The January 6 Committee transcripts are an ongoing source of revelation of Trump world in the last days. One scene that has come to light, is that of Jared Kushner testifying that when Donald Trump was told he had lost the election, he barely registered a reaction.
Testimony from Jared Kushner to the Jan. 6 committee reveals the moment WH officials told Trump the 2020 election was called in Biden's favor.
Kushner (identified as "A") notes Trump did not seem angry or sad during the phone call. pic.twitter.com/9q0u2VWNQq
— Cami Mondeaux (@cami_mondeaux) December 30, 2022
He didn’t react. Kushner’s comment, “he wasn’t showing his cards” indicates, perhaps, that Kushner sensed that Trump was hiding a reaction.
There are a few thoughts that come to mind here: The first and most obvious is sheer denial. Trump didn’t react to the information because he hadn’t processed it — at least not in any meaningful way. Sure, he heard Kushner speaking, but that doesn’t mean that he internalized, let alone accepted, anything that was said.
Second, Trump may have reacted differently to somebody else. It would be interesting to know what dialogue Ivanka had with her father about his losing the election. My guess on that would be zero. I’ll bet that Trump’s loss is the herd of elephants in the room. Nobody wants to go anywhere near that subject.
Another possibility is that Trump had every intention of not accepting the loss, either personally or privately. One of the attributes that sets Trump apart in his rhetoric to his followers is that he can say outrageous things that other politicians can’t because he believes what he’s saying. He believes anything that he’s saying the moment he says it. Five minutes later, he could have a completely different idea, but right then, while he’s saying it, he believes. Trump’s notions are fleeting and it’s well known that he repeats things told to him by the last person he spoke to.
The mind of Donald Trump is something that has been written extensively about and it’s not over yet. Mainly, he’s a performance artist, not any kind of a leader. He mastered television early on and what he was prepared to give America was a TV president, one who mouthed platitudes, cut ribbons, did ceremonial things. He was never prepared for an instant to do the actual job. He was greatly dismayed when Barack Obama explained to him how much work there actually was.
Trump is an undeveloped personality, a child in an adult’s body. He’s also got a nasty temperament and believes in “moral larceny” as Maggie Haberman put it, meaning that in every transaction he likes to see what he can get away with and how to come out on top.
That is not a recipe for a leader.
It will be interesting to see what other jewels we find in the January 6 Committee transcripts in the weeks ahead.
In his book, Little Big Man, Thomas Berger’s character Jack Crabb, played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie, described General Custer thus: “As regards the outside world, he was like a stuffed bird under one of them glass bells. His own opinion sufficed to the degree that he had no equipment for detecting exterior reactions.”
“He wasn’t showing his cards” is a phrase deriving from poker, which gave me a sudden thought.
Surely Ex-President Trump would THINK of himself as being a fantastic poker player, what with his very stable genius giving him the odds at all times, plus his self-declared ability to read people etc. etc.
However, I’ve never heard stories of him participating in even low-stakes games, despite OWNING appropriate venues from time to time.
Maybe it has something to do with table etiquette, which I understand discourages cheating and requires losers to actually pay up . . .
Some might feel sorry for the person(s) who got stuck with delivering the news. Not me. If they were scared shitless, and it wasn’t a family member and wound up being fired I have no fucks to give. Even family members had the option (as Jarvanka has been attempting) to stay the hell away from him all those years. Choose to jump into the Trump cesspool – be prepared to keep dodging new turds!