Is Trump really only in it for himself?

The events of this summer make it clear President Trump is risking his very life to run, coming within less than an inch of having his head blown off on national television.  What selfish, self-interested person would voluntarily lay their lives on the line any time they appear in public? 

With two weeks to go until the election, it’s become a common refrain from his detractors:  Former President Donald Trump is only running for a third time for his own selfish, personal reasons.  This meme is applied to almost every development in the campaign.  Most recently, a hurricane of all things was cause to repeat it.  According to The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, “Trump’s Hurricane Conspiracies Prove He Only Cares About Himself.”  Last month, it was his debate performance, as in “Harris proved that Trump will only ever serve himself” according to Dr. Rashad Richey from Straight Arrow News.  In June, The Daily Beast insisted, “Trump Can Only Think of Himself After Fans Collapse at Town Hall.”  As early as 2020, CNN was opining, “Trump’s actions show he’s still only out for himself.”  Mark Cuban, billionaire and Harris supporter, recently picked up on this idea personally, saying his “loyalty is only to himself” to fellow billionaire, but Trump supporter, Elon Musk. “Elon, there will come a time when you need something from Donald Trump,” he wrote on X. “You will think you will have earned the right to ask and receive. You have been a loyal, faithful soldier for him.” “At the point you need him the most,” he continued. “You will find out what so many before you have learned, his loyalty is only to himself.”  Apparently, this idea is so potent that President Biden, when he was still the candidate, as in before he was forced out of the race in an unprecedented political coup, devoted an entire ad to it, calling him a “convicted criminal who’s only out for himself.”  President Biden’s successor, Vice President Kamala Harris repeated something similar at their one and only Presidential Debate, insisting “You just have to look at where we are and where we stand on the issues. And I’d invite you to know that Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”  In her closing statement, she put it a different way, “The only thing I ever asked them, are you okay? And that’s the kind of president we need right now. Someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first. I intend to be a president for all Americans and focus on what we can do over the next 10 and 20 years to build back up our country by investing right now in you, the American people.”  The idea that the former President is a pathological narcissist and egotist frequently accompanies this refrain with no shortage of stories to that effect as well.  For example, the High Conflict Institute, a supposedly professional group of actual psychologists, pondered “Malignant Narcissism: Does the President Really Have It?” as early as March 2019.  Not surprisingly, they concluded, “some say yes,” quoting John Gartner, Ph.D., and author of Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump.  “Trump suffers from malignant narcissism, a diagnosis [that is] far more toxic and dangerous than mere narcissistic personality disorder because it combines narcissism with three other severely pathological components: paranoia, sociopathy, and sadism. When combined, this perfect storm of psychopathology defines the ‘quintessence of evil,’ according to Fromm, the closest thing psychiatry has to describing a true human monster.”  Dr. Gartner, who needless to say never met Trump personally, even managed to combine the two memes, noting that President Trump has “empathy for no one but himself.”

To assess these claims, we should acknowledge the easy part first:  President Trump certainly has a massive ego bordering on narcissism, but generally speaking, those are standard features of anyone that aspires to the Presidency, no indications of the quintessence of evil or whatever you choose to call it.  The highest office on the planet isn’t known for occupants who aren’t thoroughly convinced of their own greatness and righteousness, far, far more so than the average person, one might say for obvious reasons.  Perhaps no one described this tendency better than Alice Hathaway Lee, who once claimed her father, Teddy Roosevelt wanted to be “the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.”  In other words, powerful people frequently center everything on themselves, but because the phenomena is frequently accompanied by a deep personal investment and passion, once again well beyond what the average person is capable of, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a leader.  Some might say it was a requirement. Teddy Roosevelt in particular, is an instructive case even beyond the assassination attempt and trials after office. Monstrous ego and all, he was a historical victim of his own success. The most popular President in history at the time, he presided over an era so prosperous and peaceful – there was literally not a single shot fired by a US soldier at an enemy in almost eight years, largely thanks to a foreign policy that remains unmatched in its mastery of world affairs having been known as a “herder of emperors” – he has been somewhat forgotten over the years because of our tendency to focus on leaders almost exclusively during war time.  When he left office in 1909, however, he was considered in such exalted company that his face was carved on Mount Rushmore beside the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.  Jefferson, meanwhile, may have been a different kind of man than Roosevelt in general, more thinker than adventurer, but he too had a Machiavellian tendency to center everything on his own self interest, to the point where he was willing to sacrifice the political unity of the country when his friend John Adams was in office, solely so that he could become President himself four years later.  When Adams ascended the office after Washington, he offered Jefferson the opportunity to form a bi-partisan, coalition government, willing to staff his own cabinet with both Federalists and Anti-federalists, but Jefferson refused out of his own self interest – a self interest he believed would benefit the country once he assumed the office.  Similarly, it has been said of President Andrew Jackson that he viewed himself as the personification of America and therefore, what was good for him was good for America.  While one can certainly debate the merits of these claims, clearly President Trump isn’t alone in the narcissism and ego department, or having a craving for power.

Once we accept that ego comes with the job, this leaves the claim that Trump is only out for himself and/or loyal to himself.  Of course, we cannot look into his head to see for ourselves what he really thinks, but generally speaking, being out for one’s self assumes a specific gain for one’s self, some reward that would be unique to President Trump and no other office seeker. Therefore, we can ask what unique personal benefit he might obtain from becoming the occupant of the oval office for a second time and we can also consider the risks that accompany this potential reward.   Of unique benefits, there are few that I can see, financial or otherwise.  Contrary to the way progressives frame it, being President made Trump poorer rather than richer, costing him rather than benefiting him.  According to Forbes, he entered office in 2016 with an estimated $4.5 billion net worth, only to see that number plunge to less than half, $2.1 billion in 2020.  Recently, the initial public offering of his social network, Truth Social, has increased his holdings above his ascension to the Presidency in 2017, but before then his wealth didn’t top $3 billion, representing at least a 33% decline.  In addition, the fines and legal fees that have piled up since he left office and which were incredibly unlikely to occur if he remained in private life are estimated at around $540 million.  Despite all the breathless claims that President Trump is using the office to enrich himself, the opposite has occurred, nor does he have any reason to believe the results will be different should he win again next month.  At the same time, some insist the primary benefit he seeks is an escape from various legal troubles, that is if he becomes President again he can avoid additional fines and potential jail time from his conviction in New York City and other pending state and federal cases.  As the venerable BBC asked, “Is Trump running for president mostly to avoid prison?”  They put it this way in 2023, “Mr Trump has made clear that no verdict or sentence will halt his campaign. That he will carry on running for president from behind bars if he has to.  And that if elected he will use the power of his office to either quash any ongoing prosecutions or pardon himself for any convictions.”  While it’s true that the federal charges (at least) would likely disappear should he take office again, we can certainly consider whether this is the optimal means when facing hundreds of years in prison.  Is there any lawyer in the country that would recommend his client become President rather than simply make a plea deal?  Assuming he would have been charged to this extent in the first place had he remained an ordinary citizen, it seems overwhelmingly clear that there are easier and much less risky ways to extract himself from legal entanglements than winning an office the vast majority of pundits and prognosticators believed was essentially unwinnable, having pronounced him politically dead countless times.

This brings us back to the question of risk.  In addition to forgoing any plea deals and incurring potential jail time as a result, the events of this summer make it clear President Trump is risking his very life to run, coming within less than an inch of having his head blown off on national television in the first of two documented assassination attempts.  What selfish, self-interested person would voluntarily lay their lives on the line any time they appear in public to advance some other vague, indefinable notion of their own self interest?  As President Trump himself has said, he doesn’t need any of this.  He’s rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams, even with a diminished fortune.  He has a wife, children, and grandchildren that he adores.  He could be enjoying all that – complete with enhanced personal safety and the ability to negotiate away potential jail time – but instead he is single mindedly pursuing the Presidency to the full extent of his ability, costing him time, money, and possibly freedom.  While we cannot say for sure why he is doing this and we can safely assume ego is a significant part of his calculus, this seems a rather odd, contradictory version of self-interest as it is usually described.  A more logical, consistent explanation might be that he truly loves this country and – even if only as a result of his own ego – believes he can effect positive change, the same way most politicians do.  Recently, Fox News personality and former wrestler, Tyrus, encapsulated this aspect of President Trump’s drive.  After apologizing to the former President for criticizing how he fights his political battles, he said that he didn’t know him as a man and didn’t know what he fights for until he observed him with this ten year old daughter.   He described the encounter, “So Gutfeld show’s over, cameras go off, we go off stage, and I expected you to be like every politician or every celebrity I’ve ever bodyguarded for, and then you met my family.  You talked to my daughter.  My daughter is ten years’ old and her name is Georgie.  You guys talked for twenty minutes.  If nobody knew, you could’ve been her grandfather.  You were talking about her horses and her dreams and I was sitting there and I was like I have been so wrong about this man because I never understood why you fight the way you fight.  You’re a family man.”  Of course, President Trump’s detractors will never see it that way, but perhaps we can ask them why his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris’ motives are so pure in comparison?  Why would anyone believe she and she alone is running out of the goodness of her heart rather than any selfish motive?  The question becomes doubly pointed when you consider that she was anointed rather than elected, able to bypass the grueling slog of the primary complete with bitter cold in Iowa and New Hampshire to become the nominee without a single vote?  Putting this another way, the Vice President could become chief executive of the United States after campaigning for less than four months, as opposed to well over a full year for every modern candidate, a deal almost any aspiring politician or tyrant in the world would take.  She hasn’t put in nearly the work that any of her predecessors have, not even close to what President Trump has committed.  Instead, she plans to slip into the office more easily than almost anyone in history, reaping the power and the potential benefits while paying very little of the usual cost.  In normal times, we might call that a pretty self-interested calculation.