key: cord-0061088-v190e1sm authors: Renshon, Stanley title: In the Eye of the Hurricane: Strategies for Analyzing the Trump Presidency date: 2020-04-11 journal: The Real Psychology of the Trump Presidency DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-45391-6_2 sha: 8570d2bcf75325a6375f1fd0a48675fcf50f3e7e doc_id: 61088 cord_uid: v190e1sm This chapter discusses the issues associated with psychological analyses of a president “at a distance.” It takes up the issues of narratives as major explanatory vehicles, including conspiracy theories, and how they differ from real efforts at theory building based on considering a range of evidence. The nature and range of that evidence, including “events data,” is considered, as well as how it differs from the more ordinary varieties of anti-Trump analysis. It asks: is making use of more comprehensive consideration of information tantamount to “defending Trump”? The answer to that is: that is not the purpose of the analysis. The chapter ends by laying out the book’s strategy of analysis. This analysis argues that Mr. Trump's real psychology and presidency are capable of being understood, even if not precisely predicted. Yet to do so, one must be willing and able to dive into an ocean of information and misinformation while attempting find and make use of potential evidence that helps to build an accurate understanding of this complex, controversial man and presidency. These tasks must be accomplished while also being constantly buffeted by the raw emotions that Trump inspires. That requires engaging, as anyone writing about this president must, the fierce and more subtle anti-Trump narratives and memes that permeate analyses of this presidency. Swimming Against the Narrative Tide Most purported Trump analyses take the form of politically purposeful narratives, not real theories. A narrative is a motivated assembly of carefully selected and proffered facts along with their interpretation that seeks to convey a truth congenial for the purpose that the narrative was created to convey. A meme can be considered a mini-narrative with the same purpose and structure, only shorter. Narratives can be thought of as a kind of distorted pseudo-scholarship, memes their even less substantive imitation. Ubiquitous Trump buzzwords like "narcissistic" or "unfit" may be thought of as politicized terms that come with their own pre-packaged narratives and the associated memes that can serve as building blocks for them. Narratives are not synonymous with reality and bear no a priori relationship with it. Indeed, narrative is to truth what Akira Kurosawa's movie classic masterpiece Rashomon 4 is to reality. Yet a narrative's purposeful assembly often for partisan purposes does not diminish its political power. As a recent anti-Trump article headline worried, "That is what Power Looks like: As Trump Prepares for 2020, Democrats Are Losing the Only Fight That Matters." 5 What is that fight? The fight is over commanding attention and thus being able to put your narrative front and center to the exclusion of others. It is not the case that all the anti-Trump narratives and memes are wholly without any factual foundation, or that there is no truth whatsoever to them. Rather, very much like Trump's own use of "truthful hyperbole," in our history") lends itself to easy debunking, 8 without acknowledging the various metrics by which the economy could be judged, and professional debate on them-in addition to the actual figures. The fact check criticizes Trump for claiming credit for gains "begun in the Obama administration." Fair enough. Yet that eludes answering the question of whose policies were more associated with those developments. When Trump says: "Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world, by far," the check fact criticizes that by saying "The notion that a revolution in energy began under the Trump administration is wrong." In the criticized quote Trump doesn't say that he "began" the energy revolution; he simply touts his presidency's contribution to that development. When Trump mentions "gaining 12,000 new factories," the check fact replies that "'Factories' conjures up images of smokestacks and production lines, but the data set Trump cited is not really about factories." It notes in criticism, "But more than 80 percent of these 'manufacturing establishments' employ five or fewer people." Is Trump's number accurate though? Yes; the fact check notes that, "The data show that United States gained nearly 12,000 additional 'manufacturing establishments' between the first quarter of 2017 through the second quarter of 2019." So Trump's data were accurate. They simply didn't comport with the fact checker's view of how one ought to think of a "real factory." Or consider Trump's statement: "Forty million American families have an average $2,200 extra thanks to our child tax credit." The WP fact check responds: "This is an example of Trump using correct numbers, but he gives too much credit to himself and his Republican colleagues" (emphasis added). That "but" signals we are about to leave factual assessment for political debates about the allocation of credit. All of these kinds of disagreements go in the Post 's widely publicized list of Trump's "false and misleading claims." Note: not false or misleading, but both false and misleading. Some will be surprised to find that we are not on inviolate factual grounds if we depend on patterns of facts assembled with legitimate social science techniques like survey research. In reality, those techniques still contain areas in which researchers' choices and interpretations make a difference. As a result, while these "objective" measures do have legitimacy, they do not merit unlimited claims to accuracy and validity. We see evidence of this, analyzed in Chapter 10, in connection with efforts to portray Trump supporters as being suffused with "Racial Resentment." Given that there are no single dispositive facts to resolve social and political debates, the focus on finding real understanding and some substantial degree of truth value, lie more in the overall integrity of the proofs than in the individual facts presented. The question then is not only is this fact "true" or challenged by deficiencies of one form or another. The real issue of truth value turns on which facts are assembled and which left out, how fairly the facts are presented, how they are characterized or mischaracterized, the weight of evidence either way, and the alternative formulations that were considered and evaluated. Mr. Trump apparently watches more political news and commentary shows than any other modern president. Leave aside momentarily, the characterization that he is "addicted" to doing so. That raises the specter of uncontrolled or uncontrollable impulses for which no evidence is presented. It is clear that he does watch news and commentary shows and gains some sense of the American political pulse from doing so. Yet, there are other benefits to these streams of political information gathering. Consider Mr. Trump's self-appointed role as "narrator-in-chief." The Washington Post headline, "The narrator in chief: Trump opines on the 2020 Democrats-and so much more" captures something important about Trump's presidential leadership. 9 Trump has not only become the center of his presidency, as has been the case for almost all other modern presidents. The president has also made himself the public center of commentary and analysis of his presidency to an unprecedented degree. This is a unique presidential role and it has provided enormous amounts of Trump commentary. What the president thinks on any given matter is rarely a secret. Trump also uses his unique vantage point for self-defense. It might be Trump defending himself for days 10 over what others termed an erroneous inclusion of Alabama in a hurricane warning. 11 Or it could entail Trump calling presidential attention to a Washington Post story on his administration's "lost opportunities" during the summer 12 that failed to mention twenty-two other summer initiatives that the administration could reasonably count as "successes." 13 The point here is that in these, and too numerous to count other examples, Trump has emerged as the most highly visible and vociferous defender of his own presidency. This is no strategic accident. There is no end or any limits to the accusations that are made against the president and his administration. In response, Trump has a choice. He can allow the many thousands of accusations, many quite ugly, to go unanswered, accumulate, and in so doing acquire some standing as "truth." Or, take them on as they come, providing a counter narrative and perspective and in so doing deprive them of uncontested claims to be true. Trump and his opposition detractors are locked into a rhetorical arms race. It is easy to shoehorn this observation into a "Trump is narcissistic," or "Trump has a thin skin," or likes to fight narratives and their associated memes. Yet, doing so misses an important element of its purpose. In a 24/7 rapid-fire news world filled with daily crescendos of often savage anti-Trump narratives and memes, traditional responses to this kind of onslaught would be too little, too late, and too ineffective as counterweights. Trump's tweets have their downsides (see Chapter 10), but they, along with his unusual availability for non-formal press conference like venues, allow Trump to counter his attackers in real time. That is duly reported by the press that repeats and thus extends Trump's counterpoints and claims. Consider the numerous critical news reports and commentary that appeared, 14 prematurely as it turned out, as President Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs if they didn't provide more help to the United States to stem the tide of migrants passing through their country. A number of analyses immediately appeared that argued "nothing new here." 15 One anti-Trump pundit, Daniel Drezner, complimented himself in print on his own expertise, 16 and went on to say in a typical observation, "Despite the threat of tariffs, however, it appears that Mexico agreed to little more than moves it had already agreed to in previous rounds of negotiations." Subsequent events showed that these instant analyses were wrong. 17 The anti-Trump memes and narratives and the news stories written with them in mind are meant to counter, delay, and delegitimize Trump's presidency. Trump has pushed back, repeatedly and hard against many of them, at a minimum not allowing them to stand uncontested. The result is a fight-club presidency (see Chapter 4) that is difficult for many people, even those who support his policies, to bear. It is an open question whether Trump's presidential results can overcome Americans' desire for political peace. 18 Critics say Trump is a president who "needs conspiracy theories." 19 Why? Critics say, "These baseless theories are a way for Trump to explain away his problems and undercut opponents. Beyond that, though, they seem to serve distinct emotional needs, feeding a narcissistic ego that cold reality won't satisfy." In short, Trump conjures up conspiracies to buttress his fragile ego because of his narcissistic pathology. Before examining these claims (see Chapter 6) it is perhaps best to start with the definition and nature of conspiracies. One useful definition is, "A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful." 20 An important and related, but not synonymous question is whether a conspiracy allegation is either true, false, or something in between. As it turns out, it is not as easy as one might think to place a belief or conviction into one or another of these categories. First, conspiracy thinking can be distinguished from beliefs that according to almost all available evidence are factually wrong. Trump's repeated assertion that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential elections, is one of those claims for which the term "debunked" seems well suited. 21 It is based on what can only be accurately labeled as speculation even given the equivocal accuracy of many voter rolls. 22 The Pew Foundation estimated that 23 : "Approximately 24 million-one of every eight-voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate; More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters; Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state." It is, of course, quite a factual distance to travel in order to use those numbers as the basis for any specific claim of illegal voting. However, Trump's illegal voter claim is not a conspiracy claim because it involves no coordinated effort on the part of a group. There are other more clearly conspiratorial Trump claims. There is his association with "Birtherism." That is the idea, in its various forms, that President Obama was not an American citizen and thus ineligible to be president or that he was not a "real" American-a claim that rests on his attributed Muslim religion or the time during his "formative years" that he had spent living out of the country. These are, in their various forms bona fide conspiracy theories, and Trump did push them by repeatedly asking Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate-which he eventually did. Trump could then claim he was only asking for documentation because "questions had been raised." Why did Trump push getting Obama's long-form birth certificate from State Hawaiian officials? The go-to explanation on the left was Trump's racism. 24 However, the most reasonable and direct answer is that Trump pushed getting the documentation for pure political calculation reasons. At the time that the "birther" allegations were making the rounds on both pro-Hillary 25 and conservative anti-Obama sites, 26 Trump was gearing up to seriously consider making a presidential run. He knew he had little standing or few allies among ordinary Republicans of conservatives and was looking to gain some traction, somewhere. The out of the mainstream conservative fringes were a starting point. His efforts signaled that he wasn't afraid to be associated with raising fringe questions. However, he did so in a way that did not allow him to claim some higher ground. After all, he was only looking for evidence to answer public questions. Trump could also then claim some legitimacy and success as Obama did eventually release the long-form of his birth certificate in response to repeated inquiries. Did Trump actually believe that Obama was not born in the United States? Did he believe it was true, or perhaps just a possibility? That's a hard question to answer one way or another. It's fair to say that he clearly entertained the idea, and that his own political calculations were part of his thinking in going public with them. We are on much more solid evidentiary ground in asking whether Trump really believes some of the other things that critics routinely label as "debunked" conspiracy theories. Peter Nicholas' broadside against Trump's conspiracy theorizing noted above, mentions several. Among them he includes that (emphasis in original): "Barack Obama himself might have ordered spies to infiltrate Trump's campaign. Thousands of Never Trumpers have been plotting against him since he took office. " Nicholas was writing in late 2019. He was aware of the unfolding evidence regarding unprofessional and possibly illegal behavior at the top levels of the FBI. That evidence concerned the defective applications for surveillance of Trump administration personnel to the nation's FISA court. That court issued "a highly unusual public rebuke of the FBI for mistakes," 27 after having been misled into granting several such applications. Before the Justice Department Report on the FBI's failures, Trump complained that his administration had been "spied on," and that assertion was considered a "false claim" even though it was clearly true. The question of whether there was an illegal coordinated attempt behind the numerous "errors" cited in the Inspector's General's Report, in effect a conspiracy in the ordinary legal sense of that term, is now the subject of a major DOJ investigation conducted by US Attorney John Durham. 28 Before the Inspector General's inquiry about the FISA court applications and the FISA Court's public rebuke of the FBI for having misled it in seeking warrants to spy on Trump administration personnel, there was no public evidence to fairly judge Trump's spying claims. There is now, and it is not easily dismissed. Trump's claim that, as Peter Nicholas put it, "Barack Obama himself might have ordered spies to infiltrate Trump's campaign" was quickly, but somewhat prematurely, dismissed as "false." It was not. 29 Nichols lists the idea that "Thousands of Never Trumpers have been plotting against him since he took office" as one of the many false conspiracy theories that Trump espouses. This is a surprising assertion given that his article was published on November 29, 2019 and there was substantial evidence before it was published that his assertion was just plain wrong. The author should have known it. The widely discussed New York Times op-ed by Anonymous, a senior administration official who was staying in place to thwart the administration, was published on September 5, 2008. Bob Woodward's book Fear: Trump in the White House, which detailed senior administration officials removing documents from Trump's desk so he would forget about them and not further implement his policies was published on September 11, 2018. As documented in Chapter 3, there were also numerous efforts across the political landscape, at all levels of government, by civic, news, and other organizations, of both a personal and official nature to retard, sabotage, and delegitimize the Trump presidency. The overwhelming publicly available evidence is that individuals and institutions who were opposed to Trump did try to cripple his presidency and drive him out of office. Was it a secret conspiracy? No. It was actually quite public and reported at the time. Was it a coordinated effort? Not directly, although each effort that has been publicly detailed sprang from the same premises, that Trump is dangerous, bad, pathological, etc. and must be stopped. Were those involved in such efforts in touch with each other? In a number of documented cases, yes. In general, no. They didn't need to be. They all knew the views they shared and their commitments. How those would play out depended on individual circumstances and institutions. As noted in Chapter 3, no "deep state" was needed as a central organizing entity. One is reminded here of the old psychological joke; just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Trump has said of himself that he is not a trusting person. Given the competitive nature of his business career and the levels of ambition and wealth at which he operated, one would have to be careful in operating on the basis of being trusting. Trump could not assume, and didn't, that others outside of his family had his best interests at heart. Trump was used to being laughed at in business and politics. He was used to having others constantly trying to best him in business or politics. He was very used to people wanting something from him because he is rich and powerful. This left Trump with the feeling that real friends were few and he had to protect himself. After almost four years of relentless opposition, with more on the horizon even after his acquittal on impeachment charges, 30 Trump could understandably think that many people were out to get him. A number of people were and are. This is less a conspiracy theory than just a plain fact. The Trump presidency cannot be well analyzed without taking into account the strong emotional and political currents that have arisen in response to his election. These strong currents distort much of the commentary and analysis surrounding the Trump presidency. Into this political and emotional maelstrom, any analyst enters with care. A major problem with much of what is written about Trump and his presidency is not only that it is biased and reductionist, but also often just plain wrong. Such analyses are simply unreliable guides to understanding the real man and his purposes. Fair-minded efforts to clear a path "through the tangle of…underbrush that impedes more and better inquiry," 31 to use Fred Greenstein's felicitous phrasing, are sorely needed. It is clear that many characterizations of Mr. Trump are overly broad and deeply flawed. In practice this means characterizations that are substantively narrow and evidentiary shallow. Critics for example, emphasize Trump's "pathological narcissism," while not mentioning or analyzing the possible impact of "ordinary" narcissism. Trump critiques frequently take the form of beginning with explanatory conclusions and adding a preferred fact or two that support the premises with which the author began. Or, it can entail listing single sentence litanies of policies with which the person disapproves as evidence for the conclusion with which they began. Other facts, or alternative explanations that contradict a preferred formulation are simply not mentioned or engaged. In so doing, one avoids the need to weigh the different strands of evidence and, where necessary, modify the formulations. Any attempt at fair minded analysis, given the amount of misinformation and strong anti-Trump feelings, must examine and where necessary challenge the many shallow efforts to disparage and delegitimize Trump and his presidency. Putting forward in their place more substantive grounded formulations will seem to many Trump critics to be "defending" or "normalizing" Trump and his presidency. That is not their purpose. Utilizing a wider array of information and understandings creates a rather large "correcting the record" dilemma for any analysis that seeks to be scholarly, in the general understanding of that word. Considering a range of data and not only the information that supports the point of view that you begin with will, of necessity, involve some revisionism. Such an analysis may result in changing an established, but incorrect understanding of Mr. Trump. Much of the conventional wisdom regarding Mr. Trump is substantive, conceptually, theoretically, and evidentially weak. The purpose of this book is to provide a fuller, fairer, more substantive, theoretically and factually grounded portrait of Mr. Trump and his presidency. That will require some revision to Trump-related conventional wisdom. That could easily result in accusations that such analysis is an effort to defend the indefensible. That is not the purpose of this analysis. It is important to be clear that the analysis that follows is not meant to convey the author's personal approval of the president or his presidency. That said, there is no escaping the "correcting the record" consequences of examining a wider range for data and information than has been ordinarily examined in trying to analyze and understand the Trump presidency. There are several clear examples below of the ways in which narrow, often erroneous views of this president and the evidence to support them lead us astray. So, for example, it does matter that there is little documented evidence that Trump's father repeatedly told him he had to be a "killer." It does matter that Trump's father did repeatedly tell him it was important to "love what you do." The latter is almost never reported. That doesn't keep Trump critics from using the poorly documented and often asserted "killer" factoid to make an erroneous point about Mr. Trump's character and as an explanation for the derogatory characterizations that critics wish to make. Later in this analysis (Chapter 6), we examine the issue of Mr. Trump's narcissism, which is certainly a psychological fact. The question is not whether Mr. Trump has narcissistic elements in his psychology, he obviously does, but rather their nature. Are they a reflection of "ordinary narcissism," or of the much more troubling variety of "malignant narcissism," posited by so many Trump critics? In order to try and answer that crucial question, one needs to examine whether Trump displays the characteristics of the more "malignant" type-for example, lacking any semblance of empathy or the ability to express care or concern for other people (see Chapter 8 for an examination these particular elements). There is and this analysis presents evidence that this is factually not the case. What then is an analyst to do? If you present that counter evidence, you are certainly "correcting the record" and undercutting a dominant narrative, e.g., Trump is a dangerous, sociopathic "malignant narcissist." 32 Such an analysis might easily be construed as "normalizing" what critics see as an "abnormal" Mr. Trump, and it may. It might also be humanizing him as well, and that too is anathema to Trump critics. However, these are not legitimate reasons to avoid more substantive based and accurate analysis. Mr. Trump is a complex man, not a one-dimensional evil, pathological stick figure. Yet, Mr. Trump's brash argumentative hyperbole can be offputting to any moderate. His egregious generalizations about Mexicans that began his campaign would make any fair-minded person wince, even if the generalization contained some amount of factual accuracy. Illegal aliens do commit serious felonies. Trump's caustic comments about John McCain and preferring military personnel who didn't get captured was an ugly personal insult against a man who served his country honorably and heroically during the Vietnam War regardless of the enmity that developed later between those two men on policy grounds. On the other hand, his response to the many people like Democratic Representative John Lewis who publicly called Trump's presidency illegitimate was another matter. Trump responded with understandable anger to Khizr Khan, the "Gold Star" father of a soldier killed in battle, who publicly attacked Trump in front of millions of viewers at the Democratic national convention. Trump's gratuitous swipe at Kahn's wife was not so understandable, except as an example of Trump's inability to restrain himself when he should and his susceptibility to stereotypes, 33 some of which are not devoid of small elements of accuracy. Still, we can ask, what kind of response is "normal" or reflects established norms of "presidential demeanor" when the former head of the CIA calls the president's behavior at a Soviet-US press conference "nothing short of treasonous"? 34 What is the normal response when the accusation is boldly asserted in a New York Times opinion column calling Trump a "Treasonous Traitor"? 35 And what is the normal response when another Pulitzer Prize New York Times columnist informs us about Trump that, "There is the Smell of Treason in the Air," 36 and the much lauded senior professor of international studies at Johns Hopkins, Eliot Cohen, tweets his apparent agreement. 37 Not fighting back when you, and your family are personally, publicly, and repeatedly attacked with those kinds of ugly and factually unsupported accusations has political costs and consequences. It also carries enormous costs for one's sense of personal integrity and sense of self. What kind of husband, whether he is president or not, remains silent in the face of public accusations that his wife was a prostitute? 38 Analyzing those costs and consequences, including the benefits of fighting back is neither to condone or support the general response (and certainly not each instance of it), but to understand them, and in doing so make better sense of Mr. Trump's psychology and presidency. Revealing or informative quotations from principals are a cornerstone of biographical analysis, and of the kind of political and psychological framework employed herein. Such data comes in many forms for President Trump-in set speeches and ad hoc rally remarks, an unprecedented number of media interviews-both historical and contemporary, and interviews conducted with others over the decades that have some bearing on Mr. Trump's thinking or behavior. It is a large body of data, but of unequal quality. Some of it is useful, some of it is poor, and of some of it is useless. The number of Trump interviews now easily runs into four and perhaps five figures. The most important for a project like this are extended interviews, accompanied by transcripts, that press Mr. Trump not only to comment on current or past events, but that also explore his thinking about them. Often these interviews are written up as news stores or analyses and it is at that point that a reporter's own Trump narratives and memes sometimes enter into the analysis. For that reason, it is preferable for the researcher to read the Q&A transcripts and come to his or her own conclusions. Still, there are lessons to be learned from the work of seasoned Trump interviewers. One of a seasoned team of New York Times reporters who interviewed Trump a number of times had this to say about those interviews 39 : With other presidents, we sometimes struggled to find nuggets of news in an interview; with Mr. Trump we were overwhelmed… I have now interviewed seven presidents some in office, some after they left office and with Mr. Trump the experience is strikingly different in almost every respect… Clearly he was conscious that some things would be problematic if quoted, so it is fair to conclude that the provocative things he said on the record were intentionally so… Unlike with other presidents, though, there was no need to knock him off the script. He happily answered every question we asked, even if it would ultimately overshadow the designated messages of the day in this case health care and made-in-America economics… With Mr. Trump, the conversation is more rat-a-tat. He doesn't mind if you interject. But he tends to veer wildly from thought to thought, moving on before you've fully explored what he just said. For all the troubles of his presidency…we found him in a relaxed, upbeat mood. There was none of the fiery media bashing that marks his public appearances. Is that, then, shtick to fire up the base, or genuine grievance? Probably a measure of both. Another particularly useful example of this kind of data are the twentyfive interviews with Trump and others important in his personal and work life at various times (with twenty hours of interviews with Trump alone), conducted by Washington Post reporters for the newspaper's Trump book. These are archived and publicly available. 40 These kinds of interviews are very useful because the reporters are well informed about Trump's life and the interviews are long enough for many follow up questions. The Washington Post reporters also had an important core purpose to their interviews. Their paper was extremely unlikely to endorse Trump. So "the only value of the interview was to see if the editors and columnists could press Trump on his more extreme statements and test whether he really knew his stuff." 41 What they found and concluded is worth noting. They "emerged thinking that they had seen the genuine Trump-a man certain of his views, hugely confident in his abilities, not terribly well informed, quick to take offense, and authentically perplexed by suspicions that he had motives other than making America great again." 42 In short, they found a man and president much more complex than his caricatures, yet not entirely unconnected to observations associated with some of his critics' reasonable concerns. This analysis makes abundant use of events data. Like other forms of evidence used herein, news reports, interviews and Q&A's, they are used purposefully and clearly footnoted. Why? Given the controversial nature of the Trump presidency and the fact that almost everything he or his administration says or does is subject to debate and often dispute, it is especially important for any Trump analysis to provide copiously referenced source data so that the reader may draw their own judgments about the evidence. These data are single and multiple cross-checked news reports and other contemporaneous accounts of Trump's policy and political choices and his own expressed understanding of his actions in interviews. They include a concentrated focus on the unusually large number of Mr. Trump's own commentaries on his presidency, themselves primary data, given in numerous interviews, off the cuff remarks and more formal presentations. We pay close attention as well to the many well documented instances of administration choices and initiatives. Clearly no scholar can afford to take every statement that Mr. Trump makes at face value. His consistent use of "truthful hyperbole," 43 coupled with his meandering thinking and speaking style that we analyze in Chapter 10, requires caution and attention. On the other hand, a careful examination of Trump's Q&A exchanges with knowledgeable and often critical interviewers like those of the Washington Post 44 and the New York Times 45 (among others) provide often surprising insights into Mr. Trump's thinking, about himself and his presidency. Clearly, not only must Mr. Trump's interviews be cross-checked with other interviews, but also with the actual actions of the president and his administration. And these events data must not only be cross-checked by examining multiple events accounts, they must also be cross-checked against Mr. Trump's many and sometimes conflicting observations about and explanations of them. Only by doing so will it be possible to uncover and substantiate the patterns that will allow us to make tentative theoretical formations about Mr. Trump and his presidency. One reason to use events data is to document that a particular event, or set of events occurred. For a president as controversial as Mr. Trump where even the most basic facts are often in dispute or politicized, this allows readers to examine the sources of evidence used herein and, again, reach their own conclusions. However, the point is not only to provide readers with a factual touchstone for some elements of the analysis. Nor is it to provide a description of all the newsworthy events that have taken place during the first four years of Trump presidency. These data are also used as a base from which to draw some clear theoretical elements of Trump's presidential leadership and performance and examine their development over time including the decades before he became president. Many of the events data used herein follow the same set of events over time. That often allows some clarification that reframes and leads to a better understanding. For example, it was widely reported that French President Macron's invitation to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to join the G-7 Summit in Biarritz, France was a public slap to the president. It produced a headline-"Iran's Zarif makes surprise trip to G-7, catching Trump off-guard," 46 that became a meme-that resulted in another mistaken headline, "Trump finds himself on his heels and fumbling at G-7." 47 The reality was quite different. At his joint press conference with President Trump, President Macron had this to say: "So we coordinated our efforts and we reached the decision to bring together the foreign ministers-the Foreign Minister of Iran, who had a meeting with the French Foreign Minister. So I informed, before making it [the invitation]-I informed President Trump that it was my idea." 48 It would have been an extreme and public provocation to a president who doesn't respond quietly to being disrespected to have sprung the Iranian Foreign Minister's visit on Mr. Trump. And for what possible purpose? Mr. Macron is already the titular de facto leader of the establishment G-7 group. Following that story over time not only provided correction to a set of mistaken first impressions and memes, it provided some insight into the real relationship Trump has with a major allied leader. Sometimes following an important story over a long period of time is essential as well as informative. Consider the "trade war" between China and the United States that has unfolded over several years of the Trump presidency. It is a direct policy descendent of trade complaints Trump has publicly expressed for decades (then with Japan in the leading culprit role). At one level, events in this category give a set of observations about US-China economic relations. At another level, it is a set of observations about adjusting the changing strategic international relationships between two major world powers. At yet another level, they provide a set of observations about Trump's maximum pressure leadership strategies that are also on display with Iran, Mexico, and Guatemala on immigration, and Democrats more generally as a counter to their numerous congressional probes. Following those trade negotiations more closely provides data on Trump's persistence, his willingness and ability to stand apart from the economic anxieties and criticisms that the fight produces, including some among his own supporters (e.g., farmers), 49 and some information on his long vs short term perspective. Along the way, one can learn a great deal about the complex nature and variable impacts of tariffs. One can then better understand to what degree, and under what circumstances they represent a real "tax" on American consumers (that varies). 50 And a focus on these kinds of issues over time, also allows consideration of the relative value of weighting them primarily as an economic issue or whether there are other frames of analysis that need to be also taken into account (national security being one; trade fairness and reciprocity issues being another). The tariff issues discussed above are emblematic of the many different kinds of issues that someone writing about the Trump presidency must analyze. Trying to do so conscientiously does not turn a political scientist or psychoanalyst into a trained economist. It does however, allow that person to be better able to understand what's at stake in this important Trump presidency issue. Events data are not, of course, synonymous with "the literature"that body of professional evidence and debate that informs analysis of particular theoretical or empirical questions. The dilemma for a psychologically-minded Trump analyst is that his presidency is so distinctive and controversial, the theoretical characterization about him so often narrow and partisan as we detail in this chapter, and the understanding of presidential psychology so rudimentary 51 that any appeals to the "literature" are in danger of being unsuitably derivative, premature, and counterproductive. This analysis does make use of the literature-on narcissism, on presidential time, on racial resentment theory as appropriate. Yet, in many important aspects of the Trump presidency-for example, his fight club mentality, there is no precedent and thus no literature. As noted in Chapter 1, the primary "literature" available for an analysis of the Trump presidency is the enormous wealth of data generated by the Trump presidency itself. This analysis uses existing professional literature when it can, but works to develop new Trump presidency-based literature where necessary. Anyone who spends much time trying to analyze the Trump presidency inevitably, unavoidably, and repeatedly comes into contact with anti-Trump analysis. Sometimes that bias is subtle. Frequently, it is overt. Most often it is obvious. One question for a researcher is what to do about it. It would be relatively easy to write the equivalent of the twenty-four volumes of Freud's Standard Edition 52 devoted to errors of Trump reporting. That is a waste of time and purpose here. Yet, it is worthwhile and sometimes necessary to provide some illustrations in areas that have an impact on the analysis that follows. There are by now a number of biographical treatments of Trump and they can be arrayed on a continuum from useful to awful. Among the most useful are Jerome Tuccille's, 53 and Gwenda Blair's, 54 although she emerged as a willing participant in a gathering of anti-Trump biographers for an extended round robin of Trump bashing. 55 The Washington Post biography is also extremely useful, 56 and contains little of the anti-Trump slanted reporting of the newspaper. Its online transcriptions of Trump and Trump related interviews, already noted, are a treasure trove of Trump primary data. Timothy O'Brien's original Trump biography contained none of the author's post publication anti-Trump writings and harsh criticisms of those who support him 57 at least before the paperback reissue of his book with a new stridently anti-Trump introduction, 58 and is therefore also useful. It is especially so on Trump's net worth debate and on Trump's bankruptcies, though at points it loses substance as it strains to be amusing 59 -which, admittedly, it sometimes is. Others Trump biographies are simply awful. One intensely anti-Trump biographer recently published a psychiatric diatribe whose book structure can be summarized as devoting one chapter each to a list of Trump pathologies. His list of Trump traits to be covered include 60 The book makes clear that Trump is guilty to all counts. The author goes on say, "My task is not only to appreciate the full list but also to ignore the big picture and focus on a single pathology at a time." I can think of no better formula for producing a determinedly biased, shallow psychiatric hatchet job, which this book most assuredly is. Finally, at least one published Trump biography contained so many mistakes and unsupported personal accusations against Trump and his family, including a rape charge against Mr. Trump and an unproven accusation that his father Fred was a serial philanderer, 61 that the original publisher, W. W. Norton, refused to reissue the book when Trump became president. The reissue of the book is self -published. 62 That book contains clearly manufactured verbatim discussions between Donald and his father Fred that supposedly took place 63 in the privacy of Trump's penthouse office. The author was clearly not present. In one of the ugliest accusations made by the author, he recalls Fred Trump, eating a hotdog at a Coney island spot with his "Secretary-Mistress" and saying out loud of a plane carrying his son Donald somewhere: "I hope his plane crashes." 64 That publicly expressed filial death wish is literally astounding for many reasons, not the least of which it is contradicted by decades of evidence of Fred's great love and respect for his son and his well-documented lifelong effort to help him. One of the Hunt book's chief disservice to Trump biography, among many, however, lies in emphasizing the reportedly verbatim discussions in which Fred is quoted as telling his son Donald, repeatedly, "you are a killer! You are a king." 65 Other anti-Trump biographers repeat that quote 66 because it fits in so well with the meme that Trump is a narcissistic, entitled, vicious practitioner of a zero-sum childhood, career, and now presidency. Trump himself mentions the phrase only once, in passing, in all his writings and interviews. That single mention is in connection with his father trying to raise his spirits during his son's dark days of staring into his partially self-made economic abyss. 67 Fred's most important life lesson to his son which Donald repeats and writes about (see below) often is "love your work." This is another illustration of the ways in which a focus on a preferred, but erroneous, narrative or meme leads real analysis astray. Finally, a number of books about Trump are essentially anti-Trump diatribes. One clear example is David Kay Johnson, the title of whose recent book, It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America 68 gives ample evidence of its premises. The first part of the book begins with repeating almost every political and financial accusation made against the president. They are all stated as facts, with no effort to bring any evidence that would run counter to the accusation. There is no effort bring forward or weigh diverse strands of evidence, and no effort made to consider alternative explanations. Why bother if the operating assumption is that Trump is a criminal? Example: Trump built buildings out of concrete. The concrete industry in New York was controlled by organized crime. Therefore, Trump consorted and worked with known criminals, Q.E.D. Trump watched and learned a great many things about business and life from his father. One of the most important, according to Trump, was the importance of loving what you do. In accepting the Horatio Alger Award for overcoming adversity Fred is quoted by the Washington Post as saying 69 : you must like what you do. You must pick out the right business or profession. You must learn all about it. …Nine out of 10 people don't like what they do. And in not liking what they do, they lose enthusiasm, they go from job to job, and ultimately become a nothing. Trump has said many times that it is important to love what you do. In one book he wrote of his father, 70 "You know what I really learned from him?…He loved working. He was a happy guy." In another he wrote 71 : "my father would say to me, 'The most important thing in life is to love what you're doing, because that's the only way you'll ever be good at it'." In short, there is ample evidence of the "love your work" as a favorite father-son truism. There is little evidence on the record that Fred repeatedly admonished his son to be a "killer" and "king." Trump and his presidency are viewed though a cauldron of such intense feelings that two of America's major newspaper have taken the position that the ordinary standards of news reporting shouldn't apply to the president. Jim Ruttenberg wrote on The New York Times ' front page 72 : If you're a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation's worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him? Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you've never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that's potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. The Washington Post 's chief media columnist Margaret Sullivan soon followed suit. She noted a Harvard study 73 that details the almost wholly negative coverage of the first year of the Trump Presidency, and then goes on to write 74 : Trump's press coverage has been a political nightmare. Isn't that terribly unfair? Here's my carefully nuanced answer: Hell, no. That's because when we consider negative vs. positive coverage of an elected official, we're asking the wrong question. Her point, and it is a fair one, is that no president is owed positive coverage in the interest of abstract ideas of fairness, if what they do isn't positive. She goes on: The president's supporters often say his accomplishments get short shrift. But let's face it: Politicians have no right to expect equally balanced positive and negative coverage, or anything close to it. If a president is doing a rotten job, it's the duty of the press to report how and why he's doing a rotten job. Being "owed" positive coverage is one thing, taking as a premise that Trump is doing a "rotten job" and that must be reported is quite another. In Sullivan's premise and view, Trump deserves all the negative coverage he receives. And therein lies her fallacy. It is also the basic fallacy of the legions of reporters, pundits, analysts, and academics whose adversarial stance toward the president and his administration are much more consistent with the premises and outlook of the anti-Trump opposition than they are with the traditional information gathering and analysis roles they present themselves as still doing. It is true that no president is owed positive coverage. However, every president, and this includes Mr. Trump, is owed an effort to consider and evaluate a range of information about an issue or circumstance that is reported or analyzed-including information that contradicts the narrative being developed. Every president deserves a consideration of alternative explanations for the narratives or facts assembled. And every president, even and perhaps especially because of the controversial nature of his policy ambitions, deserves the assumption of fair-minded analysis. Miss Sullivan has recently gone farther in this adversarial anti-Trump direction. In a piece entitled "We have entered the Trump Unbound era and journalists need to step it up," she recommends 75 : In this new era, Trump has declared himself the nation's chief law enforcement official. He has pardoned a raft of corrupt officials. He has exacted revenge on those he sees as his impeachment enemies-Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the decorated military veteran and national security staffer; and Gordon Sondland, Trump's own handpicked ambassador to the European Union-simply because they testified under subpoena to what they knew about the White House's dealings with Ukraine. In other words, we are in entirely new territory now. Should the news media continue as usual? Should it retain its own traditions as the nation slides toward autocracy? Should it treat the Trump presidency as pretty much the usual thing, with a few more fact-checks and the occasional use of a word like "lie"? No. We need a new and better approach if we're going to do our jobs adequately. First, we need to abandon neutrality-at-all-costs journalism, to replace it with something more suited to the moment. Every single assertion above is a conclusion embedded in a set of Miss Sullivan's anti-Trump assumptions. They are clearly her views. However, they are not correct simply because she forcefully asserts them, as to take but one example her conclusions about Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (see Chapter 12) . Mr. Trump is owed the presumption that he is not guilty, whatever the accusation, before a fair effort to ascertain and evaluate the range of facts and not just state a conclusion, is honestly undertaken. If that were done, readers would never read the following: Donald Trump Is Guilty. The only remaining question is what exactly he's guilty of. 76 or "Do you think the president and his family are using the office to enrich themselves?" Goldman asked Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), "You can't be sure, and so it almost doesn't matter whether they are profiting or not." 77 or I also wonder: What's with all the private "executive time" on his daily White House schedule, when he's off by himself, unobserved and unobservable? He could be hooked up to a dialysis machine. He could be receiving transfusions. I don't have evidence of either. But who needs proof when you have suspicions? 78 or When this administration makes contentious decisions-such as awarding a 10 billion Pentagon Contract to Microsoft instead of Amazon, or probing the origins of an investigation into Russia's attack on the 2016 election-the presumption of goodwill has been replaced by a presumption of ill will and illegality. 79 Exactly. Of course. When the standard operating assumption of many (though certainly not all) who write about Trump is that he "is one of those extraordinary individuals about whom there is absolutely nothing good to say," 80 our capacity to understand this unique man and presidency are unnecessarily diminished. Much of the news coverage of the president and his administration since he has been in office has been relentlessly negative. 81 Some of this is a byproduct of the Watergate and Vietnam era that damaged the assumption of presidential competence and credibility. That period also understandably instilled in some members of the press the view that they should be the public's advocate and speak truth, as they saw it, to power. Some of it is a by-product of Mr. Trump's own leadership style which is very combative, assertive, and deeply imprecise. And no small part of it reflects a visceral level policy and personal dislike of what Trump and his administration are trying to accomplish. The result is literally an ongoing narrative civil war fought out in the public arena through news and think tank commentary, analysis, opinion, reports, and newspaper stories that are beginning to become increasingly difficult to distinguish, and Trump's response to them. In what stories are covered as news, the range of analysis put forward in reports, the particular facts that are and are not included, their interpretation, the nature and range of conclusions that are drawn, the line between narrative and news is becoming blurred. Certainly, as noted, the line between narrative analysis and "truth" has become increasingly equivocal and difficult to establish. Complicating these issues is the fact that adapting an anti-Trump stance can be a career booster. Well known New York Times columnist David Brooks acknowledged in an interview, "I want to drive traffic. How do I drive traffic? I write something nasty about Donald Trump." 82 In that interview, he is simply reporting what he does as a fact of publishing life. Others are less reluctant. Some are seeking redemption for their past mistakes of helping or supporting Trump. 83 Others recognize their clear anti-Trump bias, but simply don't care. In a New York Times opinion piece Republican establishment figure Peter Wehner writes 84 : I know it's a struggle for me to see Mr. Trump, whom I consider to be malicious, in a disinterested way. I know, too, that I'm quick-most Republicans would say much too quick-to home in on his failures, to focus on the things he does that confirm my concerns about him. That doesn't necessarily mean, of course, that my judgments about Mr. Trump aren't in the main correct. I believe they are. History will sort out whose judgments were vindicated and whose were not. I'm simply saying that for me to see Mr. Trump from a distance, dispassionately, is impossible. So my views of him, even if they are basically accurate, are also incomplete and probably distorted. His public admission of rampant anti-Trump bias, which is in his view, essentially accurate, has not resulted in any change in either his writing or perspective. Why should it? He believes his biases are essentially correct. It is certainly possible to find biased pro-Trump viewpoints as well, though they are far fewer in number and are much less likely to appear on the pages of the countries' major national newspapers or be seen on the country's major networks. If it were just a matter of numbers of biased pro-or anti-Trump views, there would still be an issue, but it would be more of a they-said vs they-said issue rather than part of a larger more difficult and divisive set of questions. The real major issue of Trump coverage and analysis concerns the stance of the country's major new and media organizations in reporting the latest set of Trump allegations. There have been enormous numbers of them over the past four years and the harsh characterizations and implications drawn from them are the rule, rarely the exception. A fairly substantial number of "bombshell" reports about Trump have just been plain wrong. 85 There is no purpose in reporting the many that are in my files and widely available. However, one illustration may perhaps serve as a proxy for the many and the specific issues raised about a not insignificant amount of Trump reporting. One widely discussed report said that Russians oligarch close to Vladimir Putin had co-signed major loans to Trump from Deutsche Bank. 86 If true, that would have been the "smoking gun" proving that Trump was personally and politically in debt to the Russians. The public accuser, Lawrence O'Donnell, relied on one source who, it turned out, had not actually seen the documents involved. Mr. O'Donnell retracted his allegation, but with the joint caveat and innuendo that "we don't know if the information is inaccurate." This clearly questionable accusation highlights a major problem with reporting on the Trump presidency that is so ubiquitous that it is hardly mentioned much less analyzed. That issue concerns the sources used for much reporting-their anonymity, the motives of the sources, and their actual closeness to the material that they give and which is authoritatively reported. Consider another "bombshell" report. A "whistleblower" alleged that President Trump in a telephone call made a "promise" to a foreign leader if he would reopen a criminal investigation on one of Trump's Democratic presidential nominee's son's work in that country, that Trump would free up aid money. Translation: Trump promised a quid pro quo to a foreign leader in a phone conversation if they would dig up dirt on one his possible presidential campaign rivals. 87 There were, for this bombshell too, immediate calls for Trump's impeachment, 88 including by Elizabeth Warren one of Democrat's major presidential contenders before she withdrew from the nomination race. 89 And in fact accusation did serve as the basis for one Article of Impeachment. However, among the problems with that accusation, as Trump himself pointed out, "Is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially 'heavily populated' call?" 90 All of the president's calls to foreign leaders are listened into by members of the intelligence and foreign policy communities of both parties to the call. The "bombshell" was further undercut with the emergence of information that 91 : The whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN . Instead, the whistleblower's concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration's determination that the complaint didn't fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said. Trump released an actual transcript of the call, and its interpretation became a matter of impeachment level debate. How that person "learned" the information, from whom, and what specifically it actually consisted of remained unclear. However, it is far removed from a complaint from an actual person who had first person knowledge of what was said. The need to any complainant to have first-hand knowledge in order to make such an accusation was quietly changed before the accusation was acted upon. The fact then emerged that Trump's accuser had coordinated his complaint with the chair and staff of the House Democratic committee tasked with drawing up Articles of Impeachment against Trump. 92 The use of confidential sources for news reports is itself hardly newsworthy. What makes it worth noting in the case of the Trump presidency is the unprecedented level of use of such sources. There are many who occupy a position of some kind, somewhere in the administration and who are strongly opposed to its policies. They include not only the permanent non-political staff of major agencies who develop an investment in how things have been done by most presidents of either party before Trump, with the exception of Reagan. They include many Republicans throughout the administration who have and continue to oppose Trump policies. The avatar of this genre of sourcing is an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, whose headline announced: "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." 93 That person goes on to say, "I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." That is only the most public tip of a very large cadre of people tapped by reporters to provide damaging, if true, details regarding the administration. The veracity of their reports can't be examined because of anonymity concerns. Accusations therefore are simply stated, accepted as fact, and used to develop and legitimize anti-Trump narratives and memes. The sources for these stories are varied and their ability to authoritatively report what they anonymously tell reporters is unknown. The impact of their motivations on what they report is unexamined and incapable of being assessed even if there were the will to do so. Sometimes critical reports are based on "two sources," unnamed and not otherwise identified as part of the administration. 94 Or, there are news reports based on "according to three people familiar with the situation." 95 Then there are stories about what the president may, or may not have said, "according to a source familiar with their conversation." 96 Familiar with the situation or conversation? How so? We don't know and are not told. There are also: "one person with knowledge of their thinking said …" 97 or "familiar with his [the president's] response," 98 or "people briefed on the meeting said …, 99 or "according to one of Trump's advisers," 100 and the ubiquitous "according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations." 101 To give some idea of the enormous numbers involved in the use of the term "advisor" or "official," there are over 200 people assigned to the president's national security staff alone 102 -all of whom could be said to "advise" the president, or be listed as "officials." Other executive agencies add hundreds more to these numbers. Who are these people and why do their reported comments run almost wholly in the direction of criticizing the president, even if, and that is a big if, they are reporting accurately? It is true that in the past, White House officials give briefings on "background" with the stipulation that their names or titles not be used. It is also true that in the 1990s as a private citizen Trump gave "off the record remarks to the New York Daily News." 103 Yet it is now almost three decades later, Mr. Trump is president, and the news reports noted above all go one direction. They are uniformly critical in one way or another of the president. Anonymity protects sources, but is also allows the harshest accusations to be made without factual evaluation. The anti-Trump slanting of seemingly objective news stories can be subtle and hard to discern, primarily because it requires the average interested reader to have at their fingertips relevant material that should have been but wasn't included in the article. Consider in that regard, the news story regarding Trump's "lost opportunities" during the summer of 2019 104 that failed to mention twenty-two summer initiatives that the administration could reasonably count as "successes." 105 One reporter from the Washington Post countered that the paper had indeed covered all of these initiatives over the past four months, at the time they were undertaken and that was accurate. 106 Yet, the Post's "Trump's lost summer" story was meant to be an overall evaluation of those efforts. That was difficult to do when the majority of the administration initiatives were not brought up in that context for consideration. The "we already covered it response" is a bit disingenuous since it assumes people read and or remember what had been written months before, which is unlikely. An article framed by the lost summer/missed opportunity narratives embedded owed its readers a fuller accounting. In responding to the Washington Post 's summary of Trump's "lost summer opportunity, the administration responded: in a "news" article about Trump's summer accomplishments, the Post not only chose to ignore, but refused to cite 84% of the president's actual summer accomplishments. Respectable, reputable, responsible news reporters would have listed those, gathered opinions from sources with diverse perspectives, and presented all of this information to their readers so they could develop their own opinions. Doing so would be a valuable, nonpartisan service to all Americans from across the political spectrum. The administration had a point. Or consider how a headline can slant a story. One recent one read: "Pence seizes control of coronavirus response amid criticism of his qualifications." 107 Criticisms of Pence's scientific background is expected and legitimate, although the asserted criticisms are simply presented as facts and are not analyzed in the story itself. However, the "seized control" phrase is puzzling. Pence did not "seize control," a characterization buttressed by the claims of two anonymous "officials." He was assigned by the president to coordinate a nation-wide and global response, including taking both responsive and preventative steps to contain the virus and helping to keep the public accurately informed. The unfolding of the Coronavirus epidemic is a vast unfolding story that includes many examples of individuals giving their point of view, many of which, not unexpectedly in a very large story such as this one, diverge. In such circumstances there is a great deal of misinformation, speculation, and premature conclusions being drawn. Trying to bring some factual order and accuracy in such circumstances is a needed, necessary, and legitimate public step. While focusing on individual presidents, either singularly or on a comparative basis, we follow Harold Lasswell's early insight about such frames of analysis 108 : "We want to discover what developmental traits are significance for the mature," and further that "the life history is a natural history and a life history is concerned with facts that are developmentally significant." Lasswell is arguing that a leader's present behavior is rooted in the past, but that not every developmental fact is relevant. Informed by psychoanalytic theory, this is an analysis of Trump's psychology, its development and its presidential consequences. It pays close attention to reoccurring patterns and unique milestones, important relationships and critical inflection points in Trump's developmental history. Many people influence a president's life and Trump is no exception to that rule. What is unusual about Trump is that his father Fred clearly played an outsized role in his son's life as mentor, model, ideal, business partner, life guide and sometimes goad, life-long supporter, and enormously proud parent. His mother Mary was the linchpin of Trump family life and a supportive and consistent presence and homemaker to her children. Trump remembers her fondly 109 and has spoken or written about her many times with affection. He said that he was able to count on her steady presence so much that it wasn't until later, after he had experienced a lot more of life's vicissitudes that he came to realize how important and unusual their relationship was. In a Mother's Day interview about his mother, Trump said: "I had a great mom. I loved my mom and she loved me, which … is probably not easy to do…"She was so good to me. I couldn't do any wrong, which is a big problem. Maybe that's why I ended up the way I ended up. I don't know. I couldn't do any wrong in her eyes." 110 Psychoanalysts have a term for this, "unconditional love" which, from the work of Freud has been recognized as one of the most precious experiences that a parent can give to a child. Prudence Gourguechon, former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association is quoted in one of the few efforts to try and fill in the thin public records of Mary Trump's life and impact as saying, 111 that a solid relationship with "what we sometimes call an ordinary, devoted mother" establishes a foundation on which critical character architecture can be built. That seems to have been at the least the case for Mary Trump's impact on her son. Donald Trump's family experience was lived out along a continuum anchored by two very different poles. One pole was the hard driven and resilient ambition of Trump's father determined to make his way and his mark in the larger world. The other, was the comparatively calm steady presence of his mother who gave her son the developmental gift of unconditional love. These very different developmental anchors and their associated experiences defined and help to shape Donald's Trump's character and emotional life. Mary Trump left little in the way of a public record of her family life or the nature of her relationships with her husband and children. As a result, only small fragments of information about her life are available for analysis. It seems prudent therefore not to speculate on the basis of dimly remembered snippets of wholly inadequate information as one anti-Trump biographer had done. He claims, without much evidence, insight into Mary Trump's reported "remoteness" and being "disengaged," and further, on her "absence from his [Trump' s] presence growing up." Trump's Mother Days' remembrance certainly doesn't seem to reflect that understanding at all. All of this author's anti-Trump speculations are in the service of attempting "to create a distinctive picture of how her conduct as mother could have contributed to Trump's tendency to lie, to brag, to bully and to evade taking responsibility for these and other behaviors." In this author's view Trump is guilty of an array of pathological behaviors-"psychopath, racist, threat to the constitution, traitor"-and this is just a partial list. And since this biased psychiatric biographer knows that mothers help set the course of their children's development, Mary Trump must also be guilty as charged. That is the case-even if the "evidence" consists of limited, fragmentary, and unvalidated information coupled with ample amounts of psychiatric speculation, venom, and hubris. 112 Trump reacts, often in the moment, to the information and people around him. He came to office with no well-formed ideology, a basic and evolving understanding of history and government, and a clear goal of using his business experience. He is "extremely confident in his own judgment, often willing to act alone, to take risks, even when those around him plead caution." 113 He is a president whose leadership is often obscured by a whirlwind of presidential motion, not all of it consistent or productive, and much of it controversial. President Trump's behavior however is not random. As a result, understanding this seeming mercurial president requires no special departure from conventional forms of scholarship. One identifies core questions, gathers diverse streams of information and the data relevant to them, evaluates and weighs the evidence, develops formulations, tests them against the evidence and, where necessary, modifies them. Then, all these elements can be assembled in a theoretical package that helps us to understand the president and his presidency. During that process, alternative explanations can be seriously considered. There is nothing mysterious about the strategy of this kind of analysis because it makes use of psychoanalytic theory. The procedure is that same as it is for every other form of evidence-based analysis. All such procedures are scholarly at their core. If these basic principles of sound research are followed, it would then be possible to draw together a meaningful composite psychological and political portrait of Mr. Trump and his presidency.. That kind of portrait would capture, as it will for any person including President Trump, an array of psychological elements that come into play in one for set of circumstances but may not in another. It will also capture a set of psychological factors that might be an advantage for presidential success and those that weigh against it. It might even capture a set of traits like ambition that can be favorable (or not) depending on their level, nature, and use. The purpose of such an analysis is not to relate Trump's every characteristic to his childhood. That was the previously reigning caricature of psychoanalytic theory. Nor, as noted, is it the purpose of this analysis to reduce Trump's presidency to his psychology. Rather the purpose to uncover the core patterns of the president's psychology and style, trace their origin and development through his childhood and adulthood, and then carefully examine how these patterns play out in his presidential leadership and policy ambitions. Nor, most definitely, is the point of this analysis to provide a psychiatric diagnosis of Trump. That would result in making the target of the analysis a narrow search for Trump pathology, for which there are already too many eager anti-Trump "mental health professionals, and others, providing a seemingly endless stream of repetitious psychiatric accusations." It would also be ethically questionable according to the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater rule prohibition, about which I have written, which analyzed the misnamed and infamous Fact Magazine article on Goldwater's psychiatric suitability see Chapter 8). 114 The much more prosaic purpose here it to understand Trump and offer a psychologically framed portrait of his presidency, not a psychiatric diagnosis of his mental health. Can an analysis "at a distance" be substantive, accurate, and fair? Can it provide a useful set of theories and observations based on the substantial evidence that is made available within these pages to be understand the subjects of its focus? I will leave that judgment to the book's readers. Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success Trump's Market Mandate: Green Shoots Say the President-Elect Is the Real 'Hope and Change' Candidate That Is What Power Looks Like': As Trump Prepares for 2020, Democrats Are Losing the Only Fight That Matters Conway quoted in Meet the Press interview Fact-Checking President Trump's 2020 State of the Union address The Real Donald Trump The Narrator in Chief: Trump Opines on the 2020 Democrats-And so Much More Coast Guard Rear Admiral Defends Trump from Storm of Backlash After Alabama Forecast Trump Continues to Push Erroneous Claim About Alabama as Dorian Lashes Carolinas Trump's Lost Summer: Aides Claim Victory, But Others See Incompetence and Intolerance The Washington Post 's Lost Summer Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal Despite the Threat of Tariffs, However, It Appears That Mexico Agreed to Little More Than Moves It Had Already Agreed to in Previous Rounds of Negotiations I know some things about how economic coercion works: Trump knows fewer things How Mexico Talked Trump Out of Tariff Threat with Immigration Crackdown Pact In Mexico's South, Police Check Buses, Trains in Migrant Crackdown Trump Better Hope Voters Don't Tire of All the Drama Trump Needs Conspiracy Theories Trump Again Makes Debunked Claim: 'Illegals' Cost Me Popular Vote For the debate on illegal voting see Jesse Richman and David Earnest What Can We Learn About the Electoral Behavior of Non-Citizens from a Survey Designed to Learn About Citizens? Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient: Evidence That America's Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade Trump Is Still Reportedly Pushing His Racist 'Birther' Conspiracy Theory About Obama memo from Mark Penn, senior Clinton campaign advisor discussed Obama's "Lack of American Roots," and suggested ways to make an issue of it. See Joshia Green Why Are People Giving Jill Stein Millions of Dollars for an Election Recount? Secret FISCA Court Issues a Highly Unusual Public Rebuke of the FBI for Mistakes Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation More Willful blindness by the media on spying by Obama administration Democrats to plow ahead with Trump probes post-acquittal The Impact of Personality on Politics: An Attempt to Clear Away Underbrush The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President It was negotiated by people that are poor negotiators against great negotiators. Persians being great negotiators, okay? It's one of those things. You might be Persian. But the Iranians, frankly, are great negotiators Trump, Treasonous Traitor There's a Smell of Treason in the Air Maryland Blogger Settles Defamation Lawsuit Brought by Melania Trump The New Presidential Interview Trump: The Art of the Deal Trump Revealed: The Reporting Archive Excerpts from Trump's interview with the New York Times Iran's Zarif makes surprise trip to G-7 Trump Finds Himself on His Heels and Fumbling at G-7 Remarks by President Trump and President Macron of France in Joint Press Conference Trump Plans More Tariffs for China. You'll Feel This Round Tariff Pass through at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy Review: Assessing Presidential Character The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud New York: Donald I. Fine. Tuccille's biography is the first book-length Trump effort and is distinguished for his earnest effort to assemble and check then known facts The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire I Think He's a Very Dangerous Man for the Next Three or Four Weeks A biographer sums up Donald Trump in a single, devastating 210-word sentence Of the Koch-Trump feud he writes, "every so often the entire city gets lucky enough to have front row seats when two well known people decide to duke it out publicly and fill Manhattan with the clattering Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President Lost Tycoon: The Many lives of Donald Trump. Brattleboro, VT: Echo Print Books & Media, loc. 1084. 62. Hurt Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success Donald Trump: Master Apprentice Trump: How to Get Rich It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America Trump and Bill Zanker Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism News Coverage of Donald Trump's First 100 Days Is Media Coverage of Trump Too Negative? You're Asking the Wrong Question We Have Entered the Trump Unbound Era and Journalists Need to Step It Up Donald Trump Is Guilty: The Only Remaining Question Is What Exactly He's Guilty Of Office of Government Ethics Resigns The Week When President Trump Resigned Trump Is Trashing the Rule of Law to Stay in Power Grading President Donald Trump in His Second Year News Coverage of Trump Is Really, Really Negative: Even on Fox News Unprecedented Hostility: Broadcast Coverage of President Trump Still 90% Negative, Says Study New York Columnist David Brooks admits to CBN News That Targeting Trump Is 'Good for Business I Feel a Deep Sense of Remorse, Donald Trump's Ghostwriter Says Seeing Trump Through the Glass Darkly Beyond BuzzFeed: The 10 Worst MSNBC's O'Donnell Said He 'Shouldn't Have Reported' His On-Air Claim That Trump Has Loans with Deutsche Bank Backed by 'Russian Billionaires Close to Vladimir Putin Trump's Communications with Foreign Leader Are Part of Whistleblower Complaint That Spurred Standoff Between Spy Chief and Congress, Former Officials Say Trump Has Done Plenty to Warrant Impeachment: But the Ukraine Allegations Are Over the Top Warren: 'Congress Is Complicit' by Failing to Start Impeachment Proceedings Against Trump New Revelations Deepen Scandal Over Trump Whistleblower Complaint Schiff Got Early Account of Accusations as Whistle-Blower's Concerns Grew I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration Trump Pushed to Close El Paso Border, Told Admin Officials to Resume Family Separations and Agents Not to Admit Migrants"; "Behind the Scenes, Two Sources Told CNN , the President Told Border Agents to Not Let Migrants In Stephen Miller Pressuring Trump Officials Amid Immigration Shakeups Barrage of Setbacks Spoils Trump's Post-Mueller Reset Potentially Damaging Information in Mueller Report Ushers in New Political Fight We See Ourselves as Rebels, Trump's Internal Resistance Trump's Role in Midterm Elections Roils Republicans Not in a Punch-Back Mode': Why Trump Has Been Largely Silent on Stormy Daniels What I Said Was Accurate!': Trump Stays Fixated on His Alabama Error as Hurricane Pounds the Carolinas Trump Orders Cut to National Security Staff After Whistle-Blower Reporters Fire Back at Trump for Ripping 'Anonymous Sources The White House Thinks the Post Ignored Trump's Summertime Successes: So, About That Pence Seizes Control of Coronavirus Response Amid Criticism of His Qualifications Interview with Donald Trump Trump says in his mother's eyes, he 'could do no wrong Gourguechon quoted in Michael Krase Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of Donald Trump. New York: Avery, pp. xxi TIME Exclusive: Donald Trump After Hours The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates