“Trump speaks from the heart.” For months, Mr. Trump’s supporters have been leaning hard on those words to turn his vengefulness and vigilantism into a virtue.
.. Casting Mr. Trump’s incitements to xenophobia and violence as heartfelt evidently makes them slightly less terrifying. A through-line of the convention has been to set up a powerful antagonism between “political correctness,” the province of the hypocritical, intellectual and weak-willed, and “speaking from the heart,” as a province of … Donald Trump.
.. I’m going to speak from the heart tonight.”
The phrase sounds smarmy. It compromises the Republican Party’s usual claim of hardheadedness over and against the bleeding-heart emotionalism of the other party.
But it’s probably the only possible rhetorical move of the Trump campaign.
.. It’s become impossible for Mr. Trump’s supporters to lend reason or logic to his vendettas, daft misogyny, thoroughgoing racism and bloodlust. Instead, they advertise it as lovable.
Donald Trump: Sociopath?
Taking his biographer’s claim seriously
Tony Schwartz, the writer of the best-selling book, said that he “genuinely believe[s] that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”
.. I’m not here to be Trump’s doctor. He has a doctor, and his name is Harold Bornstein—the fellow who wrote in his official doctor’s note, “I can state unequivocally [that Trump] will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
.. And in the context of an election where Trump has repeatedly, strategically branded people with single words that seem to have proven influential—“Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Crooked Hillary”—would “Sociopathic Donald” be an intellectually honest equivalent?.. different people define the terms differently, with understandings converging around the feature of lacking “a conscience.”.. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which the Mayo Clinic defines by “an inflated sense of [one’s] own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”.. He had tweeted about me frequently in the weeks following its publication—often at odd hours, sometimes multiple times a day—denouncing me as a “dishonest slob” and “true garbage with no credibility,”Coppins recalls. “For two years, Trump continued to rant about how I’m a scumbag, or a loser, or ‘just another phony guy.’”.. Manipulativeness: Frequent use of subterfuge to influence or control others; use of seduction, charm, glibness, or ingratiation to achieve one’s ends... Steve Becker, a psychotherapist who specializes in Narcissistic Personality Disorder, has written that “we’ve reached the point where we expect our politicians to behave like psychopaths.” We view psychopathic traits as acceptable, perhaps necessary, and even advantageous attributes of politicians... some thought it telling that when Melania Trump spoke of her husband on Monday night, she delivered an endorsement that could have come from anyone. She said nothing of him as a husband, lover, or father to her child—the insight that many were hoping she would provide. On Tuesday, his daughter Tiffany was somewhat more illustrative, saying that her father would write notes to her on her report card... In one incident, he sent The New York Times’ Gail Collins a copy of her column, having circled her photo and scrawled “The Face of a Dog!”
Ten Reasons Why Melania Trump’s Speech Will Have a Lasting Impact
The blunder by the Republican nominee’s wife underscores a campaign rife with problems.
.. Now at last the script writes itself: Trump as doofus, the guy who went broke running a casino—and can’t even find someone to write an ordinarily competent speech for his wife’s big self-introduction to the American public.
.. Trump has just vividly demonstrated that his campaign—never mind the campaign, he himself—have zero skill at crisis management. Confronted with this comically absurd failure, their instinct is not only to lie, shift blame, and refuse responsibility, but to do so in laughably unbelievable ways.
.. The incident throws a harpoon into the heart of the Trump campaign’s racial politics. Trump’s message: Non-white people are ripping off hard-working white Americans who play by the rules. “They” cheat; “we” lose. Could there be a sharper reversal of that racialized complaint than Melania Trump in her designer dress stealing Michelle Obama’s heartfelt words?
.. A capable spouse effectively doubles the candidate’s own campaigning hours—more than doubles them, because she or he can relieve the candidate of speaking to party loyalists, whose votes are not in question, to free time for reaching swing voters and persuadables
.. Donald Trump epically does not tell the truth, does not keep his promises, and does not treat others with dignity and respect. A plagiarized speech (and the failure to detect the plagiarism) pretty strongly confirms that the Trumps do not much care about hard work, either. “Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.”
Why the Melania-Michelle Echo Matters
Trump is constantly telling us how incompetent everyone who’s been steering the government is and how masterfully he’ll take the wheel. He’s incessantly crowing about what a brilliant business he manages.
.. This wasn’t just any speaker. This was Trump’s wife. The derision being heaped on her remarks is something that will burrow deep under his tenderly sensitive skin. It will turn an already-defensive candidate even more so. And it will leave his aides fumbling for the smartest response.
.. There is no sign whatsoever that Clinton had a hand in the detection of strangely familiar lines in Melania’s speech, and the assertion that Clinton feels threatened by Melania is somewhat less than persuasive.
.. After Monday night, that discomfort is bound to increase, and it could become more difficult than ever for the Trump campaign to turn to her as a surrogate who can cover some of the ground that her husband can’t.