BEHOLD, THE GREAT CRACKUP
Before our eyes, Trump is becoming more unstable as he tries to hold on to power
As the election approaches, Donald Trump, a man many of us already thought was mercurial and impulsive, is unraveling before our eyes. Under treatment for the same virus he allowed to ravage the nation — more than 212,000 dead and 7 million infected — he is acting in especially erratic and self-destructive ways. This could be the crack-up that has been expected by those who know him and by mental health experts with the courage to say that what troubles him endangers the nation.
The symbol of this moment, one that should appear in the history books, is the sight of the wobbly president, his face smeared with make-up to cover his sickbed pallor, saluting the Marine One helicopter as it whirled into the night. Thanks to the presence of news cameras set up to capture Trump’s return to the White House from his stay at Walter Reed Army medical center, the whole world got to see this pseudo-patriotic pantomime as it happened.
Trump’s salute was staged for a political campaign ad, so the president added to the spectacle by performing it twice, which meant that anyone nearby was doubly exposed to whatever deadly viruses may have emanated from the president’s nose and mouth. Never has an American president gone to such lengths to look so much like a little boy playing at tin-pot dictator.
Thanks to his addiction to media attention, Trump put his psychological collapse on display for all to see. In a rambling and sometimes babbling TV interview, he ranted about how the attorney general should prosecute Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He flung nastiness at Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris and raised unsupported claims of rampant election fraud.
The meltdown included presidential hissy fits about conditions for another debate with Biden and Trump arguing with himself over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposal for another round of pandemic economic aid. This behavior led the speaker to begin talking about the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the removal of a medically incompetent chief executive.
Trump has reached moment in which voters seem poised to reject him in resounding fashion because recent events have shaken the core of the myth the man has inhabited for decades. Comprised of lies about his wealth, his competence, and his patriotism, this false narrative was used to con others into electing him president in 2016. But though the country has been hurt by Trump’s fakery, the one most affected has been the man himself.
Having adopted his own lies as an identity, the man is now shaken to his core.
The breakdown began with The New York Times using Trump’s own records to prove he is a serial loser in business whose main skill seems to be in avoiding federal income taxes that in his first year as president, he paid $750. You read that right: $750. For someone who claims to be a billionaire, Trump’s failure to pay anything remotely like his fair share makes him an unpatriotic moocher.
More painful for Trump was the revelation of his failures as a business operator whose solvency depended on his earnings as a TV performer. Trump’s claim to great success as a big city builder was the foundation of the myth he sold to himself and the world. When I interviewed him for my 2015 biography, “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success,” Trump took pains to stress this aspect of his identity.
“I don’t think of myself as a performer,” he told me. “Do you know what I think my biggest attribute is? I’m a great builder.”
The future president said he was “offended” by those who focus more “on my personality than my buildings.” It was as if the title “builder” added to his image of strength and “personality” indicated something soft and not-so-solid.
In truth, Trump hasn’t been much of a builder for many years, unless you count image-building as building. He has, instead, busied himself at promotion, turning himself into a celebrity and the name “Trump” into a brand that he has sold to partners who do the actual work of development and construction.
Unmasked by the truth of his failures, he performed like a raving lunatic in his debate with Vice President Joe Biden. It wasn’t just the belligerence that shocked but also the strangely generic quality of his attacks. On many occasions he veered away from his opponent’s policies and record, attacking him for the university he attended or his devotion to wearing the face masks that Trump’s own public health experts have repeatedly recommend for everyone.
“I wear a mask when needed,” said Trump. “I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” At another moment he blurted out, “By the way, I brought back Big Ten football.”
This was, it seems, an attempt at seizing credit for restoring something normal to American life amid the chaos of the pandemic.