...Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.
[The bottom line for him is, as he told a Time interviewer earlier, "I must not be doing too badly becausr I'm president and you're not."]
[The bottom line for him is, as he told a Time interviewer earlier, "I must not be doing too badly becausr I'm president and you're not."]
"In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care,” he told Time.
"A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.
By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.
"A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.
By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.
He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence...
["He doesn't know what it is to know" is George Will's more fitting version.]
He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.
[Right: it is not "merely" incompetence, the incompetent sometimes recognizes his incompetence, i.e. knows there is a real world and knows it judges him incompetent. Trump lives not in this world but in the one in his mind, the world of "fantasies."]
...He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trump’s telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.
[“I believe that the president is desperate for attention and needs psychological help." Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.]
Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/trump-classified-data.html
["He doesn't know what it is to know" is George Will's more fitting version.]
He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.
[Right: it is not "merely" incompetence, the incompetent sometimes recognizes his incompetence, i.e. knows there is a real world and knows it judges him incompetent. Trump lives not in this world but in the one in his mind, the world of "fantasies."]
...He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trump’s telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.
[“I believe that the president is desperate for attention and needs psychological help." Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.]
Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/trump-classified-data.html
