Many words and phrases have been used to describe Donald Trump since he began the 2016 race for President of the United States: racist, bigot, Big Wall, businessman, political outsider, or (my personal favorite) ‘YUUUUGE’.  Despite Trump’s business experience and his incredible ability to say just about anything without feeling the effects of political pressure from the public or the media to soften his tone, I truly feel there is one word that describes Trump far better than any his supporters have been able to admit thus far: Narcissist.

The reason Trump doesn’t feel compelled to apologize when he makes reprehensible remarks toward entire voting blocs, or childish “I-hate-your-face” insults at Carly Fiorina or Rand Paul, is because a narcissist is incapable of feeling or understanding the impacts of their actions.  To Trump, he is the greatest negotiator, the best speaker, the most capable handler, the easiest to get along with…hell, he most definitely thinks his farts smell like Skittles coated with frosting.  No commentary to the contrary has ever existed, nor will it ever….and that is what makes a man like him so very, very dangerous in the Oval Office.

To be fair, everyone running for office has to have a healthy dose of confidence to overcome the amount of constant criticism and nitpicking that goes on in today’s politicking. Despite the level of intelligence and experience required to be a very excellent brain surgeon, Ben Carson is a perfect example of a candidate who lacks the essential quality – that “charm” – to command a crowd long enough to keep them engaged and to distract the media from his lack of political experience.  Let’s be honest, he reminds me of Prince Valium from “Spaceballs”. When he speaks, he sort of trails off and closes his eyes, as if he’s about to lose to a battle of narcolepsy….

Trump, on the other hand, has quite the opposite problem. He is engaging, he fires up a crowd, and because he never stops talking, he seems to make the audience feel like he will get shit done. However (comma) I have never heard someone say so many words in one breath without actually saying anything at all.

To demonstrate, at one of his recent town hall meetings in Rochester, NY, a female in the audience asked him what exactly Trump would do for a voter like her: qualified, just finished her Master’s degree, U.S. citizen, but unable to find a job because she is told she is either “overly- or underly qualified”.  Here was his response:

“You know, it’s such a question, I get it all the time. It’s an amazing question. One of the things we’re doing, we’ll be taking our jobs back from China and Japan and all of these other places that have been ripping us for years. They have been – I have been talking about this for ten years, 15 years. No politician sees it. We’re bringing our jobs back here, we’re bringing our manufacturing back here. One of the things, and I will tell you, it’s maybe the question, other than the Vets, maybe it’s the question I get asked the most. Ok? And that’s people – young, beautiful, great people, they go to college, in many cases borrow a lot of money to get through college, they’re so proud of themselves, they do well, they’re good students, they work hard – they get out, they can’t get a job. With Trump…you know there’s an expression: ‘I will be the greatest jobs President that God ever created.’ I can tell you that. That’s what you need.”

After a masterful display of verbal masturbation, what exactly did Trump say that answered her question?  Absolutely nothing.  In fact, what he provided was little more than the following translation:

“Thank you for your excellent question, which I get asked all the time [side note: probably because he still hasn’t answered it]. We need more American jobs here, and we need more manufacturing jobs.  I’m so smart I’ve been saying this for the past ten or 15 years. Now I will recap the story the questioner told me already, about her going to college and getting a degree, then graduating and not being able to find a job. Since I don’t have an actual trade, infrastructure, or investment plan that will describe how we can bring American jobs back, I will just tell you that I will be the greatest jobs President ever, because it sounds good and it makes you clap.”

But that isn’t even the worst part.  At the end of his nonsensical rambling, in which he did nothing to answer this young woman’s question, she followed up by asking, “Will you hire me?” Direct question to Trump, yet he took a direct dodge to the next questioner, pretending he didn’t hear her. Ouch.

These kinds of Q & A’s are par for the course with the Great Narcissist Donald Trump.  I find it somewhat fascinating (and frightening) that his supporters have not tired of hearing him boast about how perfect he is, and furthermore not yet seen the problem this may create for a country that depends upon compromise, diplomacy, and self-reflection in order to maintain stability both domestically and internationally.

I dated a narcissist once.  He wasn’t a businessman, but he was equally as full of shit as Trump.  During the courting phase, I bought this man’s bullshit hook, line, and sinker – he was fun, carefree, always had a good time, and never seemed to have any obligations.  It wasn’t until I moved in with him that I was able to see with my own eyes exactly what I’d bought into: a full-blown man-child, complete with the six month pile of laundry on the basement floor and gaming controller permanently attached to his hand any moment of the day he wasn’t sleeping or at work. One time, after a straight week of dawn-til-midnight gaming during his vacation from work, he complained that he “hadn’t gotten much game time in.”

In hindsight it became so blatantly obvious to me how, with just a little bit of analysis and critical thinking, there was never any substance to what he’d been saying to me the entire time.  A narcissist will always see themselves in the best light, and never see themselves the way the rest of the world does. Trust me, someone who promises they are the greatest, the best, the most wonderful, and never has any enemies is one of the following: they are deluding themselves, or they are my grandmother (because she truly was the greatest, and I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like her).

The most dangerous symptom of narcissism is that from which vampires also suffer: no reflection. We often believe in folklore that vampires cannot see their own reflection in the mirror, nor do they cast a shadow.  Narcissists operate much the same way, in that they have no ability to see how they truly appear to other people, and they feel as if their mistakes cast no lasting impact anyone around them.  They show no remorse or sense of fault, not even in the face of hypocrisy.

Herein the danger is presented: were we to have a president so full of himself that he could only believe his own way is infallible, what would prevent him from taking the same actions previous Obama-haters and Dubya-haters have complained about in the past 10 years…or (more likely) even worse? President Bush, for example, went against strong recommendations from the United Nations Security Council and all but one of the permanent members of the U.N. to invade Iraq after 9/11. We now know the intelligence used to warrant that war was “faulty” at best, though in reality some senior-level people involved (Tyler Drumheller and Mike Morell, for example) have recently stated they were actually pressured by the administration to make the case for WMDs regardless of the real intelligence found. Fast forward to the Obama administration, where many are criticizing him for circumventing Congress to issue executive orders on very controversial issues, which, they argue, takes away the balance of power necessary to maintain the integrity of our Constitution.

So, what if Trump were to become president?  What kind of cabinet would he have? Obviously a plethora of yes men, but what would happen if an advisor told a man like Trump that one of his ideas were wrong, ill-advised, or not supported by the American people? Trump wouldn’t give a damn, because his ideas are always the greatest in the world, despite evidence to the contrary. He likes to ignore facts when they don’t support his viewpoint (even if those facts surround his own actions caught on camera).

The man recently attacked Carly Fiorina by saying “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” and when questioned about the maturity of such a statement he responded that he was talking about Fiorina’s “persona”.  That is a man who certainly thinks he is above any sort of scrutiny or truth. In fact, Trump was extremely annoyed when the media asked him about making comments about Fiorina’s face, and he honestly believed that the comments he made had nothing at all to do with her physical features. Sadly, his supporters seemed to buy into his explanation.

What a majority of Americans today lack is critical or analytical thought – most are taking each news soundbite delivered to them at face value, without regard for how incredibly hollow these statements really are. Trump knows this, and he’s capitalizing on it big time.

In a world where sound bites win big on emotion and draw crowds, a man like Trump – a man with no substance – can pinpoint the watchwords which insight feisty constituents that are willing to throw the baby out with the bath water in order to punish certain minorities and government inefficiencies. Unfortunately, the only winner in this entire equation is Donald Trump.  The American people would be worse for wear, with nothing to show except a Yuuge wall on our southern border, plenty of federal spending for Trump Highways and Trump Bridges built by contractors hand-picked by him, and America’s own forced “refugee crisis” when he attempts to deport millions of illegals.

What a great vision. I’m certain the Founding Fathers would be proud of a democracy that would promote such a character for the executive branch.