Chapter 2: Family secrets
If the world wanted to prevent the arrival of a narcissistic, vulgar, big-mouthed, lying, misogynic, bullying, immigrant bashing, racist, alleged rapist, president of the United States named Donald Trump, it would have to had to have started at least two generations ago—long before immigrant bashing Trump spoke of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep out Mexicans, who he characterized as “drug dealers, criminals and rapists,” long before he toned down his anti-immigrant rhetoric to say he wants a merit-based system of immigration that will favor people who speak English and demonstrate skills that will contribute to the economy of the United States of America.
Yes, the making of the vulgar Trump started at least two generations ago, when his immigrant grandfather, possessing no skills that would have seemed likely to contribute to the economy of the United States of America, changed the spelling of his name to Trump, which was listed, though perhaps misspelled, on immigration papers as Friedrich Trumpf. It was back then, two generations ago when Friedrich Trumpf, with his new, high-rolling name Trump, made the startup cash for the Trump family fortune in the Yukon region of Canada by opening a restaurant/hotel specializing in food, liquor and rooms where Yukon prospectors could obtain sex for gold.
Christ and the Klan
It was also back then when his immigrant grandmother, Elizabeth, possessing no previously known skills vital to the economic interests of the United States of America, formally opened, after the death of Friedrich, the real estate business that her son Fred and his son Donald would turn into an empire. Perhaps the making of a loud mouth named Donald Trump was overdetermined once she narcissistically decided to bequeath to her son Fred, who was Donald’s father, her maiden name, the very special moniker, Christ, as in Jesus Christ.
Fred Christ Trump would grow up to marry immigrant Mary Macleod and to become a flamboyant real estate mogul with the awful secret from a time before Donald’s birth, that he had been arrested in 1927 at a Ku Klux Klan rally and, according to one newspaper account, had been wearing full Klan regalia at the time. Lying Donald Trump denies not only the Klan membership but also the arrest. The New York Times covered the arrest and listed the address of Fred Trump as the175-24 Devonshire Rd. address where the census indicates Fred Trump and Mary McLeod lived.
Everybody wants Donald Trump to remember something
Could this family secret explain the sharp response to Trump by so-called former Klansman David Duke after this week’s Charlottesville massacre, when a domestic terrorist drove a Dodge Charger into demonstrators protesting a Unite the Right rally featuring American Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Note there were no shots fired. Apparently no cops were around. Duke, angered perhaps by Trump’s ambiguous call for an end to hatred on many sides, issued a sharp rebuke to Trump. He said that Trump needed to remember that “it was white people who put him into office.” Remember or what? We’ll send the newspapers your dad’s membership card? Duke did not say that, but why did Trump need to remember?
Before the election, when Trump was asked to renounce Dukes support, he had initially refused to do so, claiming that he was unfamiliar with David Duke, arguably the most famous Klansman of his era. Could Duke be more familiar with Trump’s father than we know? So let’s suppose it’s not a lie and racist Trump was unfamiliar with David Duke. He was certainly familiar with his father and therefore familiar with racism. Trump and his dad had barred Black people from renting their apartments well into the 1970s, when the government forced them to do so via a consent decree in 1976.
If you want to hide something from Black folks, hide it in a Woody Guthrie song
Famed folk singer song writer Woody Guthrie, who rented an apartment from Trump in the 1950s, wrote these words:
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial hate
He stirred up
In the blood pot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project
A version of Guthrie’s song about Fred Trump can be heard at the website https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jANuVKeYezs
These events and circumstances and secrets of Donald Trump’s family from at least two generations back have overdetermined that trump would eventually acquire all of the obnoxious character traits required in this psychiatrist’s opinion to qualify for a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Indeed, narcissism is one of the descriptions almost universally mentioned by those psychologists and psychiatrists who have taken the time to comment publicly on the personality of President Trump.
Narcissists are troubled, some are troubling and some are just trouble
The first characteristic of Narcissistic Personality Disorder listed in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Number 5” of the American Psychiatric Association is grandiosity, “a grandiose sense of self-importance,” and big-mouthed Trump certainly has that. When asked about employment Trump has asserted, “I will be the greatest ‘jobs president’ God ever created.” When asked about disabilities, he has said, “No one has done more for people with disabilities than me.” About religion he has said, “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” Trump described his own book, “The Art of the Deal,” as “the #1 selling business book of all time.” At that time, “The Art of the Deal” had only sold 1 million copies, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” had sold 15 million copies and “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” had sold up to 25 million. He has also admitted, “I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.” Who knew? Many people would have thought it was the enormous fortune he had inherited. The overstating of one’s accomplishments defines the characteristic grandiosity.
But there are things worse about narcissism than just big talk.
Next week, Family Secrets, Part II of Chapter 1 “The Unauthorized Psychoanalysis of Donald Trump.”