.”
In the 2020 presidential election he was, in fact, a loser . . . but his narcissism and the incredibly fragile self-esteem that undergirds it won’t allow him to accept that reality.
He has spent the past 15 months attempting to overthrow the election in an effort to make himself the winner and, after that effort failed, rewriting the narrative, portraying himself as a victim of “THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY.”
Almost every public comment Trump makes these days is focused on the election.
Trump’s mind has no room to entertain any other thoughts, at least not for long. His defeat is his obsession; it has pulled him into a deep, dark place. He wants to pull the rest of us into it as well.
I discuss trump in psychological terms because I have said for a half-dozen years—and previously in these pages—that the most important thing to understand about Trump is his disordered personality; it’s the only way to even begin to think about how to deal with him. (I’m not the only person to think that.)
Trump seems unable to incorporate anything critical about himself, hence his need to create an imaginary world in which he really won the 2020 election but was the victim of a conspiracy that borders on gintergalactic. He’s performed a moral inversion in which the supporters who stormed the Capitol are the true patriots; they, like he, are being unfairly persecuted. They are the defenders of democracy; the people who are holding them accountable are the enemies of America.
FULL STORY AT: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/trump-obsessed-being-loser-2020-election/621505/
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His electoral defeat has pulled him into a deep, dark place. He wants to pull the rest of us into it as well.
By Peter Wehner
The Atlantic
FEBRUARY 7, 2022, 6 AM ET
About the author: Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.
Donald trump has made clear time and time again that, in his view, the worst thing that can happen to a person is to be judged a “loser.”
In the 2020 presidential election he was, in fact, a loser . . . but his narcissism and the incredibly fragile self-esteem that undergirds it won’t allow him to accept that reality.
He has spent the past 15 months attempting to overthrow the election in an effort to make himself the winner and, after that effort failed, rewriting the narrative, portraying himself as a victim of “THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY.”
Almost every public comment Trump makes these days is focused on the election.
America’s 45th president said in a statement last week that his vice president, Mike Pence, should have “overturned” the election.
In a speech, he indicated that if he were to become president again, he’d likely pardon the people who on January 6, 2021, violently stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the election, part of his ongoing effort to turn insurrectionists and those charged with seditious conspiracy into martyrs.
He also warned that he would incite unrest if prosecutors who are investigating him and his businesses took action against him.
Almost every public comment Trump makes these days is focused on the election.
Trump’s mind has no room to entertain any other thoughts, at least not for long. His defeat is his obsession; it has pulled him into a deep, dark place. He wants to pull the rest of us into it as well.
I discuss trump in psychological terms because I have said for a half-dozen years—and previously in these pages—that the most important thing to understand about Trump is his disordered personality; it’s the only way to even begin to think about how to deal with him. (I’m not the only person to think that.)
Trump seems unable to incorporate anything critical about himself, hence his need to create an imaginary world in which he really won the 2020 election but was the victim of a conspiracy that borders on gintergalactic. He’s performed a moral inversion in which the supporters who stormed the Capitol are the true patriots; they, like he, are being unfairly persecuted. They are the defenders of democracy; the people who are holding them accountable are the enemies of America.
FULL STORY AT: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/trump-obsessed-being-loser-2020-election/621505/
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