Transcription
I suppose I have had the same problems with once and maybe again President Donald J. Trump that are shared by many. It wasn't obvious to me at all that his first shot at the leadership of the world's most powerful country was anything other than a brilliant and unorthodox marketing scheme. Albeit one that succeeded beyond the wildest of imaginings. Congratulations, Mr. President.
Yeah, I knew him only at that point as a self-promoting, bombastic, quintessentially American type celebrity reminiscent in my imagination of Colonel Tom Parker, the morally ambivalent, although indubitably successful promoter of Elvis Presley. However, Trump made a name for himself in the difficult business of construction where, particularly in cities such as New York and Chicago, all manner of corruption and trouble had to be managed. A challenging matter to keep the projects going on time and within budget. Anyone who's ever undertaken a renovation of any magnitude knows how badly such things can spiral out of control without diligent devotion of time and attention. He managed while doing so to make himself quite famous, another feat that is by no means as simple as those who have never done it might imagine.
Somebody who was at the Michael Jackson concert in New York said, "When you were seated, you got the loudest applause. People stood up and roared and cheered." So maybe there was something to him on the diligence, attention, and negotiation front that belied his mere success as a celebrity. After that, of course, he was co-producer and host of the reality shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. These were highly successful and, for a long time, particularly by legacy media TV standards, running more than a decade from 2004 to 2015. He's also the author of 19 books, collaborating with various ghostwriters, and has been involved in a true variety of other business enterprises.
This history of entrepreneurial activity combined with his successful bids for attention speaks to two of President Trump's cardinal personality features. He is extremely extroverted, that is, both assertive and enthusiastic, although more particularly the former rather than the latter, and also at least relatively high in trait openness, which is the single best predictor of entrepreneurial/creative activity and prowess after general intelligence. This makes him high in the personality metatitrate of plasticity, which is characterized primarily by the capacity to change, grow, and transform. Something quite evident in the case of Trump, who is a very dynamic individual indeed, particularly given his age. Many people have been set in concrete with regard to their essential being by the time they're 30. Not Trump. He reinvents himself constantly and with a high degree of continual success. That can happen by chance once, perhaps twice, but if it is sustained across many decades, there is something substantive and real at work.
I also followed the Donald with great amusement on Twitter during his presidential run and afterward when he was in office before he was turfed so scandalously by the progressive goodthinkers who infested the platform and who must be commended on their arrogance, presumption, and sheer gall. The man has a devastating and underappreciated, at least by the legacy leaders of opinion, sense of humor, although it is also somewhat ruthless. I own a very comical book, The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump, available for purchase at the Daily Wire website, by the way, which compiles his most memorable tweets and declarations from 2009 to 2019 into beautiful library edition hardback form. It is a ridiculously funny tome. I believe that deeper consideration of this proclivity for the viciously funny is also useful in shedding more general light on Trump's admittedly complex personality.
First, we should fairly note that dictatorial types, a category which his enemies insist he falls into, are generally not known for their sense of humor. People were imprisoned in the Stalinist Soviet Union for being the first to stop applauding after a speech by the great leader. Criticism was absolutely out of the question and certainly not forthcoming from the top. I've also never encountered a compendium of the witty and amusing things said by Adolf Hitler or Fidel Castro or Chairman Mao. Trump does have a surprisingly thin skin in some settings, but he can take a joke as well as tell one. He was roasted on Comedy Central in 2011, bandied back and forth self-deprecatingly several times with David Letterman. He even made a joke about getting wood during his presidential debate with Joe Biden.
"And you know, we knock on wood wherever we may have wood that I'm in very good health." By just one. "I don't think he could help himself." And I truly like that he's rough in his jokes, but no more so than Bill Burr. "You can't hit women. You can't. You honestly cannot. You ever see how they fall? They fall like toddlers, you know." And is it not the case that a certain degree of harshness is necessary for serious comedy?
Understanding and appreciating this helps us in comprehending one of Trump's more remarkable features, his serious attractiveness to the working class. This is something particularly made evident in his ability to easily banter with soldiers and policemen, a rare trait among politicians, often made nervous by the necessity of interacting with real people with dangerous and difficult jobs. Let us not forget as well that the humor characteristic of working-class men and women also tends toward the rough, more deeply. This capacity to relate the variability that is so often derided as an appeal to a hypothetically dangerous populism speaks to me of the paradoxical presence in Trump's character of a substantive degree of agreeableness, the personality trait most associated with empathy for other people and one that seriously mitigates against the more pathological elements of the narcissism that can be associated with extreme extroversion.
How can this be, given his rough and sometimes even bullying humor? Well, agreeableness subdivides into the aspects of politeness and compassion. Although they tend to covary, else would not unite to produce the trait. People can, somewhat rarely, be high in one and low in the other. This makes them somewhat harder persons to understand, but is something that is nonetheless possible. I believe that Donald J. is one of those people. He is certainly not polite. He knows how to behave, so is not merely unsocialized or accidentally so, but he frequently chooses not to. This is part of what makes him so funny. The aforementioned Bill Burr is not polite. Louis CK is not polite. Tony Hinchcliffe of current Kill Tony fame is not polite. Many comical people will say anything that comes into their mind, no matter what, if it is either true or funny, or optimally both. Trump definitely falls into this camp.
"It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country." "Because you'd be in jail." Secretary Clinton. "It is clear from the personality and psychopathology literature that people tilt towards narcissism when they are extroverted and disagreeable. Trump is indisputably extroverted, and extremely so. He's also definitely low in politeness, but he simply would not be able to make contact with the so-called ordinary people that love him if he did not care deep in the blackness of his heart. I have a suspicion that his very impoliteness is at least in part a mask worn to shield him from the pain that such caring can produce. This would make Trump a man whose gruffness is there to shield himself from the public exposure of his tender heart. There are many men who are like that."
Now, I don't know Trump except from a distance. But I know many people who do. All of them have spoken to me of his hospitable nature in private and of his proclivity to go out of his way for the people around him. This group of witnesses to his character includes people who are seriously not aligned with him politically. By the way, it is also by no means obvious that Trump kisses up and kicks down. That tendency is a very damning sign indeed, particularly in someone who has genuine power and is simply not reported of Trump. This is something that appears to stand in marked comparison to Camala Harris, who is notoriously unpopular among her staff, current and former. And for precisely that reason, two personality traits remain to assess with regard to the former president: that of neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotion, and conscientiousness, the tendency to work hard and diligently and to formulate and keep verbal contracts.
Neuroticism subdivides into withdrawal, a depression-like proclivity to shrink, avoid, and freeze in the face of challenge, and volatility, a tendency towards what can be an aggressive touchiness. Trump appears to me to be someone who is very difficult to stop. Thus, my suspicion is that he is very low in withdrawal. What may perhaps add to the paradox of his personality, however, is a higher level of volatility. People can and do get under his skin, as Camala Harris did so effectively in her debate with him.
"In Minnesota. She went out. Wait a minute. I'm talking now if you don't mind, please. Does that sound familiar?" "Don't lie." "She went out." He gets reactive, but he won't quit. And he can handle high levels of pressure on a continual basis. His spontaneous response to being nearly assassinated provided clear and stellar evidence of that.
What about conscientiousness? Well, Trump famously does not drink or use recreational drugs, so he prioritizes his sobriety and alertness over the transient pleasures of substance use. "I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life. Okay?" "Right?" "It's one of my only good traits. I don't drink." I also cannot see how he could juggle all the activities that he has been involved in. Even the ghostwriting-aided production of 19 books, not a trivial accomplishment to say the least, of all his other businesses and projects, without a true work ethic. He's up at 5:30 a.m., a sign of the so-called morningness, the preference for early rather than late hours, which is associated temperamentally with both agreeableness and conscientiousness.
"As a spouse, a parent, or a leader, people count on you. But if you're constantly tired, unfocused, and just not feeling like yourself, how can you show up the way they need you to? That's where Merrick Health comes in. Merrick is a premier health optimization platform that uses comprehensive lab work, not guesswork, to uncover what's really going on in your body. Hormones, thyroid, inflammation, nutrient levels, the markers that matter. Their expert clinical teams build a personalized research-backed plan just for you. Whether it's lifestyle changes, supplements, or prescription treatments, when you know what's going on inside, you can leave with clarity. Show up with energy and stay sharp for your family, your team, and yourself. Head over to mealth.com and use code peterson for 10% off to join their guided optimization program with your personal medical team. That's mealth.com code peterson. Stop guessing, start leading, and start with Merrick Health."
Night owls tend as well to be more neurotic and to display more symptoms of personality disorder. Trump seems to be active and working, as well as gathering information about the state of things from TV until about midnight each day. That's a long day of movement. He has a reputation for being a veritable whirlwind of activity in general. A description I find credible given his strenuous campaign schedule, high openness and extraversion, and early morning preference, all despite his relatively advanced age.
On the openness side, I suspect Trump is more interested in ideas than aesthetics. That is, two aspects into which openness differentiates. He's not an intellectual nor an artist. So, I wouldn't place him in the upper echelons of the distribution of this trait. But no one average or below devotes any attention, for example, to writing books. And the number of books the typical person has written is zero. The diversity of his career is another testament to his trait openness. Trump is clearly a serial entrepreneur type. And he's also very interested in the entertainment world, for better or worse. That gives him commonality with those who inhabit the world of the arts and is part of what makes him a very strange Republican indeed.
So why does Trump set so many people on edge? To recapitulate: He is exceptionally extroverted, particularly with regard to the aspect of assertiveness. He's also low in politeness. Now, that combination has some overlap with narcissism, not surprising in a figure who has been in the spotlight and strived to be for so many years. However, he is genuinely compassionate, really quite surprisingly so, and appears, on the basis of his behavior, to be relatively or perhaps even markedly conscientious. The presence of those aspects and traits mitigates against what could otherwise be the dangers associated with narcissism.
We might also spend some time in regard to Trump's personality considering his family and the evidence for the Donald's fundamental reliability and perhaps even goodness that its high level of function indicates. The Trump children are a remarkably scandal-free and stable bunch, certainly by the standards set by, say, Hunter Biden. Barron seems to genuinely admire his father. Donald Jr. has many of the same personality traits of his father, for better or worse, but he has also remained free of the taint of narcissistic privilege and power. Jared Kushner married into the family but has certainly done it credit, not least on the Abraham Accord front. Trump's beautiful and elegant wife, Melania, keeps her own counsel and is admirable in so doing. She does not appear to think that she could or should run the country merely because she's married to the man who does, in marked contrast, say, to Hillary Clinton.
This familial honesty and reliability is particularly telling in the case of the Trump family, given that the almost universally Democrat-biased legacy media and its propagandistic agents would be thrilled to trumpet any possible misstep on behalf of those near the former president to the skies. Where there is smoke, there is fire. Or so goes the cliché. This is sometimes, but not always, true. The converse may be something more reliable. Where there is absolutely no smoke, even though many hawkeye observers are not only watching but wishing for it to appear, there is perhaps truly no fire. Zero scandal within the Trump family is reminiscent for me of the zero wars of the Trump presidency. It's something easy to take for granted given its too easily invisible non-existence, as it's hard to be grateful for a problem you just don't have. But it is a relief and another indication that the bombastic Donald J. has at least properly ruled his own roost. This is also no easy matter, as we have seen in the appalling family scandals of the Biden White House, and is another fact mitigating against the claim that President Trump is a danger on the temperamental front.
We should address one other relevant clinical personality issue following our analysis of personality, not least through family. Consider before we do so that there exist two primary influences on behavior: personality and the habit it constitutes, and the specifics of the situation in question. It turns out that knowledge of the former personality is clearly less useful than knowledge of the second situation or context when it comes to the specific and demanding task of predicting someone's behavior, current or future. Why? Not least because psychologically healthy persons are flexible, adapting themselves to the specific demands of the current environment despite their trait proclivities. Even extroverts are likely to be quiet, at least when they have been well socialized at a funeral. In fact, there is often something seriously wrong with those who lack such situational flexibility, although strength of character with regard to honesty constitutes a marked exception. The psychopathologies known as personality disorders, which constitute a very serious source of suffering and social conflict, are in fact precisely what emerge when someone is too rigid to change with the social demands of the moment.
This all means that it is most useful to gather evidence about how someone has acted in the past in a given situation. If the goal is prediction of their behavior when placed in that situation once again in the future, we have that evidence already at hand in the case of Trump. This means that we don't have to rely on our observations of his personality for predicting his behavior, even if they are well-founded, compelling, or even professional. The man has already been president. And for four years, what did we learn?
First and foremost, the time during Trump's tenure was peaceful, particularly on the international front. The importance of that non-prolific accomplishment can hardly be overstated. War in the nuclear age is infinitely dangerous. Had Trump been the dictator in waiting his foes so loudly and fearfully presume him to be, wouldn't some evidence of that have made itself manifest, say, on the battlefield? The typical narcissist, particularly the more malignant, sadistic, Machiavellian types, have absolutely no qualms about sacrificing others to their imperial ambitions. Indeed, they may well regard it as a great honor for others to die in service of their own glorification. Trump, by marked contrast, embroiled the U.S., the most powerful military force the world has ever seen, in precisely zero wars. Zero is a very low number.
Furthermore, he negotiated the Abraham Accords, the nine miraculous peace agreements that have built around Israel a cohort of, if not exactly Arab allies, at least not outright enemies in a just world. Trump and his previous team of diplomats should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this accomplishment, which was deemed impossible by the experts decade after decade of the State Department. It is of significant note too that these accords have held even after the events of October 7th, 2023, and all the work that has been done, mostly by the truly pathological actors of the Islamic Republic, to set the Muslim and indeed the broader world yet again against the Jews.
Let us reiterate in relation to our analysis. We understand his personality arguably, and may even have some remaining qualms about it. However, Donald J. Trump has already been president, and his tenure was marked by an absolute lack of cataclysmic occurrences. We can therefore reliably rest assured on that front. It might also be noted here that his impolite assertiveness and proclivity not to withdraw in fear or dismay might be a real strength when dealing with dictators, particularly in combination with his openness, which makes him able to think outside the box and to bring to the negotiating table the advantage of unpredictability.
Furthermore, Trump's time as president was also marked by a not inconsiderable domestic economic record, with the arguably marked exception of debt accumulation. At least decent economic performance and peace. The fact of these twin facts has put many of the various concerns I once had about Trump's personality to rest, as has my now more sophisticated appreciation for his particularized and unique combination of traits.
[Music]