The vanity presidency
He's trying to turn the whole country into a tacky branded property.
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Following the failed attempt on President Trump’s life at the White House Correspondents Dinner, lapdog Republicans and their media allies rushed to capitalize by arguing that the episode proves his very unpopular White House ballroom project has always been about presidential safety, not a self-glorifying tribute to himself.
“Everyone thought this was Trump making a monument to Trump. This is a vanity project,” the reliably smarmy Sen. Lindsey Graham snorted at Trump’s critics. (Graham wants to spend taxpayer dollars on the ballroom project, which he describes as “very national security-centric.”)
On cue, over the ensuing five days came news Trump will have his face superimposed on US passports, and that he reportedly considers himself alongside Napoleon and Caesar among the most significant figures in human history. Yeah, Lindsey, the Braggart-in-Chief exhibits nary a whiff of vanity.
Last week’s round of self-glorification is nothing new. Trump has already bullied politicians or board members into renaming the Palm Beach airport and the Kennedy Center after him. He forced the National Park Service to add his face alongside George Washington’s on the annual park pass. A $60 million UFC event will celebrate his birthday on the White House lawn this June. Oh, and when asked what the massive, 250-foot arch he wants erected shall commemorate, Trump answered with his favorite word: “me.”
So you’ll forgive Trump’s critics for concluding that his megalomaniacal second term ambitions have nothing to do with solving immigration, boosting the economy, or securing global peace. He’s too busy plastering his name, image, and tacky gold leafing on anything and everything he can.
Welcome to the Vanity Presidency, folks.
He’s so vain
Perhaps you already noticed almost every thing he does or says has a common theme: him.
He comes first. His greedy wife and kids are perhaps next, followed by a long and growing list of crypto-crooks and broligarch buddies.
Despite his clever marketing slogan, at best you and the rest of America rank fifth — and only if you’re MAGA. (Actually, nah: You think a man who respects none of the other presidents respects his most gullible marks?)
He’s not a public servant, but a self-server. Preserve, protect, and defend? Mere recommendations on faded parchment to be ignored when convenient. Besides, he’s bigger than the Constitution and all those silly amendments.
Face it, he’s the best, the smartest, the greatest — a one-man superlative. Everything he does is yuge, every achievement so profoundly novel that “nobody has ever seen anything like it before.”
He has the best words, a great memory and, of course, one of the highest IQs. As he boasted two days before the WHCD event, “As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person.”
He is the American sun and moon, our nation’s everything and only thing all in one. Nothing and nobody else matters except him because, as he so modestly declared, “I run the country and the world.”
Trump is so completely and utterly in love with himself that Carly Simon’s famous song about vanity makes Warren Beatty seem modest by comparison. He could make Narcissus blush.
The price of vanity
To be fair, some of Trump’s vanity — though trashy and nauseating, like his gilding of every surface — is harmless, even sad. Psychologists believe his malignant narcissism is the byproduct of a childhood spent trying to please his disapproving parents. Were he merely your friend or colleague, you might snicker privately about his ceaseless self-promotion and bad taste, yet feel empathy for this broken toy of a man.
Tragically, however, Trump’s vanity has costly, even fatal, consequences for millions of others, here and abroad.
Before he became president, he built his branded empire by cheating contractors who built the hotels bearing his name. He lost money that suckers invested in his eponymous, failed business ventures — Trump water, Trump steaks, Trump jets, Trump magazine, Trump board games, and so on. Students at his bogus Trump University were fleeced, too. Accelerated by his greed — vanity’s step-brother — Trump’s ego-fueled business empire repeatedly penalized people who did business with, worked for, or associated with him.
All that came before he held the world’s most powerful elected office. As president, Trump’s need to trash-talk and own the room by making bold, headline-grabbing decisions wreaks damage on a far larger scale.
Shredding America’s hard-won reputation as a good-faith ally by mocking NATO has forced European governments to withhold vital intelligence, thereby degrading US national security. Taunting Canada compelled north-of-the-border businesses to remove American products from their shelves and convinced Canadian tourists to spend their coveted travel dollars elsewhere. Empowering Elon Musk’s DOGE goons to dismantle USAID programs in service to Trump’s insatiable need for splashy press conferences has (so far) killed an estimated 600,000 people — two-thirds of them children — in some of the poorest corners of the planet. Glibly responding to the covid pandemic by promising it would “just go away” and giving credence to anti-vaxxer remedies like hydroxychloroquine caused additional sicknesses, hospitalizations, and deaths.
We could go on, but you get the point: Trump’s vanity is a political, economic, and humanitarian cancer.
Let go my ego
Trump’s vanity also leads him to make costly mistakes. But unlike the collateral damages mentioned above, his narcissism often inflicts self-harm, too.
His insatiable need for praise can be benign and even provide comic relief for Trump-haters. You’ve seen the clips: Cabinet secretaries showering Trump with compliments about what a bold and brilliant leader he is—priceless fodder for late-night comedians’ monologues. (Legendary and near-centenarian satirist Mel Brooks must giggle at Donald “I didn’t get a harrumph from that guy” Trump.)
But Trump has paid a steep political price, especially in his second term, for surrounding himself with spineless, telegenic suck-ups chosen primarily because they’re loyal and “look” the part.
Inexperienced, compliant sycophants are less likely to deliver good suggestions or bad news. Their incessant fawning also reinforces Trump’s bedrock belief that he’s the smartest and best-informed person on every subject — that he need only trust his infallible instincts and “great brain.” (This is the same man, remember, who claimed instant command of virology during the pandemic because he had an uncle who taught at MIT, and whose Good Will Hunting-level math skills include moronic claims about his prescription drug plan that can reduce the price of medications by as much the numerically impossible 1,500 percent.)
Iran is a perfect example of the perils of Trumpian vanity.
Before initiating the war, Trump surely consulted some advisers, notably the similarly overconfident, inexperienced Dunning-Kruger poster boy and former TV talking head, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. But Trump clearly did not confer with enough regional policy experts, military strategists, or relevant intelligence agency heads. Nor did President Know-It-All bother to get buy-in from congressional leaders, even from within his own Republican Party.
How do we know this? Because he reportedly was shocked to learn that, rather than immediately surrendering after the initial US attacks, Iran instead closed the Strait of Hormuz. But a beginner Stratego player could have predicted the Iranians would leverage their most valuable geo-political asset.
Because his cabinet, staffers, and GOP congressional pals tell him daily he’s the most brilliant president ever, Trump believes he can figure out this war on the fly. He mulled no contingencies, envisioned no exit strategy.
And, of course, Trump felt zero need to build a public case for attacking Iran. He regards voters now the same way he did consumers during his business career — suckers and losers to be manipulated and exploited. War-making is for presidents, not paupers.
Now look at him.
At turns, Trump has proclaimed the war won but still ongoing; threatened annihilation or agreed to limited ceasefires he later had to extend because negotiations failed (again); proclaimed the strait closed, open, closed again, and now blockaded; called upon European allies whom he’s insulted for a decade to help him, then declared he doesn’t need them anyway. His poll numbers are tanking, gas prices are rising, and he still has no exit strategy.
Trump’s vanity is like a bear trap he sets and promptly steps into. Grimacing through pain, he then tries to convince everyone — himself included — that his shattered, bloody ankle is not a problem but somehow the latest achievement of his “Golden Age.” He then demands somebody award him a medal.
Me, Myself, and I
Despite his cratering public support, Donald Trump remains convinced he is leading the most successful presidential administration ever — or at least since, well, his first term. And he demands recognition and glorification, everywhere and from everyone.
His congressional groupies want to swap Trump’s image for Benjamin Franklin’s on the $100 bill, or better yet, put his face on a new $250 bill commissioned to celebrate this summer’s semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. One member introduced a bill to add his face to Mt. Rushmore.
Starting this summer — yes, this is actually happening — he will be the first president whose signature will appear along with the secretary of the treasury’s on paper currency. He clearly deserves the honor of seeing his name on the American money he’s stealing from the government because, as he assured us, he’s more presidential than every predecessor expect Abraham Lincoln. (You’ll soon be relegated to second place, Abe — just wait.)
This draft dodger — a man who neither married nor raised anyone who served in uniform, who mocked John McCain for being captured in Vietnam, and who giddily accepted a purple heart from the veteran who earned it — apparently mused aloud to staffers about the idea of awarding himself the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military distinction. Trump’s trying to steal everything else he can get his hands on, so why not commit the most disrespectful form of stolen valor?
His vanity has now reached divine proportions. Because autographing and selling “Trump Bibles” to MAGA cultists was not blasphemous enough, in the past year he posted social media images depicting himself as both the Pope and Jesus.
To be fair, Trump saved America from ruin, as he tells anyone who will listen. All of which has elevated him — with a useful assist from a Supreme Court controlled by another six compliant, fawning lackeys — to become the first president completely above the law. On social media, Our National Savior declared his power is absolute and inviolable: “He who saves his Country does not violate any law.”
He’s better than you
In our uniquely thin-skinned era of feigned political victimhood, elitism is purportedly the most grievous of all political sins. In one breath, Republican politicians and their conservative media allies scold Democrats — especially those from coastal urban enclaves — for thinking they’re better than other Americans. Yet without irony, in the next breath these same pearly-clutching purveyors of pique praise their beloved Narcissist in Chief as better than everyone, including other presidents.
Even after the shooting attempt at White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump’s narcissism was on fully display. Still in his tuxedo, moments after being rushed back to the safety of the White House, he boasted that, in his study of assassinations, “the most impactful (figures) … are the ones that (assassins) go after.” Even attempts on his life validate his singular greatness.
America has suffered ignorant presidents, corrupt presidents, and incompetent presidents. Trump is all of these, yet something far worse: He’s the first president to view the presidency not as a sacred public obligation, but as a personal vanity project designed solely to serve himself.
Tom Schaller is professor of political science at UMBC, and author of five books, including New York Times bestseller White Rural Rage.
That’s it for today
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Is this actually our government... or is it branding with nuclear codes??? Are these real policy decisions... or ego maintenance? I am no longer watching leadership... It's like some sick vanity project with real-world consequences.
If the presidency = personal brand extension, like media control, loyalty tests, narrative management, etc.... is governence even in the same ballpark as representation or public service? At what point do I get official notice that it all start becoming private enterprise? What about the people that can't see this?