The twice elected President of the United States has spit in the face of every American who has every lived.
Again.
The Last Temptation Of Donald J. Christ
April 26, 2026Thoughts On Sacrilege and Its Uses in the Time of Trump
It is now almost two weeks since Americans and the world woke up to encounter a shocking and blasphemous image of an American president utterly unlike anything seen in our history. To make it even more shocking, the world soon learned that the very shocking, blasphemous image was posted by the very blasphemous president it depicted. To wit: The globe awakened to see an AI generated depiction of Donald J. Trump, the sitting President of the United States, clad in Jesus robes, divine light emanating from his hands, surrounded by an enormous American flag, the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, American eagles, American fighter jets, a mesmerized National Guardsman, a nurse in a beatific trance, a bearded guy in a baseball hat, an adoring woman in prayer. Hovering above Trump’s perfectly coifed head, four buoyant American soldiers and some kind of presumably non-American demon. Fireworks explode in the sky. There are other images that are too vague to discern, but what is very discernible is that every adoring face in the image is white and the subject of their adoring eyes is not the prostate man but their savior president.
Wearing neither his trademark smirk nor the cartoonish badass scowl now seen hanging Big Brother-like from the Department of Justice, but a countenance of unworldly compassion and concern, Jesus Trump lays his healing right hand on the forehead of an ailing or dead man to heal him or raise him, Lazarus style, from the dead. Dead or alive, the poor man’s condition is unclear. Not so the identity — by which I mean the spiritual identity – of the figure at the center of the frame. If there was any confusion someone, certainly at Trump’s direction, had helpfully posted the following words beneath the image: “The Chosen One. Credit: Truth Social.”
Understandably, most if not all of the responses I read were focused not on the figures on the periphery nor the surrounding symbols, but solely on the idolatrous figure of the transfigured Trump in the center. After all, this was the President of the United States. That, I believe, is to misunderstand the full meaning and intent of the image and its purpose. Indeed, the more one looks at the thing in toto — the brutal juxtaposition of American iconography, American militarism, the homogeneous character of all those adoring the American President, garbed in unmistakably messianic robes in an unmistakably messianic act, the more there is to be appalled by.
What exactly was the purpose of this thing ? Why was it even contemplated, never mind sent out into the world ?
The reaction to the image of Donald J. Christ and company was global, immediate and visceral. According to the BBC, the post “sparked fierce backlash from both sides of the US political spectrum, including from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters.” Across the world many wondered if the most powerful man in the world had finally gone completely crazy. Had Trump, who inexplicably has been the recipient of divine attributes for years and whose criminal trials had been activities compared to the suffering of Christ, succumbed to the madness of his followers ? Was he crazy ?
Well, obviously, but…
Shortly thereafter, and most uncharacteristically, Trump had the image removed — but not before it was seen if not fully absorbed by those for whom it was intended. More on that later. Very characteristically, when Trump was asked about it, he replied not with apology but with a lie. That the lie was even more transparent and insulting than most of his lies — and that’s saying a lot — seemed to matter little, if at all. Having no choice, Trump admitted posting the image but claimed, preposterously, that he thought it was a depiction of him as a doctor adding, for good measure, something about the Red Cross “which we support,” even if there is no sign of the Red Cross in the image. So, what was there to apologize for ? What’s the big deal ? Only the “fake news” , forever operating in bad faith and forever denigrating poor Trump, would dare to suggest that the image of Trump in Jesus robes with light coming out of his hands could not easily be mistaken for an image of Dr. Donald J. Trump, medicine man. Or so suggested a disgusted, once again victimized and aggrieved President.
But consider Trump’s answer for just a moment. Not about the image so much as about his lie about the image. Even as Trump is an almost supernaturally ignorant and proudly incurious man, like every successful con artist — and Trump is surely the most successful con artist in American history — Trump knows a great deal about the power of a cunningly placed and crafted image to utterly alter and rewrite reality. And he knows it from experience. After all, for millions of Americans it was his crafted, choreographed, completely fictitious image on the absurd “reality TV” show that, for millions, magically transformed a six time bankrupt super blowhard tabloid super celebrity and late night punch line into a preternaturally gifted, entertaining, wise, and truth- telling super businessman and legit presidential candidate. An image, that is, that played a significant role in elevating him to the presidency. With that in mind, is there any one outside of the MAGA cult who actually believes that an Olympian level narcissist like Trump does not scrutinize, and scrutinize to the most minute detail, every image of himself he has even the faintest control over ?
And yet, as far as I can tell, as usual the lie went completely unchallenged, leaving the only important question of the most offensive image in American history unanswered. What was this really about ?
Shortly after Trump’s lie, some but not all of Trump’s minions chimed in, most disgracefully the ever obedient Catholic convert J.D. Vance who opined, contrary to his boss’s bullshit about a doctor, that the posting was, in fact, just a joke. “I think the President was posting a joke,” said Vance. “Of course, he took it down because he recognized a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case.”
“The president”, Vance added helpfully, “ likes to mix it up on social media.”
Question for Vice President Vance: Where is the humor in a deliberately sacrilegious depiction of Trump as Christ – believed to be God by billons around the globe and millions of his fellow citizens — surrounded by adoring figures and iconic American symbols and military might ? Am I missing something here ?
Caught in his usual act of running down the halls of the Capital away from reporters, marsupial man and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson squeaked, “I told him (Trump) I don’t think it was being received as he intended it …I don’t think he thought it was sacrilegious at all.” Weaseling away Johnson added,” I think he showed great respect for others by removing it.”
Questions for Speaker Johnson: Outside of the Pope criticizing a catastrophic war of choice and calling for peace, does Trump think that anything, anything at all, is sacrilegious? And how, pray tell, was the image intended to be received ?
So…to answer my question is Trump crazy ? If so, crazy like a fox.
And to be clear, though the image of Donald J. Christ was a quantum leap, blasphemy is nothing new in Trump world. The Trump administration has been casually bleeding blasphemy into the language of government since day one of Trump’s second term. Take, for example, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s grotesque public prayers for savage violence “against those who deserve no mercy” ending always in, “And in Jesus’s name we pray. “ Or Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office Paula White’s blasphemous comparison of the criminally induced travails of Trump to nothing less than the Passion of Christ. “You were betrayed. And arrested . And falsely accused, “ she said to the President on Easter Sunday, shortly after Trump’s profanity-laced threat to Iran ( “You’ll be living in Hell.”) and one day before his threat to destroy an entire civilization should they not capitulate to his will.
A week’s reflection on the context and chronology that preceded the unholy creation, led me to believe that the intentions and purposes behind it were dark and insidious. One purpose, if the least important but most evident, was as an adolescent global “Fuck You!” to Pope Leo XIV who, on the evening of April 12, was the target of a particularly vicious, incoherent Truth Social attack by Trump. One hour before the posting of Donald J. Christ, Donald J. Trump bloviated that Leo is “weak on crime,” “terrible for foreign policy” and “catering to the Radical Left,” among other idiocies.
If Leo did what Popes do – call for peace in times of war – Trump responded by doing what Trump does anytime he is faced with an institution, a constitution, a person, anything who dares not bend to his will. Trump set out to totally discredit and debase the Pope and by extension anyone who agrees with him, which is to say Catholics.
Indeed, the main targets of the post, I believe, were Catholics, the main purpose of the thing, a tacit sales pitch. In effect, a temptation. The temptation on offer is to become, consciously or not, an adherent of Christian Nationalism, to drink from the intoxicating elixir of a “Christianity” without that troublesome, demanding Christ and his Sermon on the Mount. The goal is to divide and conquer. You can be with your Pope and his silly Beatitudes or you can be with God and Trump and America. You can sing “Anima Christi “ in the choir with a handful of fellow losers or you can roar “USA! USA!USA!” in a stadium like a lion.
You cannot do both.
Choose.
Many Catholics I know, some that I am related to and are dear to me, have in this particular case chosen. And they have not chosen Pope Leo. And this to me, if absolutely symptomatic of America at this hour, is heart wrenching. And terrifying.
And what is it to be a Christian Nationalist ? It is to perceive America as a “Christian nation, ” founded by white people for white people. It is to live in a nation especially favored by God and one in which adherence to Christian principles are wholly subservient to loyalty to country. It is a “spirituality” highly favored in MAGA land and as such one particularly embraced by those who stormed the Capital on January 6th, 2020.
The appeal of Christian Nationalism to the desperate or ignorant or lost or spiritually superficial is obvious and powerful. Just as Trump and company are promulgating a “democracy” without democratic practices or even a constitution, Christian Nationalism is a “faith “ that allows the veneer of sacrality without the demands of the sacred. Practiced in any meaningful way, Christianity is exceedingly difficult and demanding. It is also, to many, myself among them, exceedingly beautiful. The imperative to forgive, to love one’s enemies, to feed the hungry, to welcome the stranger are not options. Christian Nationalism speaks little if at all of such imperatives but it has served as a particularly insidious and powerful arm of right wing authoritarians in many countries, especially Russia and Trump’s beloved Hungary, which his administration has used as a model for transforming America. It is also massively popular in MAGA land but the ever rapacious Trump, no doubt, would be happy to see it grow and do all he can to grow it.
To that very end, in the not so subtle campaign to redefine Christianity and wed it inexorably to the American identity, President Donald J. Trump, sans Jesus robes, participated in the April 21 event titled, America Reads the Bible, billed, according to its website, as a “sacred opportunity to call our nation back to its spiritual foundation.” Said “spiritual foundation” mind you, has no basis in historical fact, but remains the foundational belief of Christian Nationalism, shared by some evangelicals and other Christian sects. Not incidentally, such a belief is antithetical to Catholicism, the word “catholic” itself meaning “universal. “
Seated in the Oval Office, in front of an American flag bookended by both the flag of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, Trump, wearing the most pious mien this most transactional and spiteful of men can muster, struggled his way through a reading from the seventh chapter of 2 Chronicles: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
It is not incidental that this particular passage has been cited by Christian Nationalists and others as Biblical evidence of America’s divinely anointed destiny. It is equally not incidental that, like Trump dolled up in Christ robes, it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.
At any rate, the absolutely perverse image of Trump as Christ, the circumstances that produced it, and what I believe to be the intentions behind it made me think of the real Christ, in particular of the story of The Temptation in the Wilderness. The story takes place just prior to the beginning of his ministry when Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of Judea where he is tempted three times by the devil. It is the third temptation — the temptation to submit to idolatry in exchange for worldly power — that has, for me, the greatest resonance in the events of the past 12 days and, indeed, in the entire second term of the Trump administration. Jesus, being Jesus, resists.
The grotesque, sacrilegious image of Donald J. Christ prompted in my mind an equally grotesque, sacrilegious and inverted rendering of said story.
In this version — the Bible of Trump if you will – the setting would be not the physical wilderness of Judea but the intellectual, political and above all spiritual wilderness of our increasingly deranged, increasingly desperate, post literate America and where increasingly our citizens possess the attention span of flies. And, most importantly, it would take place in an America that is simultaneously spiritually saturated, spiritually vacuous, and spiritually famished. It would take place in a wilderness in which people are conditioned from the moment of consciousness to believe that what is easier is better, that technology is science, that ungodly military production is a sign of divine fortune, that indifference to suffering is strength, that all things in this life are transactions, that gluttony and rapaciousness are virtues. A wilderness which deranged millions would somehow convince themselves that, no matter what he did or said, Donald J. Trump had been anointed by divine providence to save America and the world.
But unlike the real Jesus, Donald J. Christ in his Jesus robes would be not the tempted, but the tempter. And yet, what else can one expect when the most corrupt and corrupting man in America is elevated to the most powerful position on earth ?
Addendum: On April 15, three days after his sacrilegious posting, in an act of breathtaking spitefulness, pettiness and vengeance aimed directly at the man he could neither fire nor silence but directly affecting the most venerable among us, the Trump administration terminated an $11 million federal contract with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami that provided shelter for unaccompanied migrant children.
The Last Temptation Of Donald J. Christ
April 24, 2026Thoughts On Sacrilege and Its Uses in the Time of Trump
It is now almost two weeks since Americans and the world woke up to encounter a shocking and blasphemous image of an American president utterly unlike anything seen in our history. To make it even more shocking, the world soon learned that the very shocking, blasphemous image was posted by the very blasphemous president it depicted. To wit: The globe awakened to see an AI generated depiction of Donald J. Trump, the sitting President of the United States, clad in Jesus robes, divine light emanating from his hands, surrounded by an enormous American flag, the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, American eagles, American fighter jets, a mesmerized National Guardsman, a nurse in a beatific trance, a bearded guy in a baseball hat, an adoring woman in prayer. Hovering above Trump’s perfectly coifed head, four buoyant American soldiers and some kind of presumably non-American demon. Fireworks explode in the sky. There are other images that are too vague to discern, but what is very discernible is that every adoring face in the image is white and the subject of their adoring eyes is not the prostate man but their savior president.
Wearing neither his trademark smirk nor the cartoonish badass scowl now seen hanging Big Brother-like from the Department of Justice, but a countenance of unworldly compassion and concern, Jesus Trump lays his healing right hand on the forehead of an ailing or dead man to heal him or raise him, Lazarus style, from the dead. Dead or alive, the poor man’s condition is unclear. Not so the identity — by which I mean the spiritual identity – of the figure at the center of the frame. If there was any confusion someone, certainly at Trump’s direction, had helpfully posted the following words beneath the image: “The Chosen One. Credit: Truth Social.”
Understandably, most if not all of the responses I read were focused not on the figures on the periphery nor the surrounding symbols, but solely on the idolatrous figure of the transfigured Trump in the center. After all, this was the President of the United States. That, I believe, is to misunderstand the full meaning and intent of the image and its purpose. Indeed, the more one looks at the thing in toto — the brutal juxtaposition of American iconography, American militarism, the homogeneous character of all those adoring the American President, garbed in unmistakably messianic robes in an unmistakably messianic act, the more there is to be appalled by.
What exactly was the purpose of this thing ? Why was it even contemplated, never mind sent out into the world ?
The reaction to the image of Donald J. Christ and company was global, immediate and visceral. According to the BBC, the post “sparked fierce backlash from both sides of the US political spectrum, including from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters.” Across the world many wondered if the most powerful man in the world had finally gone completely crazy. Had Trump, who inexplicably has been the recipient of divine attributes for years and whose criminal trials had been activities compared to the suffering of Christ, succumbed to the madness of his followers ? Was he crazy ?
Well, obviously, but…
Shortly thereafter, and most uncharacteristically, Trump had the image removed — but not before it was seen if not fully absorbed by those for whom it was intended. More on that later. Very characteristically, when Trump was asked about it, he replied not with apology but with a lie. That the lie was even more transparent and insulting than most of his lies — and that’s saying a lot — seemed to matter little, if at all. Having no choice, Trump admitted posting the image but claimed, preposterously, that he thought it was a depiction of him as a doctor adding, for good measure, something about the Red Cross “which we support,” even if there is no sign of the Red Cross in the image. So, what was there to apologize for ? What’s the big deal ? Only the “fake news” , forever operating in bad faith and forever denigrating poor Trump, would dare to suggest that the image of Trump in Jesus robes with light coming out of his hands could not easily be mistaken for an image of Dr. Donald J. Trump, medicine man. Or so suggested a disgusted, once again victimized and aggrieved President.
But consider Trump’s answer for just a moment. Not about the image so much as about his lie about the image. Even as Trump is an almost supernaturally ignorant and proudly incurious man, like every successful con artist — and Trump is surely the most successful con artist in American history — Trump knows a great deal about the power of a cunningly placed and crafted image to utterly alter and rewrite reality. And he knows it from experience. After all, for millions of Americans it was his crafted, choreographed, completely fictitious image on the absurd “reality TV” show that, for millions, magically transformed a six time bankrupt super blowhard tabloid super celebrity and late night punch line into a preternaturally gifted, entertaining, wise, and truth- telling super businessman and legit presidential candidate. An image, that is, that played a significant role in elevating him to the presidency. With that in mind, is there any one outside of the MAGA cult who actually believes that an Olympian level narcissist like Trump does not scrutinize, and scrutinize to the most minute detail, every image of himself he has even the faintest control over ?
And yet, as far as I can tell, as usual the lie went completely unchallenged, leaving the only important question of the most offensive image in American history unanswered. What was this really about ?
Shortly after Trump’s lie, some but not all of Trump’s minions chimed in, most disgracefully the ever obedient Catholic convert J.D. Vance who opined, contrary to his boss’s bullshit about a doctor, that the posting was, in fact, just a joke. “I think the President was posting a joke,” said Vance. “Of course, he took it down because he recognized a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor in that case.”
“The president”, Vance added helpfully, “ likes to mix it up on social media.”
Question for Vice President Vance: Where is the humor in a deliberately sacrilegious depiction of Trump as Christ – believed to be God by billons around the globe and millions of his fellow citizens — surrounded by adoring figures and iconic American symbols and military might ? Am I missing something here ?
Caught in his usual act of running down the halls of the Capital away from reporters, marsupial man and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson squeaked, “I told him (Trump) I don’t think it was being received as he intended it …I don’t think he thought it was sacrilegious at all.” Weaseling away Johnson added,” I think he showed great respect for others by removing it.”
Questions for Speaker Johnson: Outside of the Pope criticizing a catastrophic war of choice and calling for peace, does Trump think that anything, anything at all, is sacrilegious? And how, pray tell, was the image intended to be received ?
So…to answer my question is Trump crazy ? If so, crazy like a fox.
And to be clear, though the image of Donald J. Christ was a quantum leap, blasphemy is nothing new in Trump world. The Trump administration has been casually bleeding blasphemy into the language of government since day one of Trump’s second term. Take, for example, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s grotesque public prayers for savage violence “against those who deserve no mercy” ending always in, “And in Jesus’s name we pray. “ Or Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office Paula White’s blasphemous comparison of the criminally induced travails of Trump to nothing less than the Passion of Christ. “You were betrayed. And arrested . And falsely accused, “ she said to the President on Easter Sunday, shortly after Trump’s profanity-laced threat to Iran ( “You’ll be living in Hell.”) and one day before his threat to destroy an entire civilization should they not capitulate to his will.
A week’s reflection on the context and chronology that preceded the unholy creation, led me to believe that the intentions and purposes behind it were dark and insidious. One purpose, if the least important but most evident, was as an adolescent global “Fuck You!” to Pope Leo XIV who, on the evening of April 12, was the target of a particularly vicious, incoherent Truth Social attack by Trump. One hour before the posting of Donald J. Christ, Donald J. Trump bloviated that Leo is “weak on crime,” “terrible for foreign policy” and “catering to the Radical Left,” among other idiocies.
If Leo did what Popes do – call for peace in times of war – Trump responded by doing what Trump does anytime he is faced with an institution, a constitution, a person, anything who dares not bend to his will. Trump set out to totally discredit and debase the Pope and by extension anyone who agrees with him, which is to say Catholics.
Indeed, the main targets of the post, I believe, were Catholics, the main purpose of the thing, a tacit sales pitch. In effect, a temptation. The temptation on offer is to become, consciously or not, an adherent of Christian Nationalism, to drink from the intoxicating elixir of a “Christianity” without that troublesome, demanding Christ and his Sermon on the Mount. The goal is to divide and conquer. You can be with your Pope and his silly Beatitudes or you can be with God and Trump and America. You can sing “Anima Christi “ in the choir with a handful of fellow losers or you can roar “USA! USA!USA!” in a stadium like a lion.
You cannot do both.
Choose.
Many Catholics I know, some that I am related to and are dear to me, have in this particular case chosen. And they have not chosen Pope Leo. And this to me, if absolutely symptomatic of America at this hour, is heart wrenching. And terrifying.
And what is it to be a Christian Nationalist ? It is to perceive America as a “Christian nation, ” founded by white people for white people. It is to live in a nation especially favored by God and one in which adherence to Christian principles are wholly subservient to loyalty to country. It is a “spirituality” highly favored in MAGA land and as such one particularly embraced by those who stormed the Capital on January 6th, 2020.
The appeal of Christian Nationalism to the desperate or ignorant or lost or spiritually superficial is obvious and powerful. Just as Trump and company are promulgating a “democracy” without democratic practices or even a constitution, Christian Nationalism is a “faith “ that allows the veneer of sacrality without the demands of the sacred. Practiced in any meaningful way, Christianity is exceedingly difficult and demanding. It is also, to many, myself among them, exceedingly beautiful. The imperative to forgive, to love one’s enemies, to feed the hungry, to welcome the stranger are not options. Christian Nationalism speaks little if at all of such imperatives but it has served as a particularly insidious and powerful arm of right wing authoritarians in many countries, especially Russia and Trump’s beloved Hungary, which his administration has used as a model for transforming America. It is also massively popular in MAGA land but the ever rapacious Trump, no doubt, would be happy to see it grow and do all he can to grow it.
To that very end, in the not so subtle campaign to redefine Christianity and wed it inexorably to the American identity, President Donald J. Trump, sans Jesus robes, participated in the April 21 event titled, America Reads the Bible, billed, according to its website, as a “sacred opportunity to call our nation back to its spiritual foundation.” Said “spiritual foundation” mind you, has no basis in historical fact, but remains the foundational belief of Christian Nationalism, shared by some evangelicals and other Christian sects. Not incidentally, such a belief is antithetical to Catholicism, the word “catholic” itself meaning “universal. “
Seated in the Oval Office, in front of an American flag bookended by both the flag of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, Trump, wearing the most pious mien this most transactional and spiteful of men can muster, struggled his way through a reading from the seventh chapter of 2 Chronicles: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
It is not incidental that this particular passage has been cited by Christian Nationalists and others as Biblical evidence of America’s divinely anointed destiny. It is equally not incidental that, like Trump dolled up in Christ robes, it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.
At any rate, the absolutely perverse image of Trump as Christ, the circumstances that produced it, and what I believe to be the intentions behind it made me think of the real Christ, in particular of the story of The Temptation in the Wilderness. The story takes place just prior to the beginning of his ministry when Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of Judea where he is tempted three times by the devil. It is the third temptation — the temptation to submit to idolatry in exchange for worldly power — that has, for me, the greatest resonance in the events of the past 12 days and, indeed, in the entire second term of the Trump administration. Jesus, being Jesus, resists.
The grotesque, sacrilegious image of Donald J. Christ prompted in my mind an equally grotesque, sacrilegious and inverted rendering of said story.
In this version — the Bible of Trump if you will – the setting would be not the physical wilderness of Judea but the intellectual, political and above all spiritual wilderness of our increasingly deranged, increasingly desperate, post literate America and where increasingly our citizens possess the attention span of flies. And, most importantly, it would take place in an America that is simultaneously spiritually saturated, spiritually vacuous, and spiritually famished. It would take place in a wilderness in which people are conditioned from the moment of consciousness to believe that what is easier is better, that technology is science, that ungodly military production is a sign of divine fortune, that indifference to suffering is strength, that all things in this life are transactions, that gluttony and rapaciousness are virtues. A wilderness which deranged millions would somehow convince themselves that, no matter what he did or said, Donald J. Trump had been anointed by divine providence to save America and the world.
But unlike the real Jesus, Donald J. Christ in his Jesus robes would be not the tempted, but the tempter. And yet, what else can one expect when the most corrupt and corrupting man in America is elevated to the most powerful position on earth ?
Addendum: On April 15, three days after his sacrilegious posting, in an act of breathtaking spitefulness, pettiness and vengeance aimed directly at the man he could neither fire nor silence but directly affecting the most venerable among us, the Trump administration terminated an $11 million federal contract with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami that provided shelter for unaccompanied migrant children.
Donald Trump and the Triumph of Narcissism
January 22, 2026
Although I am neither an historian nor a psychologist, I know enough American history to know that Trump’s demand that Greenland capitulate to his desire for ownership, regardless of the will of its inhabitants, is not merely wholly without precedent and, in fact, strategically unnecessary, but reckless and demented to a terrifying degree. At the same time, I know enough about narcissism to know that one afflicted with this insidious and sometimes extraordinarily powerful disorder is the absolute last person you want near power, that much the more, absolute power. Yet there he is. The entire world has witnessed the pathology of this disorder displayed in Trump’s actions and language now for over a decade: The true narcissist is compelled by a prodigious energy to find perpetual affirmations and reflections of their fabled identity everywhere he or she looks and in everything and everyone he or she perceives. For the narcissist, everything and everywhere and everyone is a mirror in which the narcissist must see, on some level, some reflection of who they believe they are. If they are met with something other than this fantasy, what they see must be diminished, renamed, redefined or, if threatening enough, destroyed altogether. If the narcissist cannot be the object of ceaseless adoration then being the object of ceaseless attention will do. Trump, the “thing in itself” in terms of narcissism, is a master practitioner of both and, as New Yorkers know, has been enacting this pathology for his entire adult life and doing so with spectacular success. In his first term and in the first year of his second term, Trump has provided so many examples of this horrible affliction it would take 50 pages simply to compile a fraction of them, but I list here a few examples, in no particular order or particular importance, to illustrate the point: Trump’s televised cabinet meetings, in which grown men and women ( easily the most unqualified jack-asses in the history of the institution ) are obliged time and time again to thank Trump for his leadership and praise his all around sublimity in words and tone so obsequious as to make Nicolae Ceausescu or Kim Jong Un cringe; Trump’s complete and utter degradation of the Department of Justice into his personal law firm, tasked not with representing the citizens of the United States, but with both protecting Trump and his pals, as well as employing the awesome power of the state to ruin the lives of Trump’s perceived enemies; Trump’s transformation and ballooning of ICE into what is essentially his private army, currently wreaking havoc and committing murder in Minneapolis with what appears to be complete impunity ; Trump’s disgraceful employment of Presidential Pardons to absolve thousands of convicted criminals whose actions justify Trump’s lies ( as in Jan 6, 2020), or criminal operators that can help the Trump family garner billions, ( as in Binance founder Changpeng Zhao ), or those Trump can use for political purposes, ( as in Eric Adams . ) Or simply because they are Trump’s pals. One might also include Trump’s heretofore unfathomable ultra racist wholesale designation of Somali immigrants as “garbage ” or , once again, his studied refusal to recognize MLK Day. Then, of course, there is the comparatively comical but no less grotesque renaming of The United States Institute of Peace into the Donald Trump United States Institute of Peace, as well as his proposed Board of Peace, an international body created to solve global conflicts of which Trump would be Chair For Life. And last but not least, Trump’s renaming of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ( which he also chairs ) into the “Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” transforming a national memorial to a beloved slain president into a personal tribute, the act of which might be called sublime narcissism.
One can, like Trump, go on and on and on and on and on and on.
And then there is Trump’s political rhetoric, which also illustrates Trump’s need to remake the world in his own image no matter the reality. For over a decade of hearing this person in his political guise I was puzzled by aspects of his rhetoric ( I am not referring to the idiotic babble of his self-described “weave” ), hearing in it something like an echo of a very familiar tune that eluded me. Then one day, not long ago, I recognized it: whether consciously or not, the structure of Trump’s rhetoric echoes that of the deity in the first Book of Genesis: Listen.
“And God said, “ Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good and he separated light from darkness.”
The world created by the word.
And now a miscellaneous sampling of Trump.
“Covid will vanish like a miracle.”
“I won the election in 2020.”
“I ended seven ( or eight or nine or ten ) wars.”
“Gasoline is down to $2:50”
“ We cut the prices of pharmaceutical by 400 percent. Some say 600 percent.”
No explanations. No reasons. No syllogisms. Nothing but blunt God- like declarations meant to be received as self -evident truths. It matters not at all to Trump or his devotees that the declarations are total bullshit. Trump’s words create the world.
Reality constructed by pronouncement. And endless repetition.
Monday in an endless and incoherent press conference in D. C., Trump repeated the lie about the 2020 election as well as many other untruths and smears.
And yet, even as he now lumbers rather than walks and frequently nods out in front of the world’s press, far from diminishing with age, the past couple of weeks have revealed Trump’s affliction to be growing to Caesarian levels. This, at the same time he has predictably and systemically replaced all responsible and knowledgeable advisors with mirror reflections of himself, come what may. No moment revealed this reality more than two brief exchanges within a long January Oval Office interview with the New York Times. In the first, Trump is asked about his plans to take over Greenland and his reasons for doing so.
President Trump: Really it is, to me, it’s ownership. Ownership is very important.
David E. Sanger: Why is ownership important here?
President Trump: Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.
Katie Rogers: Psychologically important to you or to the United States?
President Trump: Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.
It is simply not possible, even if surrounded by absolute lackeys, that Trump is unaware of the 1951 Treaty that allows the United States to have as many as 17 bases in Greenland as were maintained throughout the Cold War. Yet, acknowledgement of that fact would undermine and expose Trump’s true need, that the possession of Greenland is not strategically important for the defense of the United States but rather“ Psychologically important for me.”
Hence foreign policy based not on reality but narcissistic need. (And why not ? Hasn’t Trump “been right about everything else ?” )
And yet, in virtually every commentary I read or heard in the MSM about this incredible statement — foreign policy that threatens to rupture the world order based not on necessity or reality but on the psychological need of a single individual – it was excused not as the ideation of a narcissistic lunatic but somehow a remnant of Trump’s days as a real estate tycoon. A quirk of sorts. And quite understandable, when you think about it, given the circumstances.
The second excerpt came when Trump was asked a question about the subject that is perhaps most loathsome to him because it is the most revealing of his view of the presidency, and even more so of himself. Trump was asked to name what, if anything, were the boundaries, limits, and constraints on his authority as commander in chief and on limits to his global power
“Yeah,” Trump answered, “ there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me”.
Trump’s morality. Trump’s own mind. These are the only things that can stop him. Consider that a moment.
Several nights ago, the President of the United States sent the following message to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
Given their source and the immense power that currently resides in the speaker and writer of such absolutely insane statements, and the fact that all potential external guardrails have been removed, such words should send a chill down the spine of not merely every American citizen but every person on this earth.
It seems to me impossible for a reasonably intelligent and conscious person to read even these three examples and not conclude that the President of the United States is stark, raving mad. More: that his madness has a name and its name is narcissism, in Trump’s case malignant narcissism. And yet, saying that, I fear that the affliction propelling the man re-making the world before our very eyes has become so insidiously central to our degraded, social media deranged, techno driven and rootless sensibilities and so vital to the capitalistic ethos as to be omnipresent, and hence as unseen as the oxygen we breathe. Consider only the creation, rise, and ever growing power of an ever expanding legion of self-proclaimed “influencers”, an occupation that would not exist in a healthy, self respecting culture, did not exist until the advent of social media, and cannot exist without rampaging narcissism and its first cousin shameless self promotion. Consider too, the corresponding, ever expanding army of human balloons who are more than willing to be “influenced.” Lastly, ponder that according to poll after poll almost 60% of young people aspire not to be doctors, teachers, musicians, or writers, but “influencers. ” (And why not ? Some might wind up working for the Trump Administration. ) I can only think that if historian Christopher Lasch, author of the seminal 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations were still alive his head would explode.
So…we have arrived at the moment in which the psychological needs of the President of the United States are what creates American foreign policy; policy, mind you, that in the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney constitute “ a rupture, not a transition.”
A few years ago I remember feeling bemused by the subtitle of Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which was published in 2022, thinking it presumptuous or even hyperbolic. I see it now, in 2026, as at the very least prescient, if not prophetic. And that is terrifying.
How did this come to pass ? And what do we do ? How was such a man, so spectacularly unfit, unwell, uninterested in anything but enriching himself and remaking the world in his own image, elected — not once but twice ! — to the pinnacle of world power ? I am quite certain that, despite some 70 million of my compatriots having voted for this man, I am one of millions of Americans who, 10 years after Donald Trump pronounced that “I alone can fix it , ” has found himself or herself staring at a screen or reading a newspaper and thinking, “ How is this ludicrous conman / clown doing what he is doing ? What is he doing there ? What does this say about us ? How did this happen? “
Even after wholesale evisceration of the working and middle classes by globalization, championed and orchestrated by Bill Clinton, even after the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush and his multiple endless wars , even after the tepid presidency of Barack Obama, who promised change only to retain many of the same architects of the financial meltdown of 2008, even after the often hapless Biden and his equally narcissistic insistence that he was somehow fit for a second term, even after the complete devolution of what remains of the Left into ultra divisive, crazy making, thought policing identitarians and so much more…how did this happen ?
More importantly, what, if anything, can we as individuals do about it ? When I stare into the confluence of forces that have led to this moment, this farcical tragedy of history, I am often overwhelmed to the place of paralysis. And as a father I am often petrified for the future of my child, as I expect are millions and millions of other parents. All too often in the silence of the night I have found myself haunted by the words of Antonio Gramsci : “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.”
And yet one must do something. We are at war, a war that is at root psychological, intellectual and spiritual with profoundly dangerous political ramifications. “The first casualty of war, “ warned Aeschylus, some 2,500 years before Foucault and the advent of social media, “ is truth.” For me, post-modern babble to the contrary be damned, the only known route to something approximating a livable truth is through language. “The beginning of wisdom, “ wrote Confucius“ is to call things by their proper name.” More to the point is a statement sometimes attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Good government is when things are called by their right name.”
Even as he ripped off Ronald Reagan’s all too seductive “Make America Great Again” slogan ( and, of course, instantly franchised it ), and other than his love affair with enormous tax breaks and obliteration of regulation for corporations, Donald J. Trump was never a Republican, though he has wrapped himself in flags like no other American in history, sometimes publicly humping them on stage for good measure. And yet, like Lincoln, he is called a Republican. Nor has he ever been a conservative, as, with precious few exceptions, the only thing he has ever tried to conserve is his own ever extending power. And yet, when convenient, he is considered by some to somehow be in the tradition of Edmond Burke. And while he has been often and rightfully called a facsist and he has without question used the power of the state to try and institute fascistic control over the press, higher education, cultural institutions and anything else he or his minions can think of, I personally find it hard to believe the man could be motivated by any particular doctrine ( and fascism, however repugnant and repellent, is a doctrine, and one that is meant to exalt a people, not merely a person ) that is not an expression of his seemingly boundless and rapidly metastasizing narcissism. Trump is Other. Trump is narcissism incarnate.
A very wise teacher once told me that gestures are what we do when when don’t know what else to do, and in that spirit I offer a gesture, knowing full well its limits.
Following Confucius, if we at this moment can do little else, let us at the very least call things by their right name. Let Trump be known first and foremost as a narcissist and let his actions and policies be seen at their core as nothing more than expressions of his narcissistic hunger and need. Let his party be known and understood as the Narcissist Party — by definition a party of one — and his triumphs be understood as triumphs of this affliction. Let us state such openly and often, and in the hope, faint though it may be, that some glimpse of this horrible moment will seep through. And let us acknowledge too, that even as he embodies the illness like no other and strides the globe like a lumbering colossus, Trump is not the cause of this madness but a symptom thereof, and the sickness that animates him to remake the world in his image will remain, save an unseeable transformation, after he is finally, gratefully, gone.
On the Edge of Silence
January 9, 2022“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.”
Albert Camus
It was just around three o’clock on an overcast afternoon and I was taking my Sunday constitutional. I had just crossed Houston Street when I heard the sirens coming from all directions. A moment later at 1st Ave and 2nd St when the cop cars sped past me going the wrong way in a one-way street, I knew that whatever was happening was very serious, indeed. I walked in the direction they drove to see the flashing lights of cop cars join the flashing lights of cop cars that had already arrived.
There too was as an engine of the FDNY. The street was blocked. The vehicles were now cramped together on the corner of A and 2nd St and they had all silenced their sirens. In fact, despite the fact that a crowd of perhaps 30 people had gathered there, drawn by the flashing lights or curiosity or morbidity or whatever, the entire block, citizen and civil servant, seemed to be enveloped in a very un-New York City silence.
All eyes were frozen on a young man standing on his fire escape five flights above the sidewalk.
He was pale and wearing shorts and a tee shirt, on the tall side, perhaps 35 years old. What became immediately and chillingly clear was that standing in front of all of us was a fellow soul who, for whatever reasons had been driven to the place where life itself had become unbearable – “not worth living,“ in the words of Camus — and a permanent solution to that intolerable state seemed to be just a little movement away. One move and then for the young man, a very different kind of silence.
The window to the right of the man was open and one could hear, just barely, muffled voices emanating out of it. Perhaps even a conversation was taking place but, despite the silence, it was impossible to make out a single word. From time to time the man moved a step or so in either direction or stood tall or reached out to the grab the fire escape. Most of the time he was absolutely motionless. Meanwhile the murmuring from the window continued as did the silence in the street below.
At one point the window below the murmuring suddenly opened and a cop filled the square. For a moment he stuck out his head and studied the man on the platform above him, the man whose life it was his job to save. Then, just as suddenly he retreated back into the darkness.
Somewhere close to where I stood, just barely audible I became aware of a woman I could not see reciting the Hail Mary in Spanish. She would finish it and then begin again, adding to the bizarre sense that something almost sacramental was taking place.
A young African American who wandered into the scene asked me, almost in a whisper, “What’s going on? Was the man threatening to jump? “
“Yes, “ I answered, adding for whatever reason, “ It’s a hard world. “
“Yes, “ she replied. “ It really is. “
Then we watched in silence.
Once or twice I exchanged glances with the man to my right but said nothing.
The murmuring continued and the man seemed to respond. Slowly, very, very slowly and in fits and starts, he crawled head first into his window. I had no idea how much time passed. Time seems bendy in such moments. How long was I there? Five minutes ?. Eight minutes at most ? And yet somehow it seemed much, much longer.
All I know was that, at last, he vanished into his window. He was safe. And, in some sense that I did not consider until later, so were we. We, those who for whatever reason had gathered beneath him, were not to be witnesses to a primal struggle that ended in horror, not to witness a violent rejection of the sacrality of life, not to be told in the most graphic possible language that ‘Life was not worth living.”
I turned to leave. The young woman I spoke to touched my arm and looked into my face.
“Be safe, “ she said. Be safe.” “You too, “ I said.. “Be safe.”
The man to my right also met my eyes. He said nothing. He was not, I understood, the talking type. He nodded his head and patted me on the back in some sign of some kind of solidarity and walked east into the remains of his day.
And with these little gestures from two strangers I almost certainly will never see again, I was moved. I was moved because we strangers had shared something; something that could have gone terribly wrong and yet, for reasons we will never know, any more than we will know the reasons that drove the man to the edge, did not and would not .
We shared a moment of curiosity or concern or empathy, or fear, or understanding or even recognition or some combination of all of these — but it was something shared; something deeply human and even primal was felt and shared by the three of us and I suspect, on one level or other, every other person there.
As I walked on and reflected it occurred to me that we had inadvertently shared in something sacred: the sparing of a human life, asking Camus’s ultimate philosophical question and answering “yes.”
In a in a city ravaged by covid and savage inequality, in a country where trust and empathy are considered by many to be the characteristics of suckers and losers, in a world committing global suicide in plain sight and in slow motion, I’ll take it.
With gratitude, I’ll take it.
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