Trump: “I sort of thrive on it”
The other day I happened to see a quick clip of Trump saying “I sort of thrive on it” about the impeachment brouhaha. Here’s the video:
He says there that he’s going to explain why he thrives on it, although he never offers all that thorough an explanation except to say it’s “so important that we get to the bottom of [what happened].”
He also says you can’t impeach a president for…and goes on to list a batch of his accomplishments. I beg to differ on that: if the majority of the House wants to impeach a president for slurping his soup – and votes that way, ignoring the whole “high crimes and misdemeanors” requirement of the Constitution – who’s going to stop them? The Senate is highly unlikely to convict, but I doubt SCOTUS would step in.
And if the Senate was controlled by a 2/3 Democrat majority, I bet the Senate would convict on little to no grounds as well. There is no force other than integrity that stops a majority and then a 2/3 majority from impeaching and convicting for purely partisan petty and political reasons, and integrity is a rare commodity these days.
But Trump does thrive on the sort of adversity and attack he’s facing, compared to how most people would react. That confounds and frustrates his enemies and makes them nearly hysterical with rage. I think it’s just a personality trait of his, a rather unusual although hardly unique one.
I’m glad he’s got that trait, because he has already seen and will continue to see much adversity. But you know what? I think he’d be happier with less adversity. I know I certainly would.
I suspect Trump is like Bill Clinton in that he considers drama to be the normal state of affairs and if it does not exist, he will consciously or unconsciously seek to create it in order to have that feeling of normality. That’s why if Democrats had actually treated Trump like a normal President, he’d probably have created his own problems and they could have actually looked like the grownups in the room.
Mike
As someone who spent his career in construction, I actually get what he means. A colleague of mine once told me that our stock in trade is managing chaos. I can see how Trump might feel that this sort of adversity is his comfort zone.
I’ve heard some people who know Trump a bit suggest that he has a carefully crafted public persona that is partially divorced from his private one.
There were stories around the time of middle of the Mueller investigation, that said that during the early days of the investigation Trump was extraordinarily upset by it. At the time, I thought that this was entirely understandable for most people to respond that way. But it does not suggest that he “thrives on it” in reality.
On the other hand, if he gets a little flipped out like normal people, then stops and thinks and strategizes, and then acts more or less in accordance with his tough guy public persona; what difference does it make? It would make a difference to him I suppose.
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“… but I doubt SCOTUS would step in.” — Neo
That’s an interesting question. I think Neo is right, but you never know. I’m convinced that Roberts is a coward, but Kagan has surprised me on occasion. It’s possible that she thinks along the lines of a Felix Frankfurter, a real liberal (classic or leftist I couldn’t say) who stopped FDR’s court packing scheme.
If some of the justices believe that partisan political impeachments are a slippery slope, they might possibly choose to act. Would some of them believe that this would be the first such impeachment or the second?
TommyJay makes an interesting point about SCOTUS. The whole point of having three separate and equal branches of government is to provide the checks and balances that keep one branch from accumulating too much power. If Congress attempts an illegal coup, it seems like the Court would have to get involved, although I don’t know what the mechanism would be.
The Constitution places the sole power of impeachment in the hands of the House. A House dedicated to constitutional governance would consider impeachment only for very serious malfeasance in office, i.e., “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But we don’t have a House leadership dedicated to constitutional governance at the moment. I don’t see any basis for an appeal to the Supreme Court to prevent a rogue House from voting on whatever it wants to.
Trump is obviously a complex character. But he is exactly what we need at this crossroads. The left aka deep state must be exposed and punished or the war for America will go hot. I am hoping Barr and Durham will eventually place the spotlight on the darkness, and enough people will not go woke but awake.
I respectfully suggest that the Rock Climbing article in the next post may touch on this topic; some of it seemed quite descriptive of The Donald in action.
I suspect that the lab rats don’t actually experience much of a psychological “flow” in their humdrum little lives.
I never, ever psychoanalyze (psychologize!) at a distance, ahem.
But I think Mike Bunge may have something there. Also Aesop, in her quote.
*Deleted by commenter — suspected misreading confirmed*
Oh, I see, Aesop. By “lab rats” you mean the rats in Berridge’s lab, not the people in the labs. OTOH, I don’t know that the rats consider their lives “humdrum,” and obviously the human “lab rats” like Berridge and my physicist Honey don’t (didn’t) consider their lives humdrum.
I think the voters are the Constitutional check on the House’s power to impeach — not the Supreme Court. Theoretically the voters would punish the House for a baseless impeachment — and that’s why we didn’t see a House vote before Pelosi began the “inquiry.”
But I’m not confident that the voters WOULD punish the House, even if it did make up some ridiculous reason for an impeachment vote. The media would be right there all the way, dishing out misinformation to delude people into believing that the impeachment was justified. The Constitution obviously doesn’t have, and can’t have, a mechanism for forcing the media to tell the truth.
Kate’s comment makes good points. But I find the topic fascinating and I thought Dershowitz has previously expressed strong opinions on what is constitutionally required for impeachment in the House. I was going to try to paraphrase what Dershowitz had been saying, but it turns out he wrote an article on the topic in the WSJ.
Title: Hamilton Wouldn’t Impeach Trump
It seems to me that if there is a necessary constitutional criterion for impeachment, then the SCOTUS has the ability to weigh in on it.
Trump is the toughest politician of all time. Only he could survive this onslaught for the last three years.
The biggest problem, by now, is the media.
“Trump is the toughest politician of all time.”
This.
We are so lucky to have this man.
To think I used to laugh at the guy!
Whatever the outcome, we are witnessing extraordinary times.
I think it’s just a personality trait of his, a rather unusual although hardly unique one.
No, it is just his Mars energy matrix.
It converts aggression back and he sort of uses it the way Ymar uses it online.
What is frightening funny is that when I apply the same energy matrix to people online, they get surprisingly mad at Ymar for tactics that Trum doesn’t even use, because it is too “soft” and “loser like”.
I guess Trum supporters are over stimulated. They need the true s m techniques of the “toughest” guy there, haha.
“Mars energy matrix”: take 1/3 Musketeer + 1/4 MilkyWay + 1/5 Snickers bars combined, consume twice a day.