3/27/20, 10:59 AMThe President Is Trapped - The Atlantic

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FBRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / GETTY

!" #$% &'($"& )*+,(,$-&, and for his entirepresidency, Donald Trump

has created his own alternatereality, complete with his ownalternate set of facts. He hasshown himself to be erratic,impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive,cruel, mendacious, and devoid of

IDEAS

.e President Is TrappedTrump is utterly unsuited to deal with this crisis, eitherintellectually or temperamentally.MARCH 25, 2020

Peter WehnerContributing writer at TheAtlantic and senior fellow atEPPC

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empathy. None of that is new.

But we’re now entering the mostdangerous phase of the Trumppresidency. .e pain andhardship that the United States isonly beginning to experiencestem from a crisis that thepresident is utterly unsuited todeal with, either intellectually ortemperamentally. When thingswere going relatively well, thenation could more easily absorbthe costs of Trump’spsychological and moraldistortions and dis/gurements.But those days are behind us. .ecoronavirus pandemic hascreated the conditions that cancatalyze a destructive set ofresponses from an individualwith Trump’s characterologicaldefects and disorderedpersonality.

[ Peter Wehner: !e Trumppresidency is over ]

We are now in the early phase ofa medical and economic tempestunmatched in most of our

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lifetimes. .ere’s too muchinformation we don’t have. Wedon’t know the full severity of thepandemic, or whether a state likeNew York is a harbinger or anoutlier. But we have enoughinformation to know this virus israpidly transmissible and lethal.

.e qualities we most need in apresident during this crisis arecalmness, wisdom, andreassurance; a command of thefacts and the ability tocommunicate them well; and thecapacity to think about themedium and long term whilecarefully weighing competingoptions and con0icting needs.We need a leader who canpersuade the public to act inways that are di1cult butnecessary, who can focus like alaser beam on a problem for asustained period of time, andwho will listen to—and, whennecessary, defer to—experts whoknow far more than he does. Weneed a president who can drawthe nation together rather than

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drive it apart, who excels at theintricate work of governing, andwho works well with electedo1cials at every level. We need achief executive whose judgmentis not just sound, butexceptional.

.ere are some 325 millionpeople in America, and it’s hardto think of more than a handfulwho are more lacking in thesequalities than Donald Trump.

But we need to considersomething else, which is that thecoronavirus pandemic may leadto a rapid and even moreworrisome psychological andemotional deterioration in thecommander in chief. .is is not acertainty, but it’s a possibility weneed to be prepared for.

[ Read: !e four possible timelinesfor life returning to normal ]

Here’s how this might play out;to some extent, it already has.

Let’s start with what we know.Someone with Trump’s

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psychological makeup, whenfaced with facts and events thatare unpleasant, that he perceivesas a threat to his self-image andpublic standing, simply deniesthem. We saw that repeatedlyduring the early part of thepandemic, when the presidentwas giving false reassurance andspreading false information oneday after another.

After a few days in which he waswilling to acknowledge the scopeand scale of this crisis—hedeclared himself a “wartimepresident”—he has now regressedto type, once again becoming afountain of misinformation. At apress conference yesterday, hedeclared that he “would love tohave the country opened up, andjust raring to go, by Easter,”which is less than three weeksaway, a goal that topepidemiologists and healthprofessionals believe would becatastrophic.

“I think it’s possible. Why not?”he said with a shrug during a

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town hall hosted by Fox Newslater in the day. (Why Easter? Heexplained, “I just thought it wasa beautiful time, a beautifultimeline.”) He said this as NewYork City’s case count is doublingevery three days and the U.S.case count is now setting the pacefor the world.

As one person who consults withthe Trump White House on thecoronavirus response put it tome, “He has chosen to imaginethe worst is behind us when theworst is clearly ahead of us.”

[ David Frum: !e worstoutcome ]

After listening to the president’snearly-two-hour brie/ng onMonday—in which, amongother things, Trump declared, “Ifit were up to the doctors, theymay say … ‘Let’s shut down theentire world.’ … .is couldcreate a much bigger problemthan the problem that you starto2 with”—a former WhiteHouse adviser who has worked

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on past pandemics told me, “.isfool will bring the death ofthousands needlessly. We havemobilized as a country to shutthings down for a time, despitethe di1culty. We can work ourway back to a semblance ofnormality if we hold out and letthe health system make itthrough the worst of it.” Headded, “But now our ownpresident is undoing all thatwork and preaching recklessness.Rather than lead us in taking ona di1cult challenge, he isdragging us toward failure andsu2ering. Beyond belief.”

Y &% )'* '!. .e thing tounderstand about DonaldTrump is that putting

others before self is notsomething he can do, eventemporarily. His attempts toconvey facts that don’t serve hisperceived self-interest or toexpress empathy are forced,scripted, and always short-lived,since such reactions are alien tohim.

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.is president does not have thecapacity to listen to, synthesize,and internalize information thatdoes not immediately serve hisgreatest needs: praise, fealty,adoration. “He /nds itintolerable when those things aremissing,” a clinical psychologisttold me. “Praise, applause, andaccolades seem to calm him andboost his con/dence. .ere’s noroom for that now, and so he’sgrowing irritable and needing tocreate some way to get somepositive attention.”

[ Adam Serwer: Trump is incitinga coronavirus culture war to savehimself ]

She added that the pandemic andits economic fallout “overwhelmTrump’s capacity to understand,are outside of his ability tointernalize and process, and [are]beyond his frustration tolerance.He is neither curious norinterested; facts are tossed asidewhen inconvenient or [whenthey] contradict his parallelreality, and people are disposable

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Iunless they serve him in someway.”

(’% +%&-+, #&"& to recallthat Trump’s success as apolitician has been built on

his ability to impose his will andnarrative on others, to use hisexperience on a reality-televisionshow and his skill as a con manto shape public impressions in hisfavor, even—or perhaps,especially—if those impressionsare at odds with reality. Heconvinced a good chunk of thecountry that he is a wildlysuccessful businessman andknows more about campaign/nance, the Islamic State, thecourts, the visa system, trade,taxes, the debt, renewable energy,infrastructure, borders, anddrones than anyone else.

[ Read: How the pandemic willend ]

But in this instance, Trump isn’tfacing a political problem he caneasily spin his way out of. He’sfacing a lethal virus. It doesn’t

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give a damn what Donald Trumpthinks of it or tweets about it.Spin and lies about COVID-19,including that it will soonmagically disappear, as Trumpclaimed it would, don’t work. Infact, they have the oppositee2ect. Misinformation will causethe virus to increase its deadlyspread.

So as the crisis deepens—as thebody count increases, hospitalsare overwhelmed, and theeconomy contracts, perhapsdramatically—it’s reasonable toassume that the president willreach for the tools he has usedthroughout his life: duplicity anddenial. He will not allow factsthat are at odds with his narrativeto pierce his magnetic /eld ofdeception.

But what happens to Trumppsychologically and emotionallywhen things don’t turn around inthe time period he wants? Whathappens if the tricks that haveallowed him to walk away fromscandal after scandal don’t work

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quite so well, if the doors ofescape are bolted shut, and if itdawns on even some of hissupporters—people who willwatch family members, friends,and neighbors contract thedisease, some number of whomwill die—that no matter whatTrump says, he can’t alter thisepidemiological reality?

All of this would likely enragehim, and feed his paranoia.

As the health-care and economiccrises worsen, Trump’s hallmarkswill be even more fully ondisplay. .e president will createnew scapegoats. He’ll blamegovernors for whatever bad newsbefalls their states. He’ll beratereporters who ask questions thatportray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demandeven more cultlike coverage fromoutlets such as Fox News.Because he doesn’t toleraterelationships that arecharacterized by disagreement orabsence of obeisance, before longwe’ll see key people removed or

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silenced when they try to countera Trump-centered narrative. He’lltry to /nd shiny objects to divertour attention from his failures.

All of these things are from aplaybook the president has used athousand times. Perhaps they’llsucceed again. But there’ssomething distinct about thismoment, compared with everyother moment in the Trumppresidency, that could prove to beutterly disorienting andunsettling for the president.Hush-money payments won’tmake COVID-19 go away. Hecannot distract people from theglobal pandemic. He can’t wait itout until the next news cycle,because the next news cycle willalso be about the pandemic. Hecan’t easily create anothernarrative, because he is oftensharing the stage with scientistswho will not lie on his behalf.

.e president will try to blamesomeone else—but in this casethe “someone else” is a virus, nota Mexican immigrant or a

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reporter with a disability, not aMuslim or a Clinton, not a deadwar hero or a family of a fallensoldier, not a special counsel oran NFL player who kneels for thenational anthem. He will try touse this crisis to pit one partyagainst the other—but the viruswill kill both Republicans andDemocrats. He will try to createan alternate story to distractpeople from an inconvenienttruth—but in this case, thepublic is too afraid, the story istoo big, and the carnage will betoo great to be distracted from it.

America will make it to the otherside of this crisis, as it has afterevery other crisis. But thestruggle will be a good dealharder, and the human cost agood deal higher, because weelected as president a man who isso damaged and so broken in somany ways.

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