The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV
Understand that, and you’ll understand what he’s doing in the White House. Should we take him, to quote the famous precept of Trumpology, literally or seriously? Are his attacks impulsive tantrums or strategic distractions from his other woes? Is he playing 3-D chess or Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots?
The “Donald Trump” who got elected president, who has strutted and fretted across the small screen since the 1980s, is a decades-long media performance. To understand him, you need to approach him less like a psychologist and more like a TV critic.
Then cable news spends morning to midnight happily masticating the fresh batch of outrages before memory-wiping itself to prepare for tomorrow’s episode. Maybe this sounds like a TV critic’s overextended metaphor, but it’s also the president’s: as The Times has reported, before taking office, he told aides to think of every day as “an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.”
To ask whether any of this is “instinct” or “strategy” is a parlor game. If you think like a TV camera — if thinking in those reflexive microbursts of adrenaline and testosterone has served you your whole life — then the instinct is the strategy.
And to ask who the “real” Donald Trump is, is to ignore the obvious. You already know who Donald Trump is. All the evidence you need is right there on your screen. He’s half-man, half-TV, with a camera for an eye that is constantly focused on itself. The red light is pulsing, 24/7, and it does not appear to have an off switch.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/sunday/trump-reality-tv.html
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Some explosive stuff has got to be around the corner on these tax returns and all this self dealing as candidate/President?
Meanwhile, Epstein thing lurks in the shadows!
Day doses of HE SAID WHAT?
Sharpiegate probably has legs though, may they run rapidly!