Trump: Malignant Narcissist
RIGGED ELECTION! The ravings of a lunatic
I live in the UK, so this whole Trump thing has mostly been a comedy for me, from his first campaign all the way through to his recent loss.
I can’t laugh too much though — in 2016 the UK voted to leave the EU, which was our version of hostile, non-thinking, emotional politics. The ‘leave the EU’ campaign had an ‘us vs them’ focus, just like the Trump campaign did, which divided the country down the middle, just like Trump did.
I made a video back when he got elected, which was mostly do with his vitriolic rhetoric; how it stoked the fires of hatred and nationalism in many Americans, but also how he united a global mob against him in the face of sheer stupidity.
The main thing which struck me about Trump then, and the thing which still amazes me to this day, is his absolute inability to accept any fact he doesn’t personally agree with.
He’s like a school bully in first grade who forces his opinions on everyone else. The one who refuses to believe anyone other than him could ever be right but still somehow staunchly believes he’s the most popular kid in school.
He’s essentially a real life version of Eric Cartman (saying that, his win in 2016 seemed to break Southpark — the storywriters just couldn’t keep up with the parody of itself that real life had become).
As a person whose main interest is the study of the mind, Trump’s behaviour is most interesting to me on a psychological level. The most obvious traits he exhibits are ones of grandiosity (the idea he has of being vastly more important than anyone else), and his crushing need to always be right.
Now, the grandiosity one I can kinda understand, after all he does hold the highest position of office in the land. OK, I got that one. But, the need to always be right about everything, even things which he clearly knows nothing about (glass of bleach, anyone?) is a clear sign of a huge (and very fragile) ego.
An inflated, delicate ego could point to many things, but can quite commonly be associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Narcissism can characterised by a few traits, but the most defining of these are a vastly inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement, a strong expectation to be recognised as superior to all others, and an all-encompassing need for excessive and constant admiration.
It’s that last one which caught my eye regarding Trump. Underneath all of these traits, and all that orange-tinted skin, lies a fragile ego which cannot take any criticism. Everything the man does seems to be to preserve it.
It was evident from the beginning, when he claimed he had the biggest inauguration in history even when the photos clearly told a different story, or when he said one speech he made would go down as one of the best ever.
It was most clear back then, however, when he lost the popular vote when he got elected and then claimed voter fraud without any evidence whatsoever, even though he won the presidency.
He is that school bully; the one who moans and bitches when he doesn’t win and tells the teacher all the other kids are cheating. He did exactly this before the first election — claiming it was rigged against him, and then when he won he said “we said it was rigged, but I won, so we don’t care anymore.”
And now he’s at it again, four years later. At the time of writing Trump has once again tweeted the election was rigged (the tweet in the title of this piece) and still hasn’t conceded defeat. He absolutely refuses to believe it’s even possible he could’ve lost the election, which, let’s be honest, to him is just a massive popularity contest.
He’s claiming voter fraud, again. Without any evidence, again. Some republicans have jumped on the bandwagon and are whole-heartedly backing him, albeit with the same lack of evidence.
You see why it’s funny for me watching from the UK? (Although we have Boris Johnson, so I don’t know whether to laugh or cry)
Trump’s crushing and excessive need for constant admiration rules his psyche, but unfortunately it doesn’t end there. He also exhibits traits of malignant narcissism, which is all the fun of usual narcissism plus elements of anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), aggressiveness and paranoia.
He shows these through his complete disregard for due process, the rights of others or of any kind of rules. Be they legal, societal or others. His disregard for other people’s rights could be seen so clearly even before he was elected, like when we all learnt how he loves a good pussy grabbing.
How long he’ll take to accept his loss is anyone’s guess, or even if he’ll accept it all. Maybe he’ll have to be dragged out of the white house kicking and screaming, which will make for amazing television.
The general issue with his narcissistic traits is that they seem to have gotten worse over the course of his term, not better.
The world has had four years of a raving narcissistic lunatic and I, for one, am glad that in a few months his ramblings will be those of a mentally deteriorating old man, and not of the president of the USA.
I am immensely happy that after January I will no longer need to hear his ridiculous voice or see his stupid face on the news ever again.
