{"id":46059,"date":"2026-01-13T12:03:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T20:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=46059"},"modified":"2026-01-13T12:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T20:03:31","slug":"trump-unmasked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/01\/13\/trump-unmasked\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Unmasked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jan. 13, 2026 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Credit\u2026Nathan Howard\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Thomas<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Thomas B. Edsall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Trump is showing symptoms of an addiction to power, evident in his compulsion to escalate claims of dominion over domestic and international adversaries. The size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump began his second term with his administration clamping down on law firms and universities. More recently he has focused his sights on an entire country, Venezuela, with Cuba, Colombia and Greenland also high on his current list \u2014 not to mention his claim to the Western Hemisphere in the 2025 National Security Strategy<\/a>: \u201cAfter years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis \u2018Trump Corollary\u2019 to the Monroe Doctrine,\u201d the report added, \u201cis a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Manfred Kets de Vries, a professor of leadership development and organizational change at Insead, an international business school, about Trump\u2019s relationship with power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kets de Vries replied by email:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is possible to become addicted to power \u2014 particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism and psychopathology. Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact. Power supplies that affirmation. Visibility, dominance and constant stimulation temporarily fill the void.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What makes this tragic and dangerous, Kets de Vries continued, \u201cis that this dynamic is not playing out in the margins of political life but at its center. He is not the dictator of a small, contained state; he is occupying the most powerful position in the world, with consequences for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just Trump. The compulsion to simultaneously project power and demean adversaries pervades the administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, thrives on assertions of domination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe live in a world,\u201d he told CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper on Jan. 5, \u201cin which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or take Russell Vought, Trump\u2019s director of the Office of Management and Budget. Even before Trump took office, Vought fantasized in speeches<\/a> about putting career civil servants \u201cin trauma,\u201d making their lives so miserable that \u201cwhen they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advisers do their best, of course, but no one outdoes Trump. \u201cYou\u2019ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,\u201d he told crowds<\/a> gathered on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  <\/strong>Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Trump routinely outdoes himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2019 he claimed<\/a> to \u201chave the right to do whatever I want as president.\u201d In March last year Trump declared<\/a> not only that he has the right to do whatever he wants but also that \u201cI run the country and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a series of interviews, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, captured Trump\u2019s addictive character, telling<\/a> Vanity Fair that the president has \u201can alcoholic\u2019s personality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exercise of authority over others is, for some, an exhilarating experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPower, especially absolute and unchecked power, is intoxicating,\u201d wrote Nayef Al-Rodhan, an honorary fellow of St Antony\u2019s College, Oxford, and the director of the geopolitics and global futures department at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, in a 2014 essay, \u201cThe Neurochemistry of Power<\/a>: Implications for Political Change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIts effects occur at the cellular and neurochemical level,\u201d Al-Rodhan continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They are manifested behaviorally in a variety of ways, ranging from heightened cognitive functions to lack of inhibition, poor judgment, extreme narcissism, perverted behavior and gruesome cruelty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary neurochemical involved in the reward of power that is known today is dopamine, the same chemical transmitter responsible for producing a sense of pleasure. Power activates the very same reward circuitry in the brain and creates an addictive \u201chigh\u201d in much the same way as drug addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like addicts, most people in positions of power will seek to maintain the high they get from power, sometimes at all costs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I asked Ian Robertson, an emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College in Dublin and the author of \u201cHow Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief,\u201d a series of questions in this vein. He answered by email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is it possible to become addicted to power?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPower is a very strong stimulant of the dopamine reward system of the brain \u2014 which is the seat of addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the addiction result in a need to keep exercising power in an increasingly domineering fashion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, a central component of addiction is increased tolerance \u2014 i.e., you need to increase the dose to keep the same effect. It can become an unquenchable appetite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the personality characteristics that are associated with addiction to power? What needs are met for those addicted to power?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople (men more than women) with a high need for control and dominance over other people (and a corresponding fear of loss of control). The need for control is one of three basic motivational needs \u2014 the others being affiliation and achievement. Having power over other people satisfies this deep need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Feb. 12 Irish Times article, \u201cA Neuropsychologist\u2019s View on Donald Trump<\/a>: We\u2019re Seeing the Impact of Power on the Human Brain,\u201d Robertson described the frenzied opening days of the second Trump administration:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Deports manacled immigrants, closes AIDS-prevention programs, starts and stops and restarts a tariffs war, vows to cleanse Gaza of its troublesome inhabitants and demands that all Israeli hostages be released by Hamas by midday on Saturday or he would \u201clet hell break out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This activity, Robertson continued,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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fuels an aggressive, feel-good state of mind, particularly in dominant, amoral personalities such as Trump\u2019s. It also creates a restless, hyperactive state of mind, which, when combined with a feeling of omnipotence, fosters the delusions that you can snap your fingers and sort every problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, when Trump\u2019s grandiose plans are frustrated, it poses high risks: \u201cWhen that doesn\u2019t happen \u2014 when Gaza or Greenland can\u2019t be bought or U.S. birthright abolished \u2014 this ramps up a hyperactive rage at being thwarted and escalates a flurry of even more frenetic and unmeasured responses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtually all politicians have a strong attraction to power. What distinguishes Trump? When does the appeal of power lead to its abuse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to my inquiries, Adam Galinsky, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School, emailed to say that he has developed a concept he calls \u201cthe little tyrant, someone who has power but lacks status, i.e., someone who controls resources but feels disrespected. It leads people to mistreat others in a domineering fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addiction to power, Galinsky continued, \u201cis partially the result of trying to fill the hole of insecurity left by feeling one is not respected by others. I believe this fits Donald Trump. He has always felt disrespected, and in many ways his entire persona resonates with his base as they feel their hold on society slipping away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, Galinsky argued,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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represents what researchers call the dark triad of three interconnected, malevolent personality traits: narcissism (grandiosity, self-centeredness), Machiavellianism (manipulation, cynicism) and psychopathy (impulsivity, lack of empathy\/remorse).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump wants to be seen as the greatest president of all time and makes everything about himself (narcissism), he views the world as only functioning through manipulation and exertion of power (Machiavellianism), and he is impulsive and shows no empathy (psychopathy).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

One of the most exhaustive analyses of the adverse consequences of an addiction to power is a 2023 article in the journal Communicative & Integrative Biology, \u201cOn Power and Its Corrupting Effects<\/a>: The Effects of Power on Human Behavior and the Limits of Accountability Systems,\u201d by Tobore Onojighofia Tobore, an independent scholar and medical researcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the paper, Tobore explores the extensive scientific literature on the study of power to show that when power is wielded by abusive politicians or chief executives, the harm can have pervasive consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an email responding to a series of questions I posed, Tobore wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trump shows characteristics of a grandiose narcissist lacking in empathy. In the current divided political environment, where checks and balances have become significantly eroded and critical stakeholders, possibly out of fear of bullying, are unable to push back on his behavior, we may be in for more bad behavior from Trump.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s success in Iran and Venezuela, in Tobore\u2019s view, \u201cis likely to make him emboldened and more risk-prone. There is the possibility of more foreign escapades and increasing talk of a third term.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Tobore what personality characteristics are associated with addiction to power. He replied with a quotation from his article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The grandiose narcissist is assertive and extroverted and distinguished by their sense of entitlement, overconfidence, high self-esteem, feelings of personal superiority, self-serving exploitative behavior, impulsivity, a need for admiration and dominance, and aggressive and hostile behavior when threatened or challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grandiose narcissists are more likely to seek and achieve positions of power in organizations, but they are more likely to abuse their power, pursue their interests at the expense of the organization, disregard expert advice, causing them to make poor decisions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In his paper, Tobore also cited evidence that among those inclined to abuse power, the exercise of power has similar, if not identical, biological effects to those experienced by addicts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Power abuse disorder has been coined as a neuropsychiatry condition connected to the addictive behavior of the power wielder. Arguments have been made on the relationship between power addiction and dopaminergic alterations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, changes in the dopaminergic system have been implicated in drug addiction, and research on animals suggests that dominance status modulates activity in dopaminergic neural pathways linked with motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence suggests that areas of the brain linked with addiction, including the amygdala and dopaminergic neurons, play a major role in responding to social rank and hierarchy signals. Multiple lines of evidence from animal studies indicate that dopamine D2\/D3 receptor density and availability is higher in the basal ganglia, including the nucleus accumbens, of animals with great social dominance compared to their subordinates. Animal studies suggest that following forced loss of social rank, there is a craving for the privileges of status, leading to depressive-like symptoms, which are reversed when social status is reinstated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If that\u2019s true, then the linkage between dominant power status and the loss of status to variations in hormone levels helps explain both Trump\u2019s obsessive refusal to acknowledge his 2020 defeat and his continuing efforts to criminally charge those who have challenged him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The appeal of power is itself a healthy and natural phenomenon, according to many of those I contacted. The problem arises when those who acquire power do so to fulfill their narcissistic need to subjugate others and are biologically rewarded when they do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at Berkeley, made the case in an email that \u201cbecause in our evolutionary history, enjoying elevated power has benefited individuals in terms of reproductive success, the health of their children and kin, and their own individual flourishing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, Keltner wrote, \u201cgiven individual differences, there will be a small subset of people who compulsively seek out power in every social context and through whatever means necessary to satisfy the need for power \u2014 to influence (and often control) others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While voicing caution over the use of the word \u201caddicted,\u201d Keltner contended that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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the study of addictions like alcohol or porn offers criteria for calling someone addicted to power. I\u2019d state those criteria as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When someone is compulsively exercising their power, often in inappropriate contexts, when they can\u2019t stop trying to control and rise in power, when it brings about disruptions in social life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Who is quite likely to go overboard in the pursuit of power?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keltner said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We know that people who are prone to addictions, like the addiction to power, are impulsive, they have trouble staying on task, they want intense sensational, gratifying experiences, and they\u2019re prone to antisocial tendencies \u2014 fighting with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know those same tendencies predict who will exercise power in a domineering and coercive fashion. So what this tells us is that certain individuals \u2014 the impulsive, the angry, the individual who has trouble focusing and staying on task \u2014 will gravitate toward exercising power in domineering, as opposed to collaborative, ways.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Addiction to power in the right hands, Keltner contended, can be beneficial:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you have a strong need, even addiction, for exercising power and are inclined to the more collaborative approach, you will engage in more of that kind of behavior in your exercise of power \u2014 of bringing individuals together, building collaborations and alliances, encouraging and strengthening subordinates, etc., and if you are more domineering or coercive by default, that need or addiction to power will amplify those tendencies \u2014 undermining others, dehumanizing others, aggression, violence and extraction, weakening allies, hording resources.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Over the past week, it felt as though Trump was even more intensely compelled to publicly announce his determination to dominate everything in sight, and anyone who wants to block him had better watch out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps most spectacularly, during a Jan. 7 interview with four Times reporters, Trump was asked if there were any limits on his global powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He replied: \u201cYeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It\u2019s the only thing that can stop me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need international law,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump may think his own morality and his own mind are the only constraints on his otherwise limitless power, but if we are dependent on either \u2014 not to mention Trump\u2019s sense of empathy, compassion or sympathy for the underdog \u2014 we are in deep trouble. The nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large need to figure out how to place restraints on this ethically vacuous president, or we will all suffer continued and ever-worsening damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times is committed to publishing <\/em>a diversity of letters<\/em><\/a> to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some <\/em>tips<\/em><\/a>. And here\u2019s our email: <\/em>letters@nytimes.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Instagram<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>TikTok<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Bluesky<\/em><\/a>, WhatsApp<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Threads<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Tuesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

)Contributed by Michael Kelly, H.W.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan. 13, 2026 (NYTimes.com) By Thomas B. Edsall Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality. President Trump is showing symptoms of an addiction to power, evident in his compulsion to escalate claims of dominion over domestic and international adversaries. The size and scope of… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46059"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46060,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46059\/revisions\/46060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}