His presidency would be powered by solipsism.
Donald J. Trump is often characterized as being driven by narcissism which is defined as an excess of vanity powered by an unconscionably disproportionate desire to gratify one’s own ego. While that description is certainly valid, it is one that can be reasonably fitted to a great many politicians and even larger percentage of CEOs. The authors touch on a specific aspect related to but distinctly separate from narcissism which can be effectively applied to only a minimal fraction of politicians or businessmen or the population as a whole. Solipsism is a distinct psychological malady which manifests itself as a belief that everything which the rest of us known as reality is merely a fictional projection of a single mind. Since this reality exists only as the projection of one’s mind, that mind is in charge and can thus change the rules, ignore the past, and essentially do anything it wants without fear of repercussions to anyone else since nobody else actually exists except as a projected image. This is an exponentially scarier potential than that the President of the United States is merely a professional narcissist.
On July 25, 2019, as the sun rose on a hot, humid Thursday morning, President Trump declared the witch hunt over. He had triumphed over Robert Mueller, who a day before gave Congress a halting, inconclusive summary of his investigation of the president—a painful capstone to the special counsel probe. Finally, the Russia cloud had lifted. Trump no longer had to obey his cautious advisers. He was invincible, or so he thought.
July 25, 2019 has since gone down in history as one of the darkest days in recent American history, of course. But as that sun rose on that day, most Americans woke up not having the slightest idea just how much that seemingly after summer day would transform the rule of constitutional law. For that was the day that Trump picked up a phone to talk with a foreign head of state and asked for a favor. The book was published before the Senate vote on impeachment articles and so the concluding line of this quote now has a completely different context. He may only have thought he was invincible on July 25, 2019. By February 5, 2020, he was informed by the Senate Majority Leader that it was a fact.
“I thought he might explode. He was that angry. He was that volatile. His face gets red and his lips get white. He gets in these rages. The screaming. The cursing.”
The sheer number of references to and people describing Trump being in a rage is mesmerizing. This account given by Res took place almost thirty years before he became President. The description of Trump completely losing control and giving into an anger beyond all reason stretches across the breadth of his life and ranges from stimulants like Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing his recusal from all future investigations into wrongdoing by the Trump campaign during the election to, well, the choice of cheap green Chinese marble that Res ordered for renovations at the Plaza Hotel…at his directive.
“The problem with him: he tells you what he thinks he knows or what he thinks he remembers. He might actually believe it. And he may not think he is lying.”
A tremendous number of people throughout the book address the fact that Donald Trump sometimes seem to be incapable of being truth. Some of them go on record: Anthony Scaramucci tries to spin Trump’s voluminous incapacity for truth as his “being an act.” Other disregard it by couching it as simply “an amazing ability to disconnect from facts and remember experiences the way it suited him at the moment.” This particular quote from an unnamed source lays it all on the line. The method to his maddening collection of falsehoods, mistruths, and outright lies is the George Constanza Effect: “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” Or, put another way: solipsism.
