It’s long been deeply unsettling to me how many behaviors associated with psychopathy Mr. Trump exemplifies. There are seven characteristics associated with “antisocial personality disorder,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: deceitfulness, impulsivity, failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of self or others, consistent irresponsibility and lack of remorse. I’ve observed all seven in Mr. Trump over the years, and watched them get progressively worse. It’s the last one — lack of remorse — that gives him license to freely exercise the other six.
The past is prologue and, as Mr. Trump has said, he’s essentially the same person today that he was as a child. That is the central warning “The Apprentice” poses, and it comes just five weeks before the election.
Ever since Mr. Trump announced in 2015 that he was running for president, I’ve argued publicly that the only limitation on his behavior as president — then and now — is what he believes he can get away with. Mr. Trump has made it clear that he believes he can get away with a lot more today. If he does win back the presidency, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll have much more on his mind than revenge and domination — damn the consequences — in his doomed, lifelong quest to feel good enough.
The first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society where most other human beings abide by a social contract. The second lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world can ever adequately substitute for what we’re missing on the inside.
This is the thesis of the article, if you wanna save a click.
What struck me from the first day I met Mr. Trump was his unquenchable thirst to be the center of attention. No amount of external recognition ever seemed to be enough. Beneath his bluster and his bombast, he struck me as one of the most insecure people I’d ever met — and one of the least self-aware. He’d crossed the bridge from Queens to Manhattan but he remained the product — and even the prisoner — of his childhood experiences. As he told a reporter in 2015, “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same.”
These observations have resonated with a lot of us over the last N years.
