Suffering Through Trump’s Insufferable Narcissism

For ten years we have been subject to the inanity of Donald Trump's rampant narcissism, but his recent act of self-adulation is a contemptible act of vandalism: his adding himself to the Kennedy Center. This is a memorial to our assassinated president John F. Kennedy revered worldwide and yet the current president believes we should honor him still more, even to the extent of not just listing his name first on the title of the cultural center, but above Kennedy's.
Trump called the change he had demanded of the Center’s board “a surprise”; his name was on the building within 24 hours. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was an equal disgrace us:

"Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump and likewise congratulations to President Kennedy because this will be truly a great team long into the future."

Going well beyond the usual absurd bragging about himself, Trump has here crossed a line with a physical act intended to subordinate another president. It shows him to be a narcissist well beyond what we've known him this decade and that was already narcissism beyond what was thought humanly possible.

We've seen his self-infatuation from the beginning. He told us,

"I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words."

That was of course met with derision as was an early reaction to comments about his erratic conduct,

"My strongest thing is my temperament I think I have the best temperament or certainly one of the best temperaments of anybody that's ever run for the office of president. Ever."

Right off, we were warned by psychiatrists in the media that he is in the grip of "malignant narcissism", a more serious level which they say is incurable. "Narcissism impairs his ability to see reality", said a prescient clinical psychologist quoted in New York's Daily News. Our publication ran an article on his malignancy nine years ago titled “Psychiatrists Say Trump 'Dangerous' and 'Untreatable'".

We have since endured the grandiosity of his exalted view of self burst forth regularly. "I'm a very capable person…I haven't changed very much. Been very consistent. I'm an extremely stable genius".

About a climate report he said, "One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.”

On one Thanksgiving, asked what he was most thankful for — a question that for commanders in chief usually prompts praise of service members in harm’s way — Trump delivered a singularly Trumpian answer: “I made a tremendous difference in our country”.

Dismissing likelihood of high turnout in the 2018 midterms, he said, "I'm so important that people aren't going to go out and vote unless it's all about me".

He said after the debate last year that Kamala Harris was up "against one person of extraordinary genius".

To his audience at a campaign rally he said, "Did you hear? The most popular person in the history of the Republican Party is Trump. Can you believe this? Does that include honest Abe Lincoln? You know, he was pretty good, right?"

We have heard him repeatedly say, "I built the greatest economy in the history of the world" about the economy before the pandemic.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, he extolled, "For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it...Nobody else was going to get that done but me."

Examples are boundless.

To console his staggering self-regard, he confers awards on himself. He must have, ultimately for his own use, the gift from Qatar’s ruling monarch, the Boeing 747-8 “Palace in the Sky”. The world’s most luxuriously appointed aircraft is 13 years old and will need a possible billion dollars to renovate and outfit. The cost is classified. Congressional budget sleuths spotted a mysterious $934 million transfer out of funds for the modernization of America’s ground-based nuclear missiles. They’re convinced those taxpayer dollars were diverted to what will be Trump's plane.

Before the Kennedy Center, Trump had already renamed the building of United States Institute of Peace after himself. A congressionally funded independent nonprofit focused on conflict prevention and resolution around the world, it was emptied of personnel by Elon Musk’s DOGE project. A Department of State release said the name change was "to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history".

As Theodore Johnson of The Washington Post wrote, Trump seeks "national idolatry". He has "gilded the Oval Office" and hung massive, dictator-style portraits of himself on buildings around the nation's capital like al-Assad in Damascus.

An 1866 law that dictates only the deceased can appear on U.S. currency will not stop Trump from having a $1 coin struck with his image on both sides.
The Treasury Department said in a post on X...

“On this momentous anniversary, there is no profile more emblematic for the front of this coin than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump”

Speaking at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix days ago, Fox News host Jesse Watters revealed to the audience that Trump is building the $350 million, 90,000-square-foot gilt White House Ballroom as a 'monument' to himself “because no one else will”.

And now Trump plans an arch, to be placed facing the Lincoln Memorial. It of course
must be bigger than Paris’s Arc de Triomphe so as to upstage Lincoln, and is to be named the Arc de Trump, or is that a joke? Either way, his repulsive egomania tells him that he must leave his imprint all over Washington.

The Hamas attack would not have happened, Trump has often said, had he been in the White House, nor would Putin have invaded Ukraine, a war Trump would succeed in ending on his first day back in office because of his imagined control over the Russian dictator. He claims to have ended eight wars. He did participate in settlements to varying degrees, but his influence has been disputed. Just this Monday Trump claimed,

"We stopped a potential nuclear war between Pakistan and India. And the head of Pakistan… said President Trump saved 10 million lives, maybe more..."

New Delhi consistently denies any third-party intervention.

Who doesn’t cringe in embarrassment at our president’s unseemly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says that Trump has phoned foreign leaders to ask that they recommend him to the Nobel committee. “Have we ever had a president so pathetic?”, he said.

At a dinner in July, flattery being the surest way to get what one wants from Donald Trump, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached across the table to give the President a copy of a letter sent to Stockholm for “forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other”. Similarly, Trump said the subsequently assassinated Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan “gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize”. How coy. A Japanese newspaper reported that Trump asked Abe to send the letter.

What better proof of his malignant narcissism than his “obsession with not only wanting the award but believing he is deserving of it”, as a writer at Lincoln Square put it.

Over time, Mr. Trump has shown indications he believes he is meant for a higher calling. Running against Biden in 2020 he said in July,

"I'm the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness, and chaos...If we don't win, it's all gone, okay? It's all gone...We have to win the election. I'm the one"

As he contemplated running for the presidency again, he said in July of 2022:

"If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed at home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately. It would stop. But that's not what I will do. I can't do that. I have to save our country."

In his victory speech after winning election to a second term, and referring to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, he said,

"[M]any people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness."

At a gathering of conservative pastors in Concord, North Carolina, last October, he spoke of himself as anointed by the “supernatural hand” of God to win a second term in office. “I would like to think that God saved me for a purpose", Trump said to them.

That convinces him that he should stop at nothing. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in her Vanity Fair interview said Trump has "an alcoholic's personality”. He "operates [with] the view that there's nothing he can't do. Nothing. Zero. Nothing.” In an interview with The Atlantic magazine he said, “I run the country and the world”.

Whether out of adoration or fear, a host of worshippers feeding Trump’s narcissism serve to make Trump think his vainglory is only fitting. Several in Congress have proposed bills to exalt the President.

  No sooner than Trump had been inaugurated did Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) propose renaming Washington’s Dulles International Airport the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Calling him “the greatest president of my lifetime”, co-sponsor Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa) said, “This legislation will cement his status in our nation’s capital as our fearless commander in chief, extraordinary leader and relentless champion for the American people.”

  Trump’s birthday, June 14th, would be made a national holiday by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY)’s bill. She submitted on Valentine’s Day.

  Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl) introduced legislation to have Trump’s face carved into Mount Rushmore National Memorial. There’s no stable area for an addition, but credit with her leader was assured. While still governor of South Dakota, Krisiti Noem had put forth the same proposal, which explains why she is Secretary of Homeland Security.

  Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Tx) proposed in the Golden Age Act of 2025 that Treasury print $100 bills with Trump’s portrait on them, presumably bumping Benjamin Franklin.   Finding that insufficient, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC)’s bill said make that a new $250 bill with Trump’s image,
coincident with the nation’s 250th anniversary.

  Just days after inauguration, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tn), who was under investigation for fraud by the Office of Congressional Ethics and the F.B.I., announced he would press for changing the Twenty-second Amendment to allow Trump to serve a third term. His logic was, “If the man who created the disastrous ‘New Deal’ gets more than two terms, then the man who created ‘The Art of the Deal’ should get the same”.

This adulation carries over to the White House where we, the public, get to watch the strange ritual of cabinet meetings. A spell seems to have been cast over members rendering them willing to debase themselves by subservient fawning that would humiliate any normal person. As for Trump, incapable of embarrassment, he wants us to hear the praise heaped upon him – TV cameras on hand for the nightly news — as one after another delivers his or her encomium. Here’s a sampling:

  Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence: “[T]his is just such a great opportunity really to recognize your leadership as a true champion for working people.”

  Homeland Security Secretary Krisiti Noem (ICE’s boss): “The average family and individual that lives in this country is safer than they’ve been in years because of what you’ve done.”

  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “Our country has never been so secure, thanks to you. You have brought us back from the edge. You have the overwhelming mandate from the American people. You’re restoring confidence in government. “

  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick: “This is the greatest cabinet working for the greatest president .”

And on it goes around the table, at least a dozen effusively proffering their admiration.

But perhaps those who propose name changes and peace prizes, and a cabinet that lavishes praise, all serve an important function. The media is abuzz with Trump’s rapid decline, both failed accomplishment and mental slippage. Clinical psychologist Dr. Julie Futrell was quoted nine years ago in these pages saying,

“The maintenance of self-identity is the organizing principle of life for those who fall toward the pathological end of the narcissistic spectrum.”

Perhaps it’s essential that the minions who dote on Trump continue propping up his egoist self-identity. Because if the Potemkin world that Trump has designed for himself crashes to the ground, laying bare an intolerable reality, he might lash out with the ultimate retribution. We need remember that this country mindlessly gives the nuclear keys to the single person who inhabits the White House.