Politics

Trump has lived in a fantasy world of his own making for his entire life

Politico is reporting that based on his recent behavior, both mental health professionals and Trump’s niece, who is also a mental health professional and has had the chance to observe him for years as a family member, fear that Trump is having a mental breakdown.

I am not a mental health professional nor am I family member, but based on my own observations of Trump’s behavior since the 1980s, my opinion is that what we are seeing is actually pretty normal behavior for Trump.

You cannot judge Trump based on normal behavior. He has never lived a normal life like you and me so his behavior, i.e. coping skills, are not the same as everyone else. And while those life skills might be judged as abnormal for the general population, they have worked for him and helped him achieve success for more than 70 years.

What you have to understand about Trump is that his wealth has insulated him from reality. He has always lived in a bubble surrounded by people who tell him that he is the greatest, the smartest, the richest. He has never lived in the real world like other people.

Any time that reality has intruded on his fantasy world, he has always been able to escape any consequences. And because he has never had to suffer any consequences, he believes that he is invincible.

Even his numerous bankruptcies have had no personal consequences for him. The banks would write off the losses and stop lending to him. Trump never realized that banks routinely write off bad loans. They consider it the cost of doing business. In his mind, he “won”, i.e. didn’t have to pay the loans.

His fortune allowed him to hire an army of lawyers and accountants whose only job was to help him cheat, the only way he knows to get ahead, and then to protect him from any consequences.

Even the way he ran his company would be considered aberrant by normal standards. He routinely stiffed contractors and lenders, illegal behaviors that would get most CEOs fired. Trump is not the CEO of his company. He is the owner. You can’t fire the owner.

Owning his own company allowed Trump to live in an alternate reality. He surrounded himself with a group of fawning underlings who stroked his ego and unquestioningly followed his orders no matter if they were illegal. He made the rules. Their job was to follow them.

This is why he had so many problems as president. He didn’t understand that he couldn’t run the government the way that he ran his company. I wasn’t shocked when he violated norms and tried to take illegal actions. That was how he ran his company for years. He thought that he could continue making up his own rules and breaking the laws as it suited him as president.

It’s why he fired so many people. He didn’t understand that government officials, staff and cabinet members were not his employees, obligated only to him. So he kept hiring and firing until he found people who would act like employees, adopt his fantasies and implement his policies.

Which is how he ended up where he is now, hunkered down in the White House, surrounded by a bunch of whackos, strategizing how he can overturn the results of the election. This may not be normal for the rest of us, but it is perfectly normal for him. He isn’t having a mental breakdown. He is continuing the behavior that has worked for him his entire life.

Trump has to be the luckiest man alive. He was born into a wealthy family, then inherited both the wealth and the family company. As the owner of that company, he lived in a corporate bubble staffed by people who fed his ego, assuring him that he was the greatest, the smartest, the richest.

When that company was on the brink of failure due to his poor business skills, he was offered a TV show, The Apprentice. The producers of that show knew that he was a moron, but he got great ratings, so they allowed him to continue living in his little bubble where he was the greatest, the smartest, the richest.

When the ratings started to fall on his TV show, Trump ran for president and won. He reveled in his MAGA rallies where the crowds screamed that he was the greatest, the smartest, the richest.

Nothing has ever changed for Trump. He has lived in a fantasy world of his own making for his entire life. Even as he tries to figure out a way to overturn the election results, he is still living in that fantasy world where he won the election because he is the greatest, the smartest, the richest.

When it comes time for him to leave the White House, he will simply move his fantasy world to Mar a Lago. In his world, he didn’t lose the election, it was stolen from him. Everyone around him tells him so so it must be true.

He envisions hanging on to power in the Republican party, becoming a kingmaker, choosing who will run and who will be primaried.

And when that doesn’t happen, when he loses power and prestige as is normal for ex-presidents, that is when he will have a mental breakdown. His company is losing money and he has $420 million in debt coming due. He will no longer have the financial wherewithal to keep up the fantasy. He will be forced to face the same reality as the rest of us, where he is a washed up old man who has to answer for his numerous tax and business frauds. That is when he will have his mental breakdown.

Trump won’t be able to handle reality because he has never had to live in our world. He has neither the experience nor the life skills to live in a world where other people make the rules and there are consequences for his behavior.

That is when he will break.