Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx each have a big decision to make tonight. The real estate developer,

[kurtcagle]

28. This is what I've come to call the Trump dilemma

People with good intentions get pulled into Trump's orbit, and think that maybe they can control his worst tendencies. Every day, they are pulled further and further into the gray zone, hoping that by being there, by trying to feed him good advice, that he'll actually listen to them and do it. Yet I've come to think that Trump doesn't work that way. He'll listen to people at first, but after a while, he notices that others are treating those people with more respect than they are him. And so he begins to ignore their advice, envious of that respect, and increasingly actively plots against them. He has to prove that he's smarter than they are, and to do that, he has to destroy their credibility, no matter what the consequences are.

At the same time, he works to find their weaknesses - troubles with taxes, a messy divorce, a bad business decision, and he uses that to threaten them from leaving. He wants power over them, wants to prove that he CAN destroy them, even if it ultimately will cause chaos and devastation.

Fauci and Birx are likely going to eventually walk, no matter the cost, because they'll realize that Trump's a lost cause. He wants their validation, not their advice, and when he doesn't get that validation, his response is to go scorched earth. This is what malignant narcissism looks like.