Donald Trump : A Review

 Tl;dr  -  VERDICT : "Tremendously Unfit"

To get rid of the last iota of indecision (ROFL) before dropping my ballot in the ballot box, I brushed up on the biography of one of the candidates - the incumbent Donald J. Trump. Netflix has been kind enough to continue streaming their 2018 four part documentary miniseries - "Trump : An American Dream." It is an outsiders' take on the current President. These were the people who had been close to him from the seventies to his Presidential run in mid 2010s. Originally created for UK's Channel4 the documentary series is not an expose, but a biography up till his candidacy in 2016. 

While watching this series, I was also reading in tandem, Dr. Mary Trump's (Donald Trump's psychologist niece, his older brother Fred Trump Jr.'s daughter) explosive expose on Donald Trump and the Trump family - Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. My review of this book is done in Trump-speak and it goes like this - "great, spectacular, brilliant, fabulous, incredible, amazing, fantastic, tremendous, sophisticated, honest, outstanding, phenomenal, powerful, " well, you get the drift.

I will let Dr. Mary Trump speak, the best speaker Trump family has yet produced. Take it away, Dr.Trump. Everything in blue text, is an excerpt from her book, "Too Much and Never Enough"

On why she wrote this book: I am not writing this book to cash in or out of desire for revenge. I could have written this book years ago when it would have been safer because my uncle was not in a position to threaten and endanger whistle-blowers and critics. The events of last three years, however, have forced my hand and I can no longer remain silent. By the time this book is published hundreds of American lives will have been sacrificed at the altar of Donald’s hubris and willful ignorance. If he is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American democracy.

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At the Trump International Hotel in DC which was comping all the Trump family before the next day’s family dinner at White House (on Apr 5, 2017) : I opened the refrigerator and grabbed a  split of Trump white wine, had it poured down my Trump throat so it could course through my Trump bloodstream and hit the pleasure center of my Trump brain.

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Donald about the White House: Donald pointed vaguely once in awhile and declared this place has never looked better since George Washington lived here. The historian was too polite to point out that the White House hadn't been opened until after Washington had died .

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On Donald’s mental state: I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist. He meets all 9 criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders but the label gets us only so far. A case could be made that he also meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy but can also refer to chronic criminality arrogance and disregard for the rights of others. He may have a long un-diagnosed learning disability that for decades has interfered with his ability to process information.

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Most of us have been shielded until now from the worst effects of Donald's pathologies by a stable economy and the lack of serious issues or crisis. But the out of control COVID19 pandemic, the possibility of an economic depression, deepening social divides along political lines thanks to Donald's penchant for division and devastating uncertainty about our country's future have created a perfect storm of catastrophe that no one is less equipped than my uncle to manage. Doing so would require courage, strength of character, deference to experts and the confidence to take responsibility and course correct after admitting mistakes. His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the midst of the tragedies we are currently facing. His egregious and arguably intentional mishandling of the current catastrophe has led to a level of push-back and scrutiny that he's never experienced before.

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The role of Fred Trump in Donald's life: In Donald’s mind he has accomplished everything on his own merits, cheating not withstanding. How many interviews has he given in which he offers the obvious falsehood that his father loaned him a mere million dollars that he had to pay back bit he was otherwise solely responsible for his success. Nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the shrinking free world. At a very deep level, Donald’s bragging and false bravado are not directed at the audience in front of him but at his audience of one: his long dead father.

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On Donald's relationship with his father Fred Trump and the lessons he learnt from his Dad which he applies to governing the country : The atmosphere of division my grand father created in the Trump family is the water in which Donald has always swum. The division continues to benefit him at the expense of everybody else. It's wearing the country down just as it did my father changing us even as it leaves Donald unaltered. It's weakening our ability to be kind and believe in forgiveness concepts that have never had any meaning for him. His administration and his party have become subsumed by his politics of grievance and entitlement. Worse Donald who understands nothing about history, constitutional principles, geopolitics, diplomacy or anything else really and was never pressed to demonstrate such knowledge has evaluated all of his country's alliances and all of our social programs solely through the prism of money just as his father taught him to do. The costs and benefits of governing are considered in purely financial terms as if the US treasury was his personal Piggy Bank.

On why Fred Trump propped up Donald: Donald’s success and acclaim were due to Fred and his vast wealth. Fred also knew that if that secret was uncovered, the ruse would fall apart. In retrospect, Fred was the puppeteer, but couldn’t be seen to be pulling his son’s strings. It’s not that Fred was overlooking Donald’s incompetence as a businessman, he knew he had more than enough talent in that arena for the both of them. Fred was willing to stake millions of dollars on his son because he believed he could leverage the skills Donald did have – as a savant of self-promotion, shameless liar, marketer, and builder of brands to achieve the one thing that had always eluded him, a level of fame that matched his ego and satisfied his ambition in a way money alone never could.

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Why Donald behaves the way he does: Donald withdraws to his comfort zones – Twitter, Fox News – casting blame from afar, protected by a figurative and literal bunker. He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own. The simple fact is that Donald is incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Acknowledging the victims of COVID19 would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise. But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence.

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Donald’s pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he says to and about himself dozens of times a day – he is the smartest, the greatest, the best – to get him to do whatever they want, whether it is imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every institution that’s contributed to the United States’ rise and the flourishing of liberal democracy.

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Donald’s eulogy at Fred’s funeral: Donald was the only one to deviate from the script. In a cringe-inducing turn, his eulogy devolved into a paean to his own greatness. It was so embarrassing that Maryanne (Donald's elder sister and the oldest of the Trump siblings) later told her son not to allow any of her siblings to speak at her funeral.