Trump doesn’t “believe” anything

Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.”

Substitute “Trump” for “rich” and “the very rich” and you have some insight into Trump. But in Trump’s case, it’s worse. Trump is narcissism on stilts. Josh Marshall has a useful commentary over at TPM, but it’s paywalled so I won’t link to it. Here are the nut grafs:

"I’ve discussed before that for Trump and many others we have too binary, too linear an understanding of what “belief” means. Someone like Trump doesn’t “believe” things in the way most of us do — which is that we “believe” things that we think did happen and vice versa. We’re human, so bias may affect our judgments at the margins. But that’s the model. For Trump, there is just what he wants. He “believes” whatever will get him what he wants.

“Does he somehow convince himself of this? Like some kind of willed delusion? Stop it. You’re sticking too much to your linear way of thinking about belief. He hasn’t “convinced” himself. Why would he need to and what would that mean? He just says whatever will get him what he wants. Full stop. Any sense of asking, well … has he convinced himself these things are true? No! If you could actually get Trump to sit down and be straight with you this question would probably seem as ridiculous a question as if you’d asked Marlon Brando if he really thought he ran a crime family in New York. First, of course not, but also what does that even have to do with anything?

“Trump doesn’t “believe” anything.”

*snip*

“ . . . all of Trump’s statements are simply absurd on their face — both in their inherent logic and by the say-so of everyone around him. The only unifying logic is that he would say anything he had to to remain President.

“What I think all of this means is that we don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of the inner workings of Trump’s mind. That’s his problem. Not ours. As long as we do, we’re chasing a figment where there is only one possible fact witness: him. That’s silly.

“The mob boss who says he’s never been a member of the mob isn’t confused. He doesn’t have an unrealistically high opinion of himself. He’s lying because he doesn’t want to go to prison. That’s obvious. Just as this case is obvious.”