I like this thread, but I think it's just a long way of saying that Trump suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He deflects anything that might hurt his ego & says anything that might help it, *in the moment*. There IS no thinking about future consequences. https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1303855414115799040

I think people w/ other psych issues ought to be able to empathize. Imagine, for instance, a person with social anxiety disorder, trapped in small talk at a cocktail party. For that person, the anxiety is like rising ocean tides, crashing on their brain ...

... eventually creating white noise that blots everything out. They will say/do *anything* to escape the situation, even if it creates social issues/difficulties down the line. Who can think about "down the line" when there's a raging storm of white noise in their head?

Those kinds of chemical or hormonal surges of anxiety simply don't admit to any perspective-taking or long-term thinking.

For someone like Trump, with NPD, I just imagine that white noise being almost constant, stirred up by virtually any stimulus or interaction.

He's GOT to say what assuages his ego in the moment, the same way a socially anxious person has GOT to escape an interaction.

On a minute-by-minute, day-by-day basis, downplaying the virus gave him the short-term ego relief he desperately needed, in those particular situations.

Yes, he was setting himself up for long-term trouble, in a very obvious way, but he wasn't thinking about that, he was just quieting the white noise.

Obviously the dude deserves no sympathy, but man, NPD just sounds like a terrible, terrible way to live.

Look at this. He is admitting to watching 9 hours of TV, all to see what they're saying about him, to find out whether his latest short-term gambit succeeded in producing ego reinforcement. This is straight-up compulsive behavior. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1304150319639793665?s=21