To be fair, some network media figures including MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, have expressed indignation over Trump's kid-gloves treatment and frustration over Trump's refusal to appear on O'Donnell's show for a no-holds-barred sit-down. For others however, that indignation appears manifested in the form of an obsession with peppering their colleagues with the kind of tough, follow-up questions they say are not being thrown at Trump. In a typical, but in this case, semi-hypothetical scenario, Joe Scarborough waxes indignant to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson over a debate moderator's refusal to press Trump for specifics about his pledge to "get rid of" Obamacare, even rattling off several of the kinds of questions that Scarborough believes should have been asked. Reasonable enough. But then Scarborough himself goes ahead and makes the same omissions later in the show during one of his nauseating tomato-can interviews with "Mr. Trump."
Granted, the network media game has changed as the value, boundaries and available platforms for the exploitation of "earned media" by political candidates and other public figures have significantly broadened. Couple that with page-views being equal to Nielson ratings for websites where each year, an increasing percentage of cable TV watchers are being click-baited into for their news consumption. This means it isn't as easy as it might have been to get folks to plop down in front of a flat screen. To do so requires a ratings driver -- someone like Donald Trump. But in order to get Trump to talk to you, being "nice" or "fair" to him is a prerequisite.
Narcissist or megalomaniac?
Much has been written and discussed about Trump's overt displays of narcissism, but the non-clinical diagnosis of the amateur shrink in me sees megalomania -- a pathological craving for power -- as the primary element of concern about Trump's personality. Attention is the drug of choice to the narcissist; the megalomaniac however, reaches for power. It's evident that Trump craves attention but to look closer one might discover that he clearly relishes power much more. Assuming that most voters would find megalomania to be a crucial character flaw in a Commander-in-Chief, it's likely that Trump's insistence on blind obedience to the president from our military -- even to commands that are unconstitutional -- would raise eyebrows as would his Tony Soprano-style doctrine of "taking out the families" of terrorists. To the question of how is a megalomaniac lust for power satiated if simply conquering the world just won't suffice? If you're Donald Trump that probably means it's time to head for Mars.
Trump's vapid megalomania is illustrated through his utter contempt for settings over which he has no control -- like debates -- and by the manner in which he exerts power in settings over which he has complete control. At his campaign events, no dissent of his positions is permitted. Even suspected dissent is dealt with harshly as was perhaps the case recently when an orderly group of black high school students -- at Trump's demand -- were ejected from a late February rally in Georgia. Rather than occasionally engaging dissenters secure in the confidence that his own message can withstand the scrutiny of their criticism, Trump simply throws them all out, often in brutal fashion. Why, one might ask? What's Trump got to hide?
In the case of a sure ratings-grabber like Trump, the easily foreseen consequence of the network media's capitulation to ratings over a detailed and sustained examination of his character flaws has been the channeling of Trump's rise from amusing, somewhat benign Twitter warrior to the loudest aggregator of the most trenchant elements of an ugly zeitgeist now permeating America's social milieu.
Speaking of ugly, it should be noted that the perspective here is that everything about Donald Trump has always reeked of Archie Bunker with a bulging bank account. Nevertheless, it did take a bit longer than might have been expected before it was time to officially join the not-so-joyous noise of the "TRUMP'S A RACIST" chorus. It finally happened during that brief mid-November period last year when Ben Carson was polling ahead of Trump making it the first time in months that Trump was behind in the polls. That unexpected turn of events meant that Trump needed to find precisely the right word or words to assure supporters (and himself) that ultimately Carson was no long-term threat.
During a campaign event in Fort George, Iowa Trump found that word:
"Carson's an 'eNIGma' to me," proclaimed Trump, with the term "ENIGMA" inducing a slight gasp from the audience prompting a Cheshire cat-faced Trump, arms raised in the "HANDS UP; DON'T SHOOT!" position to plead: "I didn't say it; I didn't say it."
And so there it was. Trump, the notorious anti-Christ to political correctness revealed as nothing less than a skilled enactor -- through the political process -- of the Gestalt Theory, which in part, maintains: what is viewed is what appears to the viewer, and not what may actually be there.
Yes, this would-be president is at his core, hardly what he might appear to be in the view of those who comprise Trump's most ardent supporters. But it's hard not to believe that with more in-depth scrutiny by the network media, Trump would certainly appear more like what he truly is; a one-trick show-pony who -- like the "enigma," Ben Carson -- has no business entertaining a presumption of worthiness of the title President of the United States.
Carson's "shtick" is a noble endeavor -- neurosurgery. But that's essentially it. Trump's savantism is hustling business deals mainly involving beauty pageants, skyscrapers, golf courses, and casinos, all with a garish flair of a pale-skinned Bishop Don "Magic" Juan. He has essentially pimped out his name so well that developers are willing to pony up major dollars to have TRUMP placed in large letters on structures that Trump does not own.
Nonetheless, the list of Trump's checkered record as a New York City businessman is formidable. And there are no walls of legal barriers preventing intense scrutiny by the network media of the vast paper trail of Trump's marketing failures. It's an open secret that Trump has marketed steaks, vodka, a mortgage company, water, an airline, a magazine, a football team, a travel agency, a "University," a board game, and several casinos -- each of which have failed. Yet, despite these failures, perhaps his greatest marketing success has been the marketing of himself -- through his book "The Art of the Deal -- as a businessman who never loses.
Trumptopia
To some extent, it's difficult to begrudge Trump for his towering "my sh*t don't stink" attitude. That's what happens when you read your own press clippings which tend to be all good if you are "King of All Media" which Trump has ruled over starting in June. Since then, he's managed to somehow kowtow many of its most important names -- wittingly or unwittingly -- into service as subliminal abettors to Trump's ambition, which is certainly not to "Make America Great Again," but to re-brand America and perhaps the world as " TRUMPTOPIA!"
To the Joe Scarboroughs and Mika Brzezinskis of the network media, here's a question: Let's say you wandered onto a used car lot with a pocket full of cash looking to buy and were immediately set upon by a salesman who asked you -- while displaying all of Trump's mannerisms -- to give him your money because he's got a vehicle that will "make you great again."
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