Trump is still his own worst enemy

Something has been obvious to just about everyone, except passionate supporters who pretty much think Donald Trump can do no wrong — or just as likely don’t care one way or the other. 

The man, as they say in polite company, has…issues. They’re not just of the legal variety.

Based on court filings released this week, we can see how far Trump was allegedly willing to go to stay in power. The crimes that Special Counsel Jack Smith alleges are not the kind of things a normal person would do.

Two points before we go on: First, allegations are just that. They’re not proof of wrongdoing. But the charges leveled at Trump by the special counsel, backed up by sworn testimony, are not implausible. They ring true with what we know about Trump and what we heard and saw on live television on Jan. 6, 2021.

Second, I’m not a therapist, so I won’t attempt to give his condition a technical name. But in plain English, it seems obvious that Trump cannot accept the idea that he was rejected by voters in a free and honest election, and that losing affects him in a way that does not seem normal.

It’s as if losing says something about Trump that he doesn’t want to hear — or, more to the point, doesn’t want to know about himself. So he concocts an alternate reality that he thinks, or at least hopes, will turn defeat into victory. 

As I say, I’m not a mental health expert, but this strikes me as delusional.

According to ABC News, “When Trump’s effort to overturn the election through lawsuits and fraudulent electors failed to change the outcome of the election, prosecutors allege that the former president fomented violence, with prosecutors describing Trump as directly responsible for ‘the tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.’”

From the New York Times: “Smith’s submission described a familiar web of intersecting plots by Mr. Trump and his allies, including efforts to strong-arm state officials to overturn the election results, create false slates of electors claiming that Mr. Trump had won key states he actually lost and a pressure campaign against his own vice president, Mike Pence, to throw the election his way during a proceeding to certify its final outcome at the Capitol on Jan. 6.”

According to Smith, whose legal brief lays out his case for why the former president is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, “The defendant [Trump] also knew that he had only one last hope to prevent Biden’s certification as President: the large and angry crowd standing in front of him. So for more than an hour, the defendant delivered a speech designed to inflame his supporters and motivate them to march to the Capitol.”

In an interview with NewsNation, Trump said of the release of the court documents, “This was a weaponization of the government…and released 30 days before the election.…It is pure election interference.” There may be some truth in that. The timing of the release of the allegations against Trump has the feel of an October surprise designed to hurt him just weeks before the election.

Still, the lengths to which Trump allegedly went — yes, allegedly — to stay in power are signs, even to people without psychology degrees, of some kind of abnormality.

I don’t pretend to have any idea of what motivates Trump to do the things he does. But I do know this: He is convinced (or at least says he’s convinced) that his political enemies are using the law to wage war against him.

As I say, there may be something to that. But while Trump can spot a perceived enemy a mile away, he doesn’t seem to be a man who spends a lot of time on introspection. I think his massive ego would rebel if he even tried to figure out what lurks beneath the surface. 

But if he did look inward for a change, he might learn something he doesn’t really want to know: that his inner demons are the real enemies. And in the end, those demons — as much as any prosecutor — might be what bring him down.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page.