Trump’s Dangerous Belief the Media Can’t Criticize Him

Back during the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial campaign now Governor Ralph Northam described Donald Trump as a "narcissistic maniac."  When challenged about the comment, Northam replied: “You know, I’m a pediatric neurologist, there’s a lot of overlap between psychiatry and neurology, and I would invite the viewers to look up the criteria for narcissism … I think they’ll see some familiarity with what they’ll see.”  Back in July, Northam recounted the episode to the husband and I while we were at the Executive Mansion.  He seems to be standing by his medical assessment and rightly so in light of Trump's vitriolic reaction to any criticism, especially by the mainstream media which has an obligation, in my view, to keep public officials accountable and to expose their lies.  If anything, Trump's attacks on critics is becoming more maniacal and completely consistent with his unbridled narcissism.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this dangerous, malignant narcissist behavior.  Here are excerpts:

The news of a wave of mail bombs sent to various critics of President Trump was a genuinely frightening moment, and in such moments modern Americans instinctively turn to the president to perform the office’s role of ceremonial head of state. Much of the cable-news chatter focused on whether, or for how many minutes, Trump could stick to the dignified script of denouncing violence and advocating civility. The unsurprising answer was: not very long.

But the important issue here is not Trump’s inability to convincingly advocate civility for an entire news cycle. Indeed, civility is not really the question at all. The issue is Trump’s conviction that he should not be subjected to any scrutiny or criticism.

That view came through despite Trump’s attempt to deliver a scripted denunciation of political violence. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks,” Trump announced last night. A morning tweet completed the thought: A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!

[Trump] is developing what is a long-standing belief among conservatives: that the mainstream news is irredeemably biased, and should be ignored altogether in favor of an alternate ecosystem of party-controlled media.

But what has given Trump’s version of it unusual virulence is his belief that the media should be an uncritical conduit for his lies. This is the true through line of his entire career. Media manipulation, along with fraud and secret money infusions from his father, is the secret sauce of his career.

The corollary to Trump’s expectation that the news media unquestioningly transmit his lies is his demand that it refrain from criticism of any kind. He was fanatical about intimidating reporters with legal threats. He would wring apologies out of any skeptics, or even get them fired — not despite the fact the criticism was true but because it was true.

In his incarnation as a political candidate, Trump has mostly lost his ability to intimidate the media with legal threats. (Politicians have a prohibitively high standard for libel in the United States.) But his expectation and worldview are the same. Any news outlet not controlled by his loyalists is “fake news” and an “enemy of the people.”

The mail-bomb threats are the leverage he craves. They are the threat that can make good on his demand, the consequence facing the media for failing to submit to his orders.

It is a supreme irony that Trump used his speech last night to delegitimize criticism. “No one should carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains.” But the issue is that Trump, in his psychological makeup and aspirations, is precisely such a historical villain.