New York Post shows how to get under an attention seeking narcissist's skin

New York Post shows how to get under an attention seeking narcissist's skin

By Hal Brown

Archives of previous stories on right >>

Here's the cover page of the late edition of The New York Post which is on the stands and online today:

Not only was Trump's announcement relegated to the bottom of the page but he was referred to as a "Florida man"and the stories were on page 26 of the print edition.

The crew on "Morning Joe" was laughing about this this morning as they showed the cover of the New York tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. 

The paper was shown on MSNBC all day. Below: All In With Chris Hayes.

Inside the paper:

As someone who in a former life lived in Manhattan and took the subway I can attest to the fact that numerous riders read either the New York Post or the other tabloid, The New York Daily News. If I recall the history of these papers, both were planned to be easy to read on subways and buses.

Vintage photo by Stanley Kubrick. https://www.mcny.org/story/riding-subway-stanley-kubrick

When one of them comes out with a compelling cover picture these are seen all over the city Trump always thought he was king of. The papers are also displayed prominently on the few remaining  newsstands (only 330 left) and newspaper boxes all over the city.

It's been reported that the TV addicted Trump sometimes watches the Morning Joe. In fact Joe Scarborough today said that people have told him Trump sometimes "hate watches" the show. (See 

Trump lashes out at media again with personal attacks on ‘Morning Joe’ anchors, from 2017.)

I hope he watched this one. I can see him deriving some pleasure from being depicted in any way on the NY Post cover, even if it mocks him as a cartoon egg about to fall off a wall, but here they don't even use his name. 

Sometimes a picture is worth 1000 words and sometimes an image is so compelling that only two words are needed. This was the case in the notorious New York Post Trumpty Dumpty cover which the media referred to or republished  countless times after it came out. For example a see Google image search below:

Today the NY Post's main website page features Ivanka with this article today on the top of their page.

You can read the articles depicted in my images below from The New York Post. I didn't want to waste time putting links to individual articles here since the titles convey the message that NY Post editors want to convey.

Online, the story, as befits any print edition page 26 stories, is way down the page where, below, you can see the stories editors wanted to declare were more important:

It is noteworthy that the story about Ivanka announcing she won't have anything to do with the campaign is the prominent one related to Trump's announcement.

A few minutes after I took the screen shot shown above this section was changed as below:

Final Update (I have other things I have to do today)

This is how the website orders its stories as of 6:45 AM Pacific Time. (Click image to enlarge)

Related:

Of course this is a "salon" article so there's little chance Trump will read it, but he is certainly aware of the coverage being given to Ivanka not only refusing to go to his speech but then announcing she would have nothing to do with his campaign for the tired reason that she wants to devote more time to her family. In truth she probably wants to be able to defend herself in court cases having to do with her involvement in Trump businesses and to continue her grift.

"Ivanka Trump also gave an exclusive interview to Fox News, which has had a notable turn against Trump after his candidates lost competitive races last week and cut away from his rambling speech on Tuesday."

This was also on "salon" today. Heather "Digby" Parton actually watched Fox News while Trump gave his speech and reports on how their still all-in-for-Trump commentators gushed over how great his speech was.

Then there the news that guests at Mar-a-Lago who tried to leave before the speech was over were stopped from doing so by security.  I do believe this is against the law.

Recent stories 

• Quick with a quip Stephanie Rhule ad libed the bes...
• I suggested Trump took documents so he could have ...
• Georgia gave us REM and The B-52s, delicious peach...
• If DeSantis or another wins the GOP primary would ...

Quick with a quip Stephanie Rhule ad libed the best Kari Lake put-down

Quick with a quip Stephanie Rhule ad libed the best Kari Lake put-down

and has a delightful exchange with Gov-elect Wes Moore from Maryland 

by Hal Brown

One of the benefits of living in Oregon is that I don't have to stay up until 11:00PM to watch Late Night with Stephanie Ruhle which airs at 11:00 PM on the east coast. It is on at 8:00 here.

I was watching in bed last night and I was dozing off so I missed a great ad lib about Kari Lake. It wasn't until I saw the story about it on RAWSTORY this morning that I played the video (here).

The quip comes just before three minutes on the video.

Here's the ad lib in context:

Ruhle wondered if Lake would be flying to Mar-a-Lago to appear at the event with Trump. (guest Tim) Miller recalled that many of the Lake supporters were saying that she was on the VP train and would likely end up in consideration for Trump's running mate. 

"She can be the VP of catering services at Mar-a-Lago," quipped Ruhle.

This begs the question as to whether Lake even would have the chops to be VP of catering at Mar-a-Lago. It may be a job beyond her capabilities.

Now let me praise Stephanie Ruhle who I consider to be the best regular evening MSNBC host since Rachel Maddow left.

Ruhle breaks the stereotype of a financial expert nerd.  She was a drastic personality change from Brian Williams who she replaced at The 11th Hour. 

She is an incisive interviewer who rarely goes through a show without interjecting a witticism. She is not shy about expressing her own opinions.

I've seen her confront an evasive interview subject with one or another version of an eyebrow raised version of "oh come on, you don't really believe what you're saying" which conveys "you've got to be shitting me" quite clearly.

Click above to watch video

Last night she delighted in watching Wes Moore, the amiable governor-elect of Maryland who won an overwhelming victory, masterfully handle her when she wouldn't relent in pressing him on aspirations for higher office when he gave stock answers about only thinking about what he wanted to do for Maryland as governor. I can see her thinking "I'm going to have some fun with this man" who she clearly was impressed with

She knew what he was doing and that he could easily have demurred and said that he was only human and sometimes had thoughts about how his political life would develop long term. Truth is that he would make a great candidate for the Senate, president or vice president as he proves himself as a highly effective governor even a decade from now.

About Stephanie Ruhle from Wikipedia:

•  She is a graduate of Lehigh University where she earned her bachelor’s degree in international business.  
• Prior starting her journalism career at joining Bloomberg News, Ruhle spent 14 years working in the finance industry.  
• She's Senior Business Analyst for NBC News and was one of three Bloomberg reporters who broke the story of the London Whale, identifying the trader behind the 2012 JPMorgan Chase trading loss.
• She founded the Corporate Investment Bank (CIB) Women's Network and co-chaired the Women on Wall Street (WOWS) steering committee.  
• In 2003, Ruhle joined Deutsche Bank as a credit salesperson covering hedge funds. She ended her eight-year career there as a managing director in Global Markets Senior Relationship Management.  
• While at Deutsche Bank, Ruhle founded the Global Market Women's Network to help women move into leadership roles at the company.

I suggested Trump took documents so he could have the ultimate trophy room back in August

Above: Elvis earned all of these trophies.

Now the talk is all about this report about why Trump may have taken the documents. 

Basically the Post reports the following:

Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter.

I thought of this and posted about it in August when I was still allowed to write on Daily Kos. This is what I wrote:

A psychological reason Trump might have stolen the top secret documents

By Hal Brown

There’s plenty of speculation as to why Trump wanted to bring top secret documents home to Mar-a- Lago. I have yet to hear one that isn’t nefarious.  These include his wanting to sell them to foreign adversaries or curry favor with them, but I am posing a different reason just as consistent with his personality. If he wanted to use them to benefit himself in the former way it speaks to his being a traitorous sociopath. I suggest another possiblity. It is based on another aspect of his psychology. This is that he may have wanted to use them as trophies, either to enjoy by himself or to show off to select mucky-mucks who he wanted to impress. This speaks to his over-the-top pathological grandiose narcissism.

If he didn’t take them for evil reasons I lean towards his wanting to show them off because I don’t see Trump as the kind of wealthy person who is like the collector of illegally obtained fine art which he keeps in a vault where he enjoys just sitting by himself enjoying the work of the masters only he is able to look at.

I can see Trump trying to impress a guest, perhaps a foreign leader, a business magnate, sports star, or celebrity and taking them into his trophy room as saying “do you want to see some nuclear documents? I could have started World War III with these.”  Alternatively he could have said “I could have lost World War III with these.”

Trump most likely knew he wasn’t allowed to take home gifts from foreign leaders to show off to his pals but figured that showing these off was no big deal (see From chess sets to model jets, foreign leaders lavish gifts on Trump White House) compared to flashing a document labeled Top Secret with the locations of our nuclear submarines on it. For example Chinese President Xi Jinping gave Trump a paper panel with five columns of calligraphy, valued at $14,400, that’s a big ho-hum.

Of course I may be totally wrong here, but then again sometimes a simple explanation is the right one. Both reasons are consistent with who we know Trump is.

My possible, emphasis on the word possible, reason is not as newsworthy as those being suggested. It doesn’t paint him as an evil traitor. In fact while it might be embarrassing to him to offer this as a defense should the case end up in court, it might be offered to exculpate him. It would be a kind of “not guilty by reason of pathological narcissism.”

On a personal note, I was friends with Biggie Munn’s daughter Jane when he was the athletic director of Michigan State University. She showed me the trophy room he had in his beautifully furnished basement. The walls of the room were lined with shelves and displays of fancy trophies which he or his teams had won dating back to when he was an All-American at the University of Minnesota through his coaching career, to when he eventually became athletic director at MSU. In one way or another he earned each and every one of them. None of them were stolen.

Georgia gave us REM and The B-52s, delicious peaches, yummy Vidalia onions, and now may give us a historic Senate

By Hal Brown

Archives are on the right

This story is dedicated to my dear friend who lives in a town of 200 which is about 20 miles south of, and 200 years back in time, from Athens, Georgia.

Georgia has pleased the pallet of the nation with delicious peaches and Vidalia onions, and rocked out with Athens based bands REM and the B-52s

 Less known nationally is that way back in 1987 a group of Athens residents who attended a forum on AIDS at the University of Georgia in February 1987. The group initiated AIDS Athens which is still active today (website here). The year is significant. Consider this from the CDC Museum website:

 The first year of the AIDS epidemic seemed isolated to a few individuals in a few cities, so it received little media attention. When cases were reported in infants and people with hemophilia, widespread panic struck Americans. Those with AIDS were often stigmatized. In 1985, Ryan White, a teenage hemophiliac living in Indiana, contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. Parents in his community feared he would expose their children to AIDS, resulting in Ryan being barred from attending school.

In 1986, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued the Surgeon General’s Report on AIDS. In it, he called for a comprehensive program of sex and AIDS education, urged the widespread use of condoms, and dispelled myths that HIV could be spread by mosquitoes. In 1987, CDC launched an unprecedented national campaign, America Responds to AIDS (ARTA). The goal of ARTA was to increase awareness and understanding of AIDS, to prevent HIV infection, and to encourage people to seek more information and counseling. CDC also began a program to support HIV prevention efforts with national minority organizations that provided HIV prevention expertise to community-based organizations, developed HIV prevention programs targeting minorities, especially African Americans and Hispanics, and supported groups that used culturally sensitive AIDS prevention programs to address their communities’ needs.

I don't know if it was the first such organization in the nation but it certainly was among the first.

Of course Georgia also gave us Martin Luther King and Jimmy Carter.

Now we have something else that Georgia may give us thanks to the decisions by the state's Republican leadership to back Herschel Walker for Senate. They can read a pie chart:

Had they managed to find someone they thought could be a great male white to run against Senator Warnock they surely would have lost decisively 

As it happened thanks to a deviously disruptive independent running as a Libertarian by Oliver Chase there will now be a runoff election.

Now the Republicans are saddled by one of the worst Senate candidates in recent history. Not only is Walker woefully ignorant and beset with trying to deal with what one could call his women problem,  he is unstable and unpredictable. The GOP is saddled with a candidate prone to putting his hoof in his mouth, an impossible contortion for a horse but something Walker manages to do on a regular basis.

One obvious result of a Warnock win is that it will diminish the power Sen. Manchin has. It also has major ramifications for the appointment of judges, including Justices to the Supreme Court should a vacancy occur. This is from Reuters:

If Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock were to win the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff election against Republican challenger Herschel Walker, that would expand Democrats' majority to 51-49. That would give Democrats an additional edge in passing the few bills that are able to advance with a simple majority of votes, instead of the 60 needed for most legislation.

It would also dilute the influence of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, "swing" votes who have blocked or delayed some of Biden's major initiatives, including expansions of some social programs.

I will leave it to the pundits to elaborate on what else a one seat advantage in the Senate will mean for legislation. One additional thing is that the power sharing agreement of a 50/50 split would no longer apply (read more). 

Suffice say it is so significant that the Republicans have no choice but to go all in on supporting Walker and holding their collective breath that he doesn't say something totally cray-cray or have an accusation leveled against him that he can't lie his way out of.

Update: News like this can't thrill Republicans:

Excerpt:

"Now let me tell you this here: If we was ready for the green agenda, I'd raise my hand right now," he said. "But we're not ready right now! So don't let them fool you like this is a new agenda, this is not a new agenda! We're not prepared, we're not ready right now! What we need to do is keep having these gas-guzzling cars, because we got the good emissions under those cars. We're doing the best thing that we can!"

This is not the first time that Walker has spoken confusingly about energy and environmental policy.

Earlier this year, for example, Walker seemed to suggest that China was taking America's "good air" and replacing it with "bad air."

"Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move," Walker said. "So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got we to clean that back up."

See my related Walker story:

If DeSantis or another wins the GOP primary would Trump run as an independent? You bet your sweet ass he would.

By Hal Brown

As speculation that Trump is not a shoo-in for the Republican nomination grows like kudzu on steroids I wonder what would happen if Ron DeSantis or another Republican became the nominee. 

DeSantis seems poised to vanquish both Trump more so every week if not every day.  Other aspirants for the nomination may be waiting in the wings should DeSantis stumble, but my bet is that there's a 50% chance he'll beat Trump.

This is from Jamelle Boule in The NY Times (subscription)

The first assumption is: 

The idea that Republican elites could simply swap Trump for another candidate without incurring any serious damage rests on two assumptions: First, that Trump’s supporters are more committed to the Republican Party than they are to him, and second, that Trump himself will give up the fight if he isn’t able to win the party’s nomination.

This is the second:

This gets to the second assumption: the idea that Trump would go quietly if he lost the nomination to DeSantis or another rival. Donald Trump might have been a Republican president, but he isn’t really a Republican. What I mean is that he shows no particular commitment to the fortunes of the party as an institution. His relationship to the Republican Party is purely instrumental. He also cannot admit defeat, as you may have noticed.

There is a real chance that Trump, if he loses the nomination, decides to run for president as an independent. And if he pulls any fraction of his supporters away from the Republican Party, he would play the spoiler, no matter who the party tried to elevate against him. Republican elites might be done with Trump, but Trump is not done with the Republican Party.

If this should happen Trump has two choices. One is to accept defeat with grace and dignity. This doesn't sound like any version of Donald Trump I've ever observed. The other is to claim victory (be assured he'd find a way to do this) and run as an independent. 

Think of the fun he'd have, all the rallies of rabid MAGA fans waving flags depicting an even more badass Trump. I can see one with him dressed as a gladiator with one metal clad boot on Sleepy Joe Biden's neck and the other on the neck of Ron DeSantimonious as he raised a mighty sword towards Heaven. 

If he floated the idea with Republicans for their input this would be irrelevant unless they enthusiastically agreed with the decision he'd already made. The sensible Republicans know how many of his MAGA cult would vote for him would try to dissuade him from doing this. How do you spell spoiler?

Trump would listen to sycophants like Boris Epstein and Steve Bannon who desperately want to remain in his favor. Who knows what Sean Hannity would tell Trump if Murdoch told him to zip it?

Trump is driven by revenge and resentment and wouldn't give a tinker's damn whether he was a spoiler and single handedly destroyed the prospects for a Republican victory. 

The race itself would be a delight for Democrats because the Republican, let's assume it's DeSantis, would have to attack both President Biden and Donald Trump. Likewise Trump would have to attack both of them. Biden would be sitting in the catbird seat because he could just run on his accomplishments which by mid-2023 should be readily apparent.

Trump was always a Republican of convenience has because he has no central political philosophy. He knew that the only party that had a both a contingent which would welcome his racist dog whistles, fascism, and authoritarianism and another larger group that would go along with whatever he wanted to achieve their own agenda from appointing Supreme Court Justices to cutting taxes for the rich

Trump has no loyalty to the party. His only loyalty is to the party of one. There's no political science or punditry. My calculation is based on only on understand the psychology of Donald Trump.

You only have to look up malignant narcissism in Wikipedia to understand why the syndrome's exemplar or paradigm would behave this way:

Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.

Malignant narcissism could include aspects of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) alongside a mix of antisocial, paranoid and sadistic personality disorder traits. The importance of malignant narcissism and of projection as a defense mechanism has been confirmed in paranoia, as well as "the patient's vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression". A person with malignant narcissism exhibits paranoia in addition to the symptoms of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Because a malignant narcissist's personality cannot tolerate any criticism, being mocked typically causes paranoia.

On another, but very related issue, there's the questions as to whether Ron DeSantis would resign from his position as governor (as it appears he might but not necessarily have to do if he runs for president,  see "If DeSantis wins and runs for president, would he have to resign as governor? There are options.")

I think in his grandiosity and his blind ambition this is how much he cares for the people of Florida as long as he doesn't needs their votes for governor. 

If he resigns he knows they'd still vote for him for president in a primary or general election. Florida has two senators, Marco Rubio who just easily won his bid for reelection over Val Demmings, and Rick Scott whose term expires in January of 2025.

If he doesn't become president I can see DeSantis running and winning against Scott in the GOP primary. The newly minted Sen. DeSantis could command a national stage, thus keeping him as a viable Republican candidate for president down the road.

I see nothing in his personality that indicates DeSantis would have any compunction about kicking a wounded Donald Trump while he was down even if polls showed Trump held an edge over him. 

He knows that unless Trump can been using Adrenochrome, which according to QAnon, is being harvested by liberal elites from the blood of kidnapped children and can confer immortality on those who use it, he can run for president without Trump getting in his way in the following presidential election.

It is worth noting what Frank Bruni wrote in his NY Times Opinion essay published in a subscriber only newsletter:

Tweeted by his wife, Casey, with the apparent expectation that it would draw notice and go viral, it casts DeSantis not merely as a model and promoter of selected (and selective) religious principles — that’s commonplace for Republican leaders — but as a divine instrument, a holy messenger, fashioned precisely into his current form and set specifically on his present mission by God.

In little more than 90 seconds, its unseen narrator mentions “God” 10 times, beginning with the assertion that “on the eighth day” God gazed at a newly created world and decided that it needed a protector. “So God made a fighter,” the narrator says — sonorously, somberly. That’s the ad’s refrain, intoned again and again, and accompanied each time by a shining, commanding image of DeSantis.

also:

Early this week, Trump suggested to a group of reporters that he had dirt on DeSantis and was prepared to spill it. “If he did run,” Trump said, “I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife.”

That’s highly unlikely to deter DeSantis, given how celestially high on himself he is. He brings to his political ambitions not just the customary cockiness but a more sinister zeal and grandiosity. No wonder he gets under Trump’s skin. They’re megalomaniacs of a feather.