Maggie Habernan has her Trump book out - “Confidence Man: the Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”. Apparently it is more about who he is and how he was formed than just a depressing chronicle of his time in office. I’m not sure I can stand to read 600 pages about this toxic person. But she lays out his surprisingly few tricks in the first few pages as to how he exploits the world around him:
- The counter attack
- The quick lie
- The shift of blame
- The distraction and misdirection
- The outburst of rage
- The performative anger
- The designed-just-for-headlines action or claim
- The indecisiveness of masked by a compensatory lunge
- The backbiting about one adviser with another adviser, creating a wedge between them
His current trick is his made-just-for-headlines-claim that he wants to testify publicly to the January 6 Committee. He will never testify but it somehow gives his Trump Cult comfort to make the claim. I don’t know why.
Soon, I hope, this endlessly repetitive bore will go away. Prison would be nice.
