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Tuesday
In the past I’ve compared Donald Trump to King Lear, two narcissistic leaders who are so focused on indulging their own insecurities that they plunge the realms they head into chaos. With this weekend’s back and forth between Trump and special counsel Jack Smith over the recent indictment, I’ve found another comparison: both Lear and Trump, when pushed into a corner, lash out with violent language.
In Smith’s request for a protective order following Trump’s threats, he notes that the former president is using social media to go after “witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him.” Trump’s first attack was fairly general:
IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!
He directed his second attack against his formerly sycophantic vice president, who witnessed first hand how Trump tried to overturn election results and will probably testify against him in his trial:
WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side. I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was ‘too honest.’ He’s delusional, and now he wants to show he’s a tough guy. I once read a major magazine article on Mike. It said he was not a very good person. I was surprised, but the article was right. Sad!
Finally, there’s an attack on the judge:
THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE ‘ASSIGNED’ TO THE RIDICULOUS FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FAIR ELECTIONS CASE. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, AND SO DOES SHE!
Compare this to King Lear after he learns that his two daughters have stripped him of his retinue. First, he curses Goneril:
Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility.
Dry up in her the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honor her. If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child.
Later, when he addresses both daughters, he sounds like a little child throwing a temper tantrum. He threatens them with the “terrors of the Earth” but can’t provide specifics since he has already given away all his power:
No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the Earth! You think I’ll weep.
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep.—O Fool, I shall go mad!
Narcissists go mad when they are confronted with concrete evidence that the world does not revolve around them. If they lack concrete means of revenge, they resort to bombastic language.
Which in Trump’s case is delivered in all caps.