He’s touchy about Conway because he’s worried about dementia
by digby
Conway and McCain’s feuds nonetheless revealed a handful of truths about the president and his White House, starting with the president’s hair-trigger sensitivity over accusations of mental instability. After the author Michael Wolff raised questions about Trump’s mental health in a 2018 book, the president lashed out — despite warnings that he was only inflating Wolff’s book sales — and insisted that he was a “stable genius.” Those who know him say these barbs are a point of particular sensitivity, and his dispute with Conway appears to have originated from the attorney’s recent suggestions that Trump is mentally ill.
After tweeting images from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the text medical professionals use to diagnose mental illness — listing the characteristic of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Conway charged that Trump is “unfit and incompetent for the esteemed office you temporarily hold.”
“I don’t think that Trump is laughing at that,” said Jack O’Donnell, a former Trump casino executive who has become a critic of the president. “He takes that stuff pretty personally.”
The two disputes also highlight Trump’s inclination to personalize disagreements and disputes, roping in family members and friends and working to divide them against one another to inflict maximum damage.
The Conway-Trump grudge match grew even more heated midday Wednesday when Trump stopped to take questions from reporters before boarding Air Force One en route to Ohio and described George Conway as “a tremendous disservice to a wife and family.”
The accusation mirrored the president’s response through the winter to the cooperation of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, with federal prosecutors. The president took aim at Cohen’s father-in-law, retweeting a conservative author who had suggested he was a “loan shark” and telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in mid-January that rather than provide investigators with information on him, Cohen should “give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at.”
“He makes it personal so that it hurts a little bit more. That’s when he enjoys it,” O’Donnell said. “He’s very calculating in that way.”
I have written this before, I think he takes it personally because he is terrified that he’s going to get Alzheimer’s disease like his father. And maybe, he’s actually having some symptoms, some of which are manifesting themselves in ways we don’t know. But even if he isn’t, he’s got to be acutely aware that it could be coming.
I don’t see evidence of it, personally. I think his psychological problems are something quite different. He’s always been a pathological narcissist and he’s undoubtedly got some other serious problems. The stress of the job may be making all that worse. But his problems seem to be different than the dementia I’ve seen in my life. (But what do I know?)
In any case, whether he’s feeling some symptoms or is just worrying about getting them, it woudn’t be surprising that he’d get very defensive on that subject.
Also, he’s an asshole.
But there’s no excuse for this:
Kellyanne Conway was drawn into the dispute on Wednesday, seemingly forced to choose between her husband and her boss. She chose the latter, perhaps one reason White House aides say her standing with Trump has not been diminished by her husband’s bitter exchanges with the president.
“You think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a nonmedical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?” Conway told POLITICO.
I have no idea what game she’s playing, but to take the side of Donald Trump over her own husband and father of her four kids is just … awful. If she couldn’t bear to lose her stupid job and stick up for her spouse, she could at least have kept her mouth shut. Of course, this may just be part of their good cop-bad cop strategy, which at this point is just … weird.
I still think she’s the infamous op-ed writer … setting herself up as the hero when the whole thing falls apart. Whether this is part of that I couldn’t say.
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