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Is Trumpism Ideological or Psychotic?
A superficial clash between explanations of Trump’s second presidential term
How much of Donald Trump’s second term as president follows from his metastasized personality disorder, and how much can be attributed to the anarcho-capitalists, billionaires, and grifters who mean to exploit Trump as their frontman so they can impose Project 2025 on America?
Luckily, there’s no need to choose between those explanations since they fit together like a hand and glove.
Everything Trump personally says or does, especially in his elderly period, is caused purely by his malignant narcissism. The pettiness, childish self-obsession, shameless amorality, incuriosity, lying, and so on are rampant not just in Trump’s mannerisms but in his preoccupations in the White House.
For example, he harangued President Zelensky in public in the Oval Office because Zelensky failed to bow before Trump like a courtier. The cause of that scandal was just a personality defect on Trump’s part, not a strategy, policy, or political calculation. The Trump regime might rationalize the effects of Trump’s disorder, but it’s obvious that the disorder often comes first in Trump’s dealings with the world.
