Donald Trump has a sad
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly wants you to know that Donald Trump is embarrassed by the investigations into his criminal scandals. Wait, could this mean that Trump has finally grown a conscience, and that he’s ready to acknowledge that he was wrong for committing everything from sexual assault to treason? No, of course not. Kelly meant that Trump was embarrassed in the other way.
John Kelly was asked during an NPR interview yesterday if there is a cloud hanging over Donald Trump’s White House. Kelly said there wasn’t one, but “the President is somewhat embarrassed” by the investigations. He explained that every time a world leader visits Trump, that world leader spends the first few minutes of the conversation asking Trump about the investigations. In other words, we’re somehow supposed to feel bad for Trump because the criminal probes into his life of crime are preventing him from enjoying himself while holding an office that he only occupies because he treasonously rigged the election.
So now we know that Donald Trump really is sitting around the White House throwing a pity party for himself all day, worrying about how his criminal scandals make him look in the eyes of important people, and whining about it to the staffers around him. Of course a sociopathic narcissist like Trump is incapable of understanding that he’s done anything wrong. He’s surely rationalized that everything he’s ever done, from laundering money, to assaulting women, to conspiring with Russia to rig the election, was justified – and that the investigations are somehow unfair to him. But it nonetheless tells us something important.
Even though Donald Trump surely thinks he’s the victim, his disheartened obsession with the investigations into his criminal behavior is a sign that it truly is getting to him. When it comes to ousting Trump for his crimes, half the battle is breaking his spirit, so he won’t be in the right headspace to fight back against the inevitable justice he’s going to face. In the mean time, if he’s embarrassed about meeting with world leaders who can’t stop asking him about his crimes, he’ll be relieved to know that he won’t have to hold those kinds of meetings once he’s in prison.
