Trump’s first month in office has been a whirlwind shitshow that has left countries and American citizens rattled and fearful.  But what is driving him?  SMAC has taken a deep dive into the belly of the beast to try to explain this unprecedented phenomenon that is akin to a massive asteroid hitting the Earth (but we didn’t see it because all NASA employees have been fired by Musk to improve efficiency).

Until he started running for the presidency against Hilary Clinton, what did we know about Donald Trump?  Nothing much really except for his successful reality show, The Apprentice.  Some who took a deeper interest knew that he wasn’t a particularly successful businessman.  In fact, he was disastrous.  He managed to bankrupt three hotels and three casinos.  You really have to work at bankrupting a cash machine like a casino.  He had six other ventures that platzed, the most prominent of which were the Trump Shuttle airline and the Trump University.  The latter also left all his graduates with expensive but worthless degrees. 

So how did he get to be president … twice?  His weapons of choice are mis-directions,  lies and exaggerations which he uses like a stripper uses silicone – nothing’s real and it’s just there to attract and distract you to part with your money – and in his latest venture, your votes.  Some of his lies are outrageous:  In 2015 his personal physician, Dr Borstein, released a letter saying that Trump had “extraordinary physical strength and stamina” and he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency”.  The superlatives and the style cast doubt on its authenticity which was confirmed by Borstein before his death in 2021 when he admitted that Trump dictated the letter.

Following the playbook of the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, where one repeats the lie until it becomes a fact, Trump used the far broader reach of social media where his supporters became unwitting propagandists by retweeting his talking points.  An analysis of just Trump’s Twitter feed from June 2015, when he declared his 2016 presidential run, until January 8 2021, when he was booted off, reveals the following: He insulted Hillary Clinton 646 times by calling her a criminal amongst other things with most over less than six months before the November 20 election.  That’s an average of 3 to 4 per day.  Over the full period of around 260 weeks, he denigrated the legacy media 1288 times and used the phrase “fake news” more than 500 times.  This was gaslighting at its worst.  Another feature was Trump’s vile and vindictive personal attacks on people he didn’t like.

His second presidency has displayed even more than before that he is a bully.  He has declared war on every country.  With his BFF, Elon, by his side the next phase of human history might become known as World War X.   But it doesn’t stop there.  He has also declared war on everyone (federal workers, LGBTQIA+ people, migrants, Democrats, and anyone who did him a perceived injustice including prosecutors and the FBI) and everything (wind turbines, plastic straws, low flow shower heads).  The last two show how single-mindedly petty he is all because he has a personal gripe.  He does this because he can – firstly, because the USA is by far the most powerful country financially and militarily and whose dollar is effectively the reserve currency of the world and secondly because his toadies in the majority in both the Senate and the House as well as the Supreme Court have got his back not to mention His Master’s Voice, Fox News.  In his first term he tested the limits of what he could get away with and then came four years in the wilderness during which he marinaded in his grievances and victimhood during his court cases.  This has empowered and emboldened him to be off-the-charts outrageous.

His character is a complex assembly of asinine ideas, half-baked conspiracy theories, festering vindictiveness and many other distasteful traits in his amoral bubbling personal cauldron but the most important idee fixe is the word me.  He has no alter ego just ego.