“You can do anything when you’re a star…”by digby
He believes he is omnipotent and nothing can touch him. He knows he’s always gotten away with everything and believes he always will:
Trump has internalized the belief that he can largely operate with impunity, people close to him said. His political base cheers him on. Fellow Republican leaders largely stand by him. His staff scrambles to explain away his misbehavior — or even to laugh it off. And the White House disciplinarian, chief of staff John F. Kelly, has said it is not his job to control the president.
For years, Trump has fired off incendiary tweets and created self-sabotaging controversies. The pattern captures the musings of a man who traffics in conspiracy theories and alternate realities and who can’t resist inserting himself into any story line at any moment.
“In an intensely polarized world, you can’t burn down the same house twice,” said Alex Castellanos, a GOP campaign consultant. “What has Donald Trump got to lose at this point?”
Castellanos added that for many voters, and especially Trump’s base, there’s an “upside” to his bellicosity. “A strong daddy bear is what a lot of voters want,” he said. “Right or wrong, at least he’s fighting for us.”
[…]
In Missouri, he was talking about taxes, but he might as well been describing his mind-set.
“Hey, look, I’m president,” Trump said. “I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.”
[…]Trump’s advisers and friends said he feels emboldened, even invincible, to communicate as he chooses — especially on cultural issues, believing that his stances work for him politically by galvanizing his base.
Having long trafficked in conspiracy theories — his political rise was fueled by his role as one of the nation’s leading champions of the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States — Trump continues as president to promote falsehoods and reject facts.
Trump has recently told friends that he believes special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation will be winding down by the end of the year and that he will be exonerated, even though many experts and others close to the wide-ranging probe say that view is overly optimistic.
Trump has watched as other high-profile men’s careers have crumbled under the weight of public accusations of sexual misconduct. Yet Trump has faced no disciplinary repercussions, even after bragging on a 2005 tape about having sexually assaulted women. “Grab ’em by the p—y. You can do anything,” Trump told “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, who lost his job over the incident.
“You can do anything.”
When he said that he meant “I can do anything.”
.