What Donald Trump Doesn't Want to Hear

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/10/trump-covid-aides-pleasing-coddling/616646/


What Donald Trump Doesn’t Want to Hear
White House aides cater to the president’s emotional needs, at the expense of the country’s interests and his own health.
Peter Nicholas
5:00 AM ET


Most people admitted to the hospital are grateful if the staff makes them healthy. In President Donald Trump’s case, his doctors and top aides wanted to make him happy. Trump left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this week even though he’s still sick, vulnerable to a relapse, and spreading the virus with each maskless exhalation. He resents perceptions that he’s frail and weak, and so his team fed the illusion that he’s vital and strong. Advisers arranged a triumphant car trip around the hospital so that he could wave to fans, exposing Secret Service agents to needless risk.

“What he really doesn’t like is being portrayed as ill, weak, or sick,” a senior administration official told me. “He decided to show everyone he was okay.”

By staging photo ops and a video of his premature return to the White House, Trump’s staff again seemed to cater first to the president’s emotional needs, rather than the country’s interests or even his own health. Trump craves adulation, and to succeed in his administration, aides have to make sure he gets it. This practice began on day one with a lie about Trump’s inauguration-crowd size and has become so ingrained in West Wing operations that aides have routinely sent him reports filled with ego-stroking tweets, news stories, and transcripts of cable-news commentary. As the pandemic took hold, Trump denied its severity, and a cadre of advisers indulged the delusion. “Because he was never properly loved, he requires attention and submission,” Mary Trump, the president’s niece and a fierce critic of his, told me. “He requires not ever being contradicted.”

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At some point, most likely when Trump is no longer in power, the U.S. will open an inquiry into the pandemic, examining how the world’s most powerful country wound up with the world’s highest death toll. No doubt officials will look into the shameful politicization of once-respected agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They’ll ask why masks were so scarce. But an important reason for the virus’s spread is a familiar human story of hubris and weakness: a president lacking the emotional maturity to admit error and acknowledge a problem, surrounded by advisers afraid to confront him about his failings. “Imagine that a parent does that to a child. What do you get? You get a monster,” Mary Trump said.

Yesterday afternoon, Trump left the residence and showed up unexpectedly in the Oval Office, the heart of a West Wing space that is more confined and unventilated than people might suspect. In doing so, he brought the virus that much closer to a staff that’s already been stricken by its spread. We don’t know yet if anyone tried to stop him from leaving isolation, but if they did, he didn’t listen. Or maybe, given the history, they encouraged the idea.