By Calvin Hill
It is not that he doesn’t read – it’s that he won’t read. Having heard a number of his biographers who have said that he doesn’t read, Donald Trump makes a very unconvincing argument that being president takes away from his time reading. While other presidents seemed to always manage to have a book with them when boarding Marine One or Air Force One, Trump is more content just to have his phone in his pocket. One can only wonder how many chapters of a book could have been read instead of the self indulgent narcissism of the myriad Tweet tantrums he has engaged in during any given weekend.
Theories abound as to how The Donald got this way. Doctors of psychiatry have termed his narcissistic behavior as “malignant.” In Episode One of the podcast Powell To The People, psychologist Dr. John Gartner reveals several of Trump’s behavioral habits as that of a malignant narcissist.
I am not a doctor. Nor do I have any medical or psychiatric training. My opinion is based solely on an observational diagnosis having lived almost as long as Donald Trump, educated in the New York City public school system around the same years that Trump was being educated in New York, and having witnessed the changing scope of education in America. In the 1950s and ’60s, students were separated into classes with students they were most likely to keep up with. Students that had difficulty keeping up with doing the required work were put in separate learning classes and, occasionally, held back to repeat a grade. Students who seemed unable to do the work and/or were extreme disciplinary problems could be placed in totally different schools. For parents of means, like Fred Trump, who felt their child, needed more structure and discipline to buckle down, military school was an option. Years later, what was found to be an issue that was not addressed in the 1950s, is what I believe to be Donald Trump’s problem. I think that if he were tested then, using today’s methods, they might have found that Donald Trump was learning disabled. And we now know, that once diagnosed, it requires a special kind of education.
The bullying aspect of Trump’s personality is to attack the intelligence and accomplishments of those much smarter than he is to obfuscate his life of failures and disappointments. He surrounds himself with yes men, yes women and sycophants who publicly massage his ego while privately bestowing differing variations of “moron” and “idiot” upon his reality. A learning disability could also explain his lack of knowledge of the simplest bits of history and why he gets so much of it wrong. He is adamant in his attempts to convince more learned people that he knows what he is doing, even when the evidence is to the contrary.
Trump’s long term lawyer/fixer, Michael Cohen, recently testified before Congress that Mr. Trump had him threaten the educational institutions he attended if they released any of his grades or test scores while his former client repeatedly inflates the vast capacity of his brain power. For someone who claimed to graduate at the top of his class at the Wharton School of Business, his grades should be something Trump is proud of, not embarrassed about. His spurious attacks on the intelligence of others would seem to welcome a side-by-side comparison of his scores with those he accuses of being “low IQ” and “dumb as a rock.” And no former teachers or fellow students have come forward to report that he was even a good student much less one of superior intellect.
The venom with which he targeted Barack Obama and his accomplishments as a student, author and President of the United States reveals an innate deficiency that probably goes back to his father’s teaching when they blatantly violated the Fair Housing Act. An arrest report of Fred Trump in support of a KKK rally might cause one to imagine the kind of dinner sermons that took place around the Trump dinner table. Today, you can find the anti-black rhetoric on any given website, YouTube channel or Facebook page. Failing that, you can merely listen to varying statements by Donald Trump over the past 3 1/2 years, consult his biographers, or some of those who worked for him.
The glaring and constant need for adulation is a sign of an almost incurable weakness. Trump’s need to lash out at those who have disagreements is a sign of deep insecurity probably stemming from a lifelong inability to compete on an intellectual level. It is, perhaps, why there is no gray area for Trump – you either win or you lose. It is why he will fight, to his last breath, to conceal every correspondence with Vladimir Putin. He could never admit the likelihood that his years long attempt to build a Trump Moscow was a Kremlin designed carrot that was used to reel him in. It was never going to happen. His supporters who believe that the Saudis and the Russian oligarchs who vastly overpaid for Trump properties were victims of Trump’s erstwhile deal making and marketing abilities were, themselves, victims of Russian bots.
Trump’s body language after his 2-hour tongue lashing in Helsinki, at the hands of Vladimir Putin, tells the story of a badly beaten man. And for all his talk of how he has been tough on Russia and is not compromised by the Kremlin, why does he hide all his talks with Putin? If he is not a Russian asset, why won’t he release the transcripts of his meetings? And why won’t he give the order to secure our elections against any foreign interference? It looked pretty clear that the glad handed greeting between the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the president of Russia at the recent G20 summit belied a lot more in common than killing their journalistic opposition.
Trump has been had. And he was had for cheap. For all his Congressional supporters and media lackeys who find his Tweet tantrums to be fresh and exhilarating and his use of the term “covfefe” to hold some profoundly distinct meaning, they need to think with a lot more logic and reason because I believe it explains a lot. I think it is a lot more likely that it signifies the degree to which he is, indeed, learning disabled.
The Op-Ed Alternative 