Donald Trump Is a Broken Man
In
another time, in a different circumstance, there would perhaps be room to pity
such a person.
11:58 AM ET
Contributing writer at The
Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC
The most revealing answer
from Donald Trump’s interview
with Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace came in response not
to the toughest question posed by Wallace, but to the easiest.
At the
conclusion of the interview, Wallace asked Trump how he will regard his years
as president.
“I think
I was very unfairly treated,” Trump responded. “From before I even won, I was
under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal
investigation.”
When
Wallace interrupted, trying to get Trump to focus on the positive achievements
of his presidency—“What about the good parts, sir?”—Trump brushed the question
aside, responding, “Russia, Russia, Russia.” The president then complained
about the Flynn investigation, the “Russia hoax,” the “Mueller scam,” and the
recusal by his then–attorney general, Jeff Sessions. (“Now I feel good because
he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama,” Trump said about the
first senator to endorse him in the 2016 Republican primary.)
Donald
Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man. He is so
gripped by his grievances, such a prisoner of his resentments, that even the
most benevolent question from an interviewer—what good parts of your presidency
would you like to be remembered for?—triggered a gusher of discontent.
But the
president still wasn’t done. “Here’s the bottom line,” he
said. “I’ve been very unfairly treated, and I don’t say that as paranoid. I’ve
been very—everybody says it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.
But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was.
President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It’s never happened in history.
If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right
now.”
Just in
case his bitterness wasn’t coming through clearly enough, the president added
this: “That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of
this—the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many
years. They would be in jail; it would’ve started two years ago, and they’d be
there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let’s see
what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the
first three and a half years.”
With
that, the interview ended.
Such a
disposition in almost anyone else—a teacher, a tax accountant, a CEO, a cab
driver, a reality-television star—would be unfortunate enough. After all,
people who obsess about being wronged are just plain unpleasant to be around:
perpetually ungrateful, short-tempered, self-absorbed, never at peace, never at
rest.
But
Donald Trump isn’t a teacher, a tax accountant, or (any longer) a
reality-television star; he is, by virtue of the office he holds, in possession
of unmatched power. The fact that he is devoid of any moral sensibilities or
admirable human qualities—self-discipline, compassion, empathy, responsibility,
courage, honesty, loyalty, prudence, temperance, a desire for justice—means he
has no internal moral check; the question Is this the right thing to
do? never enters his mind. As a result, he not only nurses his
grievances; he acts on them. He lives to exact revenge, to
watch his opponents suffer, to inflict pain on those who don’t bend before him.
Even former war heroes who have died can’t escape
his wrath.
So Donald
Trump is a vindictive man who also happens to be commander in chief and head of
the executive branch, which includes the Justice Department, and there is no
one around the president who will stand up to him. He has surrounded himself
with lapdogs.
But the problem doesn’t
end there. In a single term, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party through
and through, and his dispositional imprint on the GOP is as great as any in
modern history, including Ronald Reagan’s.
I say that as a person who
was deeply shaped by Reagan and his presidency. My first job in government was
working for the Reagan administration, when I was in my 20s. The conservative
movement in the 1980s, although hardly flawless, was intellectually serious and
politically optimistic. And Reagan himself was a man of personal decency,
grace, and class. While often the target of nasty attacks, he maintained a
remarkably charitable view of his political adversaries. “Remember, we have no
enemies, only opponents,” the former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who worked
for Reagan, quotes him
as admonishing his staff.
In his
farewell address to the nation, Reagan offered an evocative description of
America. “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t
know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it,” he said. “But in
my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans,
wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony
and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And
if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to
anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it
still.”
A city
tall and proud, its people living in harmony and peace, surrounded by walls
with open doors; that was Ronald Reagan’s image of America, and Ronald Reagan’s
Republican Party.
When
Reagan died in 2004, the conservative columnist George Will wrote a moving
tribute to his friend, saying of America’s 40th president, “He
traveled far, had a grand time all the way, and his cheerfulness was
contagious.” Reagan had a “talent for happiness,” according to Will. And he
added this: “Reagan in his presidential role made vivid the values,
particularly hopefulness and friendliness, that give cohesion and dynamism to
this continental nation.”
There
were certainly ugly elements on the American right during the Reagan
presidency, and Reagan himself was not without flaws. But as president, he set
the tone, and the tone was optimism, courtliness and elegance, joie de vivre.
He has
since been replaced by the crudest and cruelest man ever to be president. But
not just that. One senses in Donald Trump no joy, no delight, no laughter. All
the emotions that drive him are negative. There is something repugnant about
Trump, yes, but there is also something quite sad about the man. He is a damaged
soul.
In
another time, in a different circumstance, there would perhaps be room to pity
such a person. But for now, it is best for the pity to wait. There are other
things to which to attend. The American public faces one great and morally
urgent task above all others between now and November: to do everything in its
power to remove from the presidency a self-pitying man who is shattering the
nation and doesn’t even care.
