On the other hand, as we watch the president stagger through the Covid-19 emergency, golfing as The New York Times prepared to publish a roster of the dead, we should consider that the cruelty, the arrogance, the rage and deviance are not an act.
No president capable of caring for the country, and who possessed a full range of human emotions, would so consistently and automatically revert to the kind of crude and self-serving behavior Trump shows if it were an act.
Likewise, a president who urges people to fill places of worship, as Trump urged on Friday when he called for them to defy public health cautions against such gatherings, is not acting in a rational, thoughtful way.
At his most genuine, our president is the man who throughout his life used enormous family wealth and the power that came with it to get away with breaking all sorts of rules (for proof, see his business bankruptcies, sex scandals, Trump University and Trump Foundation scams, among others).
Editor’s note: Michael D’Antonio is the author of the book “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success” and co-author with Peter Eisner of “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence.”
