As I’ve written many times on this blog — too many times but it bares repeating — there is much discussion of various “isms” when it comes to President Donald J. Trump, from communism to socialism, racism and sexism. But the only “ism” that matters is narcissism, and the failure to understand this prevents us from having any hope to dealing with him effectively.
There are numerous examples of his narcissism, but none is more striking than the recent display in which he and Vice President JD Vance double-teamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a brutal takedown, a moment so stunning that some people, myself included, were left shaking.
Perhaps that’s because I recognized it for the narcissistic display it was. Here we need to remind ourselves that the narcissist has no core identity. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to figure this out. All you have to do is to spend any time with one or with victims of narcissistic abuse.
Devoid of identity, the narcissist must reinvent himself — narcissists are almost always men —daily. Trump’s fascination with Russian President Vladimir Putin stems in part from the mirror Putin holds up to Trump of the strongman, the tough guy, he could be. The MAGA faithful in turn — equally narcissistic and lost — refract an adored yet aggrieved leader in a house of mirrors of abject selfishness.
In such a world, truth shape-shifts — recall that Trump said he didn’t remember calling Zelenskyy a dictator — and everything is performative. In the White House meeting, Trump was performing on camera and before the press for Putin. The more interesting actor there, however, was flying monkey (narcissist enabler) Vance, the catalyst for the shakedown/takedown. Vance is actually smarter and better educated than Trump, which made his actions more heinous. He started in with how Zelenskyy wasn’t sufficiently grateful, and here we arrive at a classic narcissistic technique — attacking the victim’s soft underbelly. Zelenskyy is grateful in part, because he knows he has to be. He’s the supplicant. And there are few positions that are worse to be in than that of the beholden.
Vance knows this as well, and he hammered Zelenskyy on it, because he, too, was playing for an audience of one — Trump. Vance sees himself as the heir apparent, but really, he should ask the Trump children how well sucking up to daddy dearest works. (On a surprisingly insightful episode of his “Open Book” podcast — in which former Trump associate Anthony Scaramucci interviewed Michael Wolff, author of the new “All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America” — the two discussed how much Trump’s family hates him. That sounds extreme. But ask yourself this: Do ever see any of them with him except for special occasions? How well did the Trump association work out for former lawyers Michael Cohen and Rudolph Giuliani?
Remember that with a narcissist, loyalty is a one-way street. He may be a Lake Titicaca of need, but having a relationship with a narcissist is like diving into the shallow end of an empty pool: You’re going to break your neck.
That’s because the narcissist lets you do the dirty work while retaining plausible deniability should things head south, which they almost always do. Trump let Vance do the heavy lifting, but to no avail. Trump is never going to cede control to anyone. Indeed, he’s probably thinking of another run in 2028. He is the only sun in his political solar system. Everyone else is just a teeny-tiny planet. And indeed, after the White House debacle, Trump jetted off to Mar-a-Lago, while Vance faced the music of protestors while on a ski vacation with family in Vermont. He should brace himself for four years of Vermont — and more. Just ask Mike Pence.
Critics like Trump whisperer Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested that Zelenskyy should’ve soft-soaped Trump à la French President Emmanuel Macron or British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But really Zelenskyy is in an untenable position. Trump’s had it in for him since he refused to play ball and dig up dirt on Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine. But there’s something else that observers are missing, something essential to narcissism: The narcissist, perhaps more than anyone else, fears death as a metaphor for his own psychological oblivion, and Zelenskyy, a wartime president in drab utilitarian garb that was ridiculed for disrespecting the White House, is intimately associated with death.
Given all this, the meeting’s outcome was a foregone conclusion. “You have no cards,” Trump bellowed at Zelenskyy. True enough: You can’t reason with a narcissist. He holds all the cards in his irrational alternate universe. But perhaps the cooler heads of the Macrons and Starmers can prevail and get Zelenskyy to a minerals deal that would at least tie the United States to Ukraine for years to come and keep Russia at bay.
No one wants Ukraine to capitulate, of course. But you have to be cagey when dealing with people who are not playing with a full deck.