One of my morning routines, after walking my dog, is to hop on Twitter and see what Donald Trump is raging about. It’s almost as certain as the sunrise, something will have triggered Trump’s rage, and he’s up at 3 AM to let everyone know that public opinion polls are “fake news” or reassure his followers that he’s really in charge.
Not only is this completely unbecoming of any politician, let alone a president*, but it reeks of insecurity. Not winning the popular vote is still bothering Trump who continues to insist that he would have won had it not been for an imaginary 3 million people who voted illegally.
Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2017
Even if 3 million people had voted illegally, who cares? Despite the fact this is completely absurd and unfounded, Trump still managed to win the election, but he just cannot let it go. Why? Because it means he doesn’t have a mandate, and he’s incredibly unpopular. In fact, no president has ever reached a majority disapproval rating in such record time – all of eight days.
Then there is his ongoing feud with the New York Times, perhaps rooted in a long-seeded resentment that New York’s most prominent newspaper never gave him the praise and admiration Trump believed they owed him. He wanted to be accepted in Manhattan, and Garrison Keillor explained, the boy from Queens never got that.
To the Times, Queens is Cleveland. Bush league. You are Queens. The casinos were totally Queens, the gold faucets in your triplex, the bragging, the insults, but you wanted to be liked by Those People. You wanted Mike Bloomberg to invite you to dinner at his townhouse. You wanted the Times to run a three-part story about you, that you meditate and are a passionate kayaker and collect 14th-century Islamic mosaics. You wish you were that person but you didn’t have the time. (Source)
Now that he’s president* despite losing so badly in the popular vote, Trump insists that winning the popular vote wasn’t his intention, and then claims illegal voters kept it from happening. To Trump, winning by a technicality isn’t enough. Sure he has his millions of deplorables, but he’s desperate to have the approval of the New York Times or even Fox News.
The failing @nytimes has been wrong about me from the very beginning. Said I would lose the primaries, then the general election. FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2017
Somebody with aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing @nytimes and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017
Trump feels that he has to show that he’s in charge, despite the fact many people believe Steve Bannon and/or Vladimir Putin are the ones calling the shots. It is believed that Trump didn’t even read the executive order that put Bannon on the National Security Council, a position presidential advisors have no business being in.
Some critics have even gone so far as to send postcards to the White House, addressed to “President Bannon” which is what likely provoked this angry Tweet.
I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it. Some FAKE NEWS media, in order to marginalize, lies!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017
Trump knows that he is an unpopular and illegitimate president, and it shows in nearly every speech or early-morning Twitter episode. It bothers him and he obsesses about it constantly. It drips from his pores like the stale, cheap beer sweat of a million former Budweiser drinkers. It is the monster under the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom that keeps Trump up at night, pacing back and forth between the bathroom and the bed, old smartphone in hand, determined to show the world that he doesn’t care if they don’t love him like President Obama.
Trump isn’t in charge, and he knows it. He projects it constantly, and it isn’t hard to spot. If he couldn’t get New York to love him, whatever gave him the idea that the rest of America, or even the world would?
