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this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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To those of you who say he was always like this - Yes and No IMO. Look at his interviews from - even from the early 2000's he's "relatively" normal. At least in terms of how he's processing things.
He's a fraud, obvs. He's corrupt, narcissistic, stupid, vain, arrogant, etc. Yes. No doubt. A true turd. No argument there. But: he's not the babbling cretin he is now.
He was babbling in 2016, yes. He was clearly already having problems - so many people talking about how he just says the same thing over and over for hours. Well, that ain't right. So much effort into trying to show he's "normal" when he's clearly losing it.
And then he got the covids. And decided he was going to stage a coup. And the rest of his "relatively normal" brain said, aiight imma head out.
Now he's just pathetic and horrifying. He was always awful, always a total fool, but not always so neurotic and random.
Yeah look at him in the birther conspiracy years and you can see the progression of a man slowly succumbing to mental illness. He was always a two faced dipshit, but he was a sane con man once.
What we see today is a very mentally ill fascist. Either alone presents an incomplete picture of him. Dementia, power, and the frustration of a con man facing pushback.
I think the birther nonsense is more key to his current state than people realize. I think that, rather than just being a con man playing rubes for fools, he genuinely fell down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole like so many others and his world view ceased even remotely resembling reality. He fits the typical conspiracy victim archetype: dumb or poorly educated (his professor called him the worst student he ever had) but thinks he's smart, and desperate for validation and respect due to his father's abusive upbringing. Surrounding himself with people who'd call him a genius and truth-teller for whatever random nonsense he spouted broke his filter on reality and he dove right in and soaked up their approval.
In other words, he's every moron you see on Facebook, just with a louder voice and more reach. And being nothing special is the worst fate imaginable to a narcissist like him.
Edit: it also makes him far more dangerous, unfortunately. A con man will back down when their con starts unravelling, but if he genuinely believes the shit he's spewing, he'll keep pushing far past the point where he hurts himself and everyone around him. Which is what we've been seeing.
One thing that makes me doubt he's a true believer is the difference in how he treated covid publically vs behind closed doors. He knew it was a bigger deal than he was trying to downplay it as and was privately terrified of it.
Though who knows if that has since changed as his dementia has gotten worse.