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This is what Trump posted on Truth Social at 5:26 PM last night.
Here’s the text:
"Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before. The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one, but many people from Colorado have called and written to complain. In fact, they are actually angry about it! I am speaking on their behalf to the Radical Left Governor, Jared Polis, who is extremely weak on Crime, in particular with respect to Tren de Aragua, which practically took over Aurora (Don’t worry, we saved it!), to take it down. Jared should be ashamed of himself!"
This is making the news both in Colorado and around the country. Below, from, Colorado Poltics:
This is from Time:
It is making news in the homeland of the artist. This is from the British publication The Telegraph.
Here’s the painting of Barack Obama:
One might think that this is more than merely Trump resenting that President Obama’s picture seems to show him looking better than he does. Could it be that deep, deep, down in the murky morass of Trump’s unconscious he is jealous of the president who he calls Barack Hussein Obama?
This is the dictionary definition of preen:
(of a bird) straighten and clean its feathers with its beak: robins preened at the pool's edge | [with object] : the pigeon preened her feathers. • (of a person) devote effort to making oneself look attractive and then admire one's appearance: adolescents preening in their bedroom mirrors. • (preen oneself) congratulate or pride oneself: it did not prevent them from preening themselves on their achievement.
The first person to use the term “preening narcissism” to describe Trump in an article was Pulitzer Preze winning columnist Jennifer Senior (Wiki profile) writing for The New York Times. It was in this article written during the pandemic:
President Trump Is Unfit for This Crisis. Period.
His narcissism is a grave danger to our health.
The article was illustrated with a photo with this caption: President Trump boarding Air Force One in Florida on Monday. Reports over the weekend said the White House overruled government health officials who wanted to advise older people against flying.
I was struck by one term in what she wrote, in bold below:
And of course, it was at that same news conference that Trump infamously said, “I like the numbers being where they are,” in explaining why he was reluctant to let passengers, some of whom have tested positive for the virus, off the Grand Princess cruise ship floating off California (it has since been given permission to dock in Oakland).
That news conference was, to me, the most frightening moment of the Trump presidency. His preening narcissism, his compulsive lying, his vindictiveness, his terror of germs and his terrifying inability to grasp basic science — all of it eclipsed his primary responsibilities to us as Americans, which was to provide urgent care, namely in the form of leadership.
It’s preposterous for Trump to resist determining how widespread this epidemic is. Yet right now, the United States isn’t reporting how many people have been tested; the C.D.C. pulled the number from its website. Late last week, an extraordinarily detailed article by The Atlantic, counting state by state, put that number at only 1,895. In South Korea, the number was more than 140,000. (Which Trump dismissed as “sampling.” It was not. It was testing, straight and simple.)
I wrote about Senior calling Trump a preening narcissist and posted it in Daily Kos: Trump was captured in one paragraph and one catchphrase by NY Times OpEd writer Jennifer Senior
This is the illustration I made for this:
What I wrote there had no particular content which was original with me. I just wanted to share her use of the term “preening narscisst” because it was the first I’d heard it and it described one aspect of Trump so well. It turned out that of the 1,700 pieces I posted on Daily Kos this one received the most recommendations (471) and it had 188 comments.
I also wrote: "Don't rain on my pomade" president, the pathetic preening narcissist is getting his due with this illustration:
I discovered this in this RawStory article: 'Nobody likes a bad picture of themselves': Trump rages that Obama painting is 'wonderful'.
RawStory used a bad picture of Trump to illustrate this article:
The least noxious and dangerous part of Trump’s narcissism is that it has to do with his appearance. If only he was just a strutting peacock dispalying his feathers or a crowing rooster ruling and impregnating all the chickens in a henhouse. Put another way, Trump thinks he is the cock of the walk.
The origins of this idiom are somewhat unclear, but it’s believed to have originated in rural England during the 18th century. At that time, cockfighting was a popular pastime among farmers and other working-class people. The winner of each fight was considered to be the “cock of the walk,” or the top rooster in the pecking order.
Trump, if he believed in God, would think he was God’s gift to women because he’s such a hunka burning love.
Trump’s has many other characteristics besides narcissism that makes him the most dangerous president in history. I wrote about this here: Sadists ® U.S: Trump and The Dark Tetrad, By Hal M. Brown
It should be obvious that Trump is an example of someone who has all of the traits of The Dark Tetrad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism
The most dangerous aspect of his narcissism looked at in isolation is that he believes he knows more about everything than anybody else. He has said that he has the biggest brain which to him means he is more intelligent than anybody else. He has surrounded himself with toadies who have far more knowledge in their areas of expertise than he does, but when Trump doesn’t agree with them they disagree with him at their peril.
Addendum:
This was one of the comments I posted on my Daily Kos piece:
Michael D'Antonio, the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author with Peter Eisner of "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence." wrote:
...the problem is not so much the President's overweening self-regard but his inability to recognize the needs of others. This problem, invariably a characteristic of the truly narcissistic...
In the current crisis, the problem is not so much the President's overweening self-regard but his inability to recognize the needs of others. This problem, invariably a characteristic of the truly narcissistic, makes it difficult if not impossible for someone to put others first. In families, it can be evidenced by the parent who buys himself a new car when the rent is overdue. In countries, it is seen when a leader can't seem to see what people need in a moment of crisis.
Whether he's throwing paper towels into a crowd amid death and devastation in Puerto Rico or mocking victims of sexual assault, Trump has shown himself to be callous with enough regularity that he has taught us to cringe when we see him in a moment where concern for others is required. Remember how he joked about crowd sizes when he visited a hospital after a mass shooting in El Paso? How about the time, at the beginning of his term, when he stood at a memorial for fallen intelligence officers and bragged about his own intellect?
Compassion, which is the opposite of narcissism, is as essential to the presidency as any trait and presidents of both parties have shown it often. We all remember the moving responses from Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, George W. Bush after the attacks of 9/11 and Barack Obama after the Charleston church shooting. It is something we have relied on from our leaders. It is also the piece so often missing from Trump's response to difficult times. This is the man, who, a Huffington Post video showed, needed an emotional cheat sheet for a meeting with survivors of school shootings. That the prompts encouraged him to say, "I hear you," is all the evidence we need to know that the White House staff recognizes that the President struggles when it comes to compassion.
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