The Narcissist
One bit of imagery is provided by Trump that is an absolutely perfect and definitive portrait of his psyche. Like most revelations of the truth, it is unintended, of course, but that hardly undermines the quality of the imagery. Trump is referencing his self-described positive impact on the economic status of African-Americans during his term and he gets to the point at which the coronavirus impacted things. The imagery reveals a man who is completely oblivious not just to the reality of the economic pain the pandemic caused, but his own Zeus-like ability to control it:
“I got—forget all about the good economic numbers, which will be just as good in a very short—because I turned it off and I then I turned it back on again.”
The Existential Problem
The existential problem with four years of governing by the Trump administration is not really located in the man at the top himself. Even the craziest of leaders in history have been stopped by the people who were below them. The problem with Trump is that nobody below him is willing to stand up and do their job of protecting America from a danger even when that danger occupies the Oval Office. Jim Mattis, a former Secretary of Defense is presented in all his full bloom of ironic imagery at the point at which he identifies this existential problem yet is oblivious to his own complicity in it:
“Nobody believes—even the people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says.”
The Motto
There is apparently an unofficial motto among all those powerful Republicans who could do something to stop Trump from exercising his most unhealthy impulses, but choose not to. It does, perhaps, tie in with the assessment by Mattis of a willingness to believe in a larger picture even when the details are vomit-inducing. It has been not just the unofficial motto of the GOP, but their methodology of dealing with Trump. For many, at least—not for all by any means—the motto has turned out to be a recipe for disaster masquerading as imagery:
“Earlier in the evening, Pence told Coats in a sidebar conversation to `Stay the course.’ At the end of the night, the vice president bid his fellow Hoosiers goodbye. `And I just looked at him like, this is horrible. I mean, we made eye contact,’ Marsha says. I think he understood. And he just whispered in my ear, ‘Stay the course.’”
The (Non)-Transcript
Throughout the investigation and impeachment, Trump routinely referred to the summary he released of his infamous phone call with the newly installed leader of Ukraine as a “transcript.” Technically, it was not a transcript since it was not a verbatim recording of everything which was said, but rather a loose confederation of quotes and description of other quotes. Because he could not relieve himself of the opinion that what he released was actually a transcript, Trump remained—and probably still remains—incapable of understanding how it was precisely the release of that document which unleashed the flood waters leading to his impeachment. Woodward desperately tries to get Trump to see this, but the immovable object is simply too large and embedded in the ground of his own constructed reality. Even when Woodward offers him a perfect bit of imagery which history justifies to place the issue in context, it remains a non-starter:
Woodward: “I am telling you my experience, and my conviction, my reportorial belief, you gave them a sword when you released that transcript.”
Trump: "I so disagree with you. If I didn’t have a transcription, they would have made up a story that was so phony and I would've had no defense.”
