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You could drive yourself crazy trying to understand what Trump believes or doesn't. I do think he's a terrible narcissist with 70+ years of being rewarded and praised for bullying and lying and no average person can remotely understand what that's like.

twelvepoint wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:57 pm You could drive yourself crazy trying to understand what Trump believes or doesn't. I do think he's a terrible narcissist with 70+ years of being rewarded and praised for bullying and lying and no average person can remotely understand what that's like.

We need to get Mick Jagger on the line!

enframed wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:30 pm

Garth wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:40 pm Honest question: Which version do you think most accurately fits the truth:

A.) Dude is so gone he truly believes the election was stolen from him
B.) Dude is totally just going along w the grift

My current thinking is that both A&B are correct: that he has always relied on lawyers to solve his problems and has just been working from that same playbook all along and his own narcissistic delusions have taken over the narrative to the point where he actually believes it.

That woman who worked for him, the one who looks like Beavis, said she thought he actually believes it.

Yeah I think I'm going to change my earlier assessment and agree with her. I mean he is so arrogant, so full of himself, and so consumed by ego he cannot imagine a world where the majority of people hate him so much they would rather have Joe Biden.

There's another component too where I don't think he's even smart enough to come up w/ a grift this solid. I also don't think his own ego would keep him from bragging to someone about it. There's no world that exists where I can imagine him pulling Sean Hannity aside and saying "no, I know I lost the popular vote, but if I just keep saying this shit, well...let's just get on that bus and see where it takes us."

He deliberately started this whole insurrection and genuinely believes he had the election stolen from him. It's the epitome and end result of peak white-man-persecution-complex. He grifted himself if anything.

twelvepoint wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:57 pm You could drive yourself crazy trying to understand what Trump believes or doesn't. I do think he's a terrible narcissist with 70+ years of being rewarded and praised for bullying and lying and no average person can remotely understand what that's like.

This is absolutely correct and I need to stop driving myself crazy like I have been for the past 6 years of hating a man and trying to understand why things are going the way they are.

Garth wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 4:03 pm

There's another component too where I don't think he's even smart enough to come up w/ a grift this solid.

No, you're right. Trump has never masterminded anything. He just grabs at as many lies and takes as many suggestions from his minions as he can. If anything seems to stick a little he'll keep hammering it and if he said something ridiculous that gets no traction it can fall away while he chases 10 other avenues of bullshit.

If you look at the legal history of the 2020 election it's like an ecosystem of various lawsuits to see if one can survive. They all went extinct.

I think he knows he's a loser. Always has been.

But lying and bluster have been a winning defense mechanism.

So many tipping points where a reasonable person thinks, finally he's done.

I don't see this being any different but I'd love to be wrong.

It depends what you mean by belief. Trump believes in believing what he wants to believe. It's his life philosophy. You make things true by believing them. If it isn't true, you're a loser who didn't believe hard enough. Trump's beliefs aren't tied to facts, they're driven by pure force of will.

He is perfectly willing to believe things that aren't true, even while knowing they aren't true. He's not going to give in to that little voice. SHUT UP DAD

So yeah, I guess today's highlight was Trump apparently hopping in his car and saying "right, we're off to the Capitol riot then", and the Secret Service replying "like fuck you are, sir".

Burning calories exploring the inner workings of that man’s mind seems wasteful to me. The man tried to cheat and lie. That’s all he’s ever known. It will never be anything other than that.

Watching people continue to follow him sucks and that’s what I hate the most. He gave fuel to a dying fire (narcissistic nationalism) that’s just getting hotter and finding more fuel.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the level of devotion to him and the literal doublespeak from his disciples.

Remember that time when he tried to order the military to shoot peaceful protesters (just another day in the Trump presidency), and his supporters cried "he's doing a Jericho Walk!" and fell about speaking in tongues? Babbling actual fucking gibberish in ecstasy at the thought of Trump murdering American progressives.

The only things separating an Evangelical from a schizophrenic street bum are temperance and a space metal mega-church.