In Service to a Sociopath

     To those of us on the outside looking in, we just can't understand it.

     I mean, of all people to whom one enters in a life of indentured servitude, why a sociopath?

     What's the upside?

     Well, the answer, obviously, is that if your boss is a sociopath, there is no upside. There's just a paycheck and, with Trump's burgeoning reputation of not meeting his financial obligations, even that's conditional.

     This is a guy who, as the lead picture shows, is so selfish that he can't stand the very idea of sharing his umbrella with his wife and son and would rather see them get drenched than share a bit of fabric and a few inches of his personal space.

     Maybe Melania and Barron got used to it a long time ago. Maybe Don Jr. got accustomed to his father not looking in his general direction or Eric getting thrown under the bus during depositions. Maybe both grown sons just accepted it as their lot when their father calls them "idiots". That's just Daddy being Daddy.

     As long as Melania keeps getting her spa treatments at Mar a Lago, what's a little rainwater and the occasional affair? And, as for Ivanka, she's probably happy that the only man who touches her thighs is her husband, Jared. As long as Daddy keeps his distance, it's all good.

     But what about the rest of them?

     What keeps them True Believers?

     Former Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, brings us a little closer to the answer in a Twitter thread she'd posted today in which she wrote, "Remarkable to see where many have ended up post-Trump Admin. Meadows. Bannon/Navarro convicted. Rudy in ruin. People indicted/broke. Meanwhile 'the boss' continues to lie/raise $ off people. It’s so hard to watch. Please speak up-you know who you are. He doesn’t care about you."

     Then someone asked her, "This is what I don’t understand. Who has walked away after working with Trump better for it? This excludes those of you that 'escaped'”. Grisham's answer inches us closer to the real reason by responding, 

     "That’s a totally fair ? & all I can offer is you feel 'special/untouchable' when in his circle. Your ego almost mirrors his & u think he’ll never turn on u. If u think about leaving it’s scary - he attacks, both sides hate you, jobs are hard to come by & people need to survive."

     So maybe it's as simple as that: Being near the sheer tonic of his implied power.

     But it doesn't quite answer how a man who never once tried to hide the fact that he's a sociopath can still get people to work for him who don't seem to know, or care, that they're working for a self-interested sociopath.

     Take the case of his body man, Walt Nauta.

     Nauta was folded into the indictment in South Florida. From that point on, Trump and Nauta were practically Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins. Even when Trump ordered a Philly cheese steak right after a speech, there Nauta was, joined to him at the hip. There was no way Trump was letting him out of his sight. And it wasn't because he loved his company, either.

     As Grisham said, he doesn't care about anybody but himself and you don't need to be Dr. Mary Trump to know that.

     By June 2015, when Trump went down that escalator in Trump Tower, he knew who and what his audience would be and he milked it, and still milks it, for all it's worth. When he infamously bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose any votes, he knew what he was talking about it. By that time, the Cult of Trump was already in full swing. He knew what his base was and what they'd be prepared to do for him. And on January 6 2021, Trump cynically cashed it in like a poker chip.

     So, it's a cult?

     By all outward appearances, yes. Well, there are certainly people who were once or are still in Trump's hermetic inner circle who seem to be unreformed and unrepentant. They remain slavishly in service to him, even continuing to parrot his lies for him, like all good cultists do, and some, like Nauta, seem willing to even go to prison for him. They continue to believe that Trump's travails are theirs, too, although Trump is no more disposed to share his lucrative victimhood with anyone any more than he's willing to share an umbrella on a rainy day.

     And they don't realize that, far from Trump covering for them, they're covering for him. And that, once the plea deals are taken off the table and they go to prison, their usefulness to him will then come to an end and he will never again think of them, unless he dusts off their half-forgotten names as he had with Ashli Babbitt's and trot them out for fundraising purposes. Which he also won't share.

     So, is that cult behavior? I asked Grisham that on Twitter and, while she didn't venture an answer, she did "like" my question. 

     So I'll accept that as a yes.