How The Donald Lost His Teflon
NOTE: Like a number of the blogs appearing on this website, this post explores a particular nuance of the psychopathology underreported by the national media, and that has contributed to the dysfunctionality of American politics.
[A severely edited version of this article was initially published in early 2021 as a one page “On the Couch” column in USA Today (the magazine).]
What to do when a federal official exhibits all the diagnostic traits of a psychopath? (While the official manual of that society’s mental health providers lacks a coherent list of these traits—making psychopaths harder to recognize).
Worse still, say the society is also so politically polarized, that nearly half will support the official—regardless of their psychopathy.
In America we assumed we had a solution in place—an impeachment trial. But the toxic political polarization now suffered makes guilty impeachment verdicts in the senate nearly impossible.
And besides, political changes alone seem inadequate—as it often takes decades, generations, even centuries, before political solutions become psychologically internalized. (The Civil War ended in 1865—yet we’re still arguing over the power of the federal government to lead the states; and still suffering the ravages of racial inequality).
And American psychiatry failed us when sociopaths and psychopaths were largely erased from its diagnostic manual by 1980 and have remained so ever since—as if both no longer exist. Yet due to the urgencies of global warming, we no longer have the lazy ease of generations and centuries before we become more objective, and wiser about the only planet we have—and what it now needs from us.
Like narcissism, psychopaths and political tribalism have darkened the human landscape for millennia. And so, solutions to their unholy union are unlikely to come from a single source. But perhaps, from a probing, collective conversation just barely begun.
What follows reflects what we’ve most recently suffered—and why this conversation is so necessary, and needs to continue…
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Upon arising to the top of the Gambino crime family, mobster John Gotti was known as “the Teflon Don.” For once he’d ascended, charges against him rarely stuck. But then the winds of change, and his own underboss (Sammy “the Bull” Gravano) turned against him, and in a truly life-changing way. And from then on, rather than in expensive suits, Gotti spent the rest of his life in prison garb.
Like Gotti, Donald Trump was a “made man” of sorts—though not by the mafia. Nor was he the self-made billionaire as he’d portrayed himself, and that made him seem an invincible figure-—almost larger than life—a fabulous success story.
In truth, what had made him—rich, and bailed him out of bankruptcies—was the inheritance from his father Fred; an inheritance hundreds of times greater than the one million dollars Trump claimed as his initial grubstake. Plus, there was the further inheritance—Trump’s father was both a racist, and a psychopath.
Like Gotti, Trump went on to commit numerous acts that could have led to arrest, while managing to skate through life without being held accountable—and for far longer than Gotti. Both men had a flamboyant flare, liked the limelight, and had become New York media darlings. Trump also made use of a mafia fixer, Roy Cohn, whose clients included mob boss “Fat Tony” Salerno, of the Genovese crime family. And as Trump was rising in the rough and tumble world of New York City real estate, he’d become an apprentice to Cohn’s dark art.
This was an art described by writer Sam Roberts as based in “situational immorality.” And Cohn’s art had a three-pronged strategy that Trump would adopt for the rest of his life: 1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, and counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat. In the words of columnist Liz Smith: “Donald lost his moral compass when he made an alliance with Roy Cohn.”
With Cohn as the model of the kind of fixer-attorney Trump was looking for, it’s no wonder that the acting Attorney General he’d inherited as president, Sally Yates, only lasted days. And he was then bitterly disappointed with his next AG Jeff Sessions. For rather than quashing the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Sessions recused himself.
His own personal fixer, attorney Michael Cohen lasted longer, and was quite willing to do Trump’s bidding—until he no longer could, and finally, no longer would. But in terms of an Attorney General, with William Barr Trump had finally found his man. (Though for the rule of law, and how this applies to the president, this was like putting a willing and crafty fox in defense of the chicken coup).
And as the Trump presidency was unraveling at the end, Barr—seeing the handwriting on the wall— flew the coup; hoping to distance himself from the attempted coup that he rightly assumed was about to follow. This left Trump’s legal defense manned in part by the conspiracy-theorist-buffoon that Rudy Giuliani had become. For by now, the really good lawyers with political ties wanted nothing to do with America’s 45th president.
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Committing multiple acts that could be subject to arrest is a diagnostic trait of psychopaths. Since you won’t find a comprehensive list of psychopathic traits in the official diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association, I’ll provide one here:
Pathological lying, irresponsibility, lack of guilt or remorse, recklessness, impulsivity, and failure to accept accountability—but instead, a pattern of blaming others for one’s own failings (“blame-externalization”), no sense of shame, conning, coercive, manipulative behavior, misrepresentation when relating events, cheats to achieve self-centered ends, selfish, callous, misuse of others, egocentric lack of empathy, failure to learn from experience, goes through life wearing a mask (beneath which lurks a lack of morality; at worst real evil).
And linked to the above psychopathic traits is another—a life rife with lawsuits. And Trump’s been involved with over 4000 —if not first ballot credentials for the Psychopathic Hall of Fame, he’s at least on the short-list.
Psychopathy—like narcissism—are both considered personality disorders. Yet people suffering from a personality disorder rarely suffer from one, and one personality disorder alone. A psychopathic president is far more perilous to a nation than a president who is merely narcissistic. While having a psychopath in the White House, who is also a narcissist—and possibly also suffering from both a paranoid and a delusional disorder—has to be the most perilous president imaginable.
And if we just considered Trump in regard to the pandemic, while only scanning for psychopathy, we might see the presence of the above-listed psychopathic traits. For example, Trump continuously lied about the lethality of the Covid-19 virus long after he knew that what he was saying wasn’t true. And this came to light when Bob Woodward’s book Rage was published in mid-September 2020.
For Woodward had taped a February 7th interview with Trump which revealed a surprising level of detail in his understanding of the pandemic—that it was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious, and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” And then in March, Trump admitted to Woodward that he chose to keep that knowledge hidden from the public—a grievous policy calculation that would lead to many more lies—and so many more unnecessary deaths.
Trump also coerced false testimony from governmental agencies that were being bent—not toward the welfare of the nation, but in favor of the president’s own political ambitions. (A similar coercion to obtain false testimony from the Ukrainian president—so as to favor Trump in running against Biden—had formed the grounds for his first impeachment). Though with Covid, this coercion included agencies such as the CDC that were restricted from releasing their own scientific findings about the virus—which would have better informed and protected the nation than the doctored findings that were released instead.
Yet Trump refused any accountability or responsibility for the fact that under his “leadership” the U.S. was to become the epicenter of the virus—a country with barely 4% of the world population yet 20% of its Covid-deaths. And the lack of accountability, as well as the psychopathic trait of blame externalization can be heard in Trump’s own words: “The virus has nothing to do with me,” Trump told Woodward in their final interview in July 2020. “It’s not my fault. It’s—China let the damn virus out.”
And we might see his egocentric lack of empathy in being more concerned about his own upcoming election in 2020—and then more concerned with contesting the results— than actually addressing the suffering throughout the nation, both from the pandemic itself, and its economic impact upon the American people (40% of us with less than $400 in the bank for emergencies even before the pandemic struck).
Even as more than four thousand Americans died each day, he remained completely AWOL in responding to the pandemic, exhibited no guilt or remorse for how he’d mishandled it, nor did he learn anything from the experience. (The failure to learn from experience is why the recidivism rate of psychopaths in prisons is so high). And throughout his presidency his conning misrepresentation of events continued. As the saying goes, “if his lips are moving, he’s lying.”
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Yet Trump’s last big lie couldn’t be “fixed,” or diverted from by what he said or did next. For his narrative of a stolen election incited an angry mob to storm the Capitol. And the videos to emerge over the next several days were far scarier, and more visceral than the initial news feeds. I’ll spare you the visceral images that ended with a commentator saying that from now on, 1/6/21 will be remembered like the current decade’s version of 9/11.
I’ll only mention the following: Though Vice President Pence had been coerced and then vilified by Trump for not supporting the narrative of a stolen election, and though the mob that Trump had incited had threatened to hang him, Pence declared himself unwilling to invoke the 25th amendment, saying it would “set a bad precedent”—overlooking the more dire one just provoked by the former president. That led to the House initiating impeachment proceedings the following day.
Plus the business community turned against Trump, with many announcing they’d now refrain from donating to individuals or organizations continuing to contest the 2020 election. And Facebook and Twitter banned Trump from their platforms.
With Barr no longer intervening at Justice on Trump’s behalf, the FBI announced that no resource would be spared in apprehending and bringing to trial those who’d breached the Capitol. There was now a heightened prosecutorial will to root out all remnants of domestic terrorism that had been part of Trump’s most militant base.
Like the boy who’d cried “Wolf!” one time too many—Trump now finds himself cornered and alone on an angry, delusional island, where being vulnerable—or incarcerated— had never before seemed so likely.
For waiting on the mainland, in the world we call “real” is Manhattan DA Cyrus R. Vance Jr. He’s retained a slew of forensic accounting experts as the criminal probe against Trump escalates. New York’s Attorney General Letitia James also lies in wait. As does Georgia’s Fulton County DA Fani T. Willis—who’s opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s taped attempt to coerce Georgia’s Secretary of State to overturn the state’s election results.
These attorneys won’t be hindered by federal statutes shielding Trump (as they’d been interpreted by Barr’s Justice Department). Plus, there’s other pending lawsuits—one from his niece Mary L. Trump, who is suing Trump over a multimillion-dollar inheritance dispute.
As mentioned, a plethora of lawsuits is a psychopathic trait. Yet no one knows how, or just when, the above will play out. Nor do we know the long-term impact of Trump upon his party. (Though a prosecutor’s assessment of Gotti’s impact upon the Gambino family comes to mind). Namely, the Teflon Don had been “so incompetent, inept, and unqualified” that he contributed to its downfall.
Yet the Biden administration now finds itself between a rock and a hard place in investigating the corruption of the previous regime—which went beyond any we’ve seen. The early indications are that Biden would prefer to move on from the past and its divisiveness. And to focus instead on getting needed legislation passed.
Yet if the Biden administration wants to return America to being the bulwark of democracy, and to once again lead and defend democracies world-wide, it would be derelict and lacking in credibility if it fails to adequately confront the corruption of the previous administration that had imperiled America’s own democracy.
Failure to do this would also alienate the Democratic Party’s more progressive wing. And further, if there is no price to pay for Trump’s numerous infractions to the rule of law, this will leave a degraded inheritance to future generations. Namely, of the checks and balances upon which America’s democracy was built—and that helped it to survive—until now.
Currently, the DOJ’s top national security lawyer, John Demers, is about to resign from his post amid questions about what the Trump appointee knew about the agency’s efforts to secretly obtain phone, email, and other records from reporters, as well as from Trump’s most vocal critics. This comes as many are demanding that current AG Merrick Garland “clean house” of any officials involved in partisan or politically motivated investigations.
“What I think we are seeing is that it was worse than all of us even imagined. We knew the Department of Justice had become, in a sense, the personal arm of the Donald Trump protection racket,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said during a Washington Post Live event. “These stories sound Nixonian but they are actually worse than Nixonian.”
Critics say that the DOJ’s clandestine targeting of Democratic congressmen, Hill aides, reporters and others demonstrated how the 45th president had weaponized the agency to go after his political enemies. “Like the mafia, the Justice Department became nothing more than a corrupt arm of the Trump administration, run by Donald J. Trump as its head of the family,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney.
And so, in regarding Trump only two sentences seem certain: The Donald has lost his Teflon, and had become not only a lame duck, but a disgraced and wounded one. Though the only shame here is surely not Donald’s.
For psychopaths are incapable of feeling shame, empathy, or remorse.
The nation’s shame now settles... on his political, financial, and social media enablers—plus 74 million voters, and the bulk of his party’s leadership—who’d stuck by this psychopath for so long.