9/10/2023 0 Comments Advanced twitter search trump![]() ![]() It wasn’t about the dozen Diet Cokes that he consumes, or the amount of cable news that he crams into a workday, but rather Trump's inability to stomach the fact that there are things in the world to talk about besides himself. In particular, I was stunned by one revealing paragraph. I was reminded of that insight in a recent New York Times story detailing Trump’s hour-by-hour self-care rituals inside the White House. Trump then explained that his need for attention has sustained him for decades, and that it “would unnerve” him if he walked into a room and wasn’t the center of it. ![]() Seizing on the moment, D’Antonio asked Trump how that made him feel. Because, it’s like, ‘Oh, is that all there is?’” Trump said candidly. “I’ve had these tremendous successes and then I’m off to the next one. In the rare instance, Trump says that his favorite song is Peggy Lee’s, “Is That All There Is?” because it mirrors his own unfulfilled feelings about the ephemeral nature of success. There are plenty of telling insights into his thinking during the protracted discussions, but few rival the moment when Trump seems to be completely vulnerable and honest about his biggest fear in life: becoming inconsequential. In October of last year, The New York Times got ahold of five hours of taped conversations between Trump and biographer Michael D’Antonio. Trump’s fear about becoming irrelevant has haunted him for decades. And that, as the folks in Silicon Valley like to say, truly will make the world a better place. It might even deal a considerable blow to the companies-like Twitter and Facebook the Daily Mail, InfoWars, and Fox News-who have taken advantage of his attention-seeking for their own gain. But there’s a pattern I’ve started to see in his narcissism that is more likely to undercut him. I doubt very much that Trump will be impeached for obstruction of justice, treason, or because his aides (and possibly even relatives) have ties to the Kremlin. I don’t believe the Russia investigation will make its way to Trump. But that’s O.K., because this particular story has a happy ending. I know that by writing this column, I’m contributing to the problem. But it’s also because we’re learning to tune him out. (Though he could be tomorrow.) Part of that is because Trump’s eccentric behavior is becoming normalized. If you look right now on Twitter, he’s curiously not among the global-trending topics. (Lord knows, to his consternation, he was not Time’s person of the year.) And while there was a point in time when the most widely read, e-mailed, and shared stories at news outlets around the Web were almost all Trump-related, they are increasingly about other topics, like Potato Latke recipes and why your grumpy teenager doesn’t want to talk to you. There have even been moments when Trump’s name wasn’t on the front page of The New York Times. Sure, he's still the most-talked about person on Earth, but it is ebbing. Trump, it seems, is at the very beginning of becoming irrelevant. And that destiny is already beginning to take its course. Lately, however, I’ve come to realize that while Trump probably won’t go down in traditional forms of ignominy, he might face a worse fate. It seemed that karma may never actually come close to him. According to this logic, the president seemed like he’d be able to forever avoid accountability for allegedly assaulting women, making fun of people with disabilities, enticing violence around the globe, and leaving a stain on the most important office in the land. And this, more than any other, is the land that Trump presides over. We now live in a world where truth is increasingly obfuscated, or distorted by our filter bubbles and feedback loops. In this mortality tale, I feared, Trump might not ever be faced with the sort of chilling epiphany countenanced by men such as Roger Ailes and Joe Paterno, or Bernie Madoff and Bill Cosby, whose past demons returned to tread on them. His explosive divorces have ended in remarriages his numerous bankruptcies do not appear to have stymied his lifestyle this, after all, is the guy who was elected president after losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. Trump has spent his life lying without repercussion about the number of floors in his buildings the size of his crowds whether he owns a real Renoir the veracity of the Billy Bush tape the contents of the tax bill and the impact of climate change, among many other things. One of the things that has bothered me the most about Donald Trump in the past two years, since he famously descended the escalator in Trump Tower’s gilded lobby (with paid actors there to cheer for him), has been his ultimate ability to-for lack of a more elegant phrase- simply get away with it. ![]()
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