Sometimes that is counterintuitive to what people expect who see only the behaviors.
1/
He will not.
Trump, like all narcissists rage most at a public shaming they see coming and can’t avoid.
2/
His tweets give him a sense of power. The prospect of an embarrassing demerit on any future tweet renders him helpless against another party’s shaming.
3/
He has no internal life.
He is like a laptop with no battery. He has to be plugged in to function.
4/
Being seen as shameful shames him. It is excruciating.
Things that label him as worthy of contempt or criticism hurt him.
5/
When they arrive, he collapses in a heap and slinks off to nurse his wounds.
6/
It is a public notice that he deserves contempt for his conduct.
He can’t play that to a tie. He can’t fight it out and hope to change minds. The shaming hurts too much.
7/
So, he’ll try to walk it back. Reframe what he said. Insist he didn’t mean it the way “people took it.”
He’ll try to claim that what he actually meant was something quite okay.
And then he’ll over correct...
8/
He got shamed for appearing to authorize murder of protestors for property crimes.
So now he’ll pretend to be outraged at some authority for not peacefully protecting the peace.
9/
He exists solely to serve the master of his broken self-esteem.
Today, that master will make him try to get out from under what he said when people expect him to double down.
He won’t. Bet you a beer on it.
//
And FWIW, this tweet may well have been written earlier or by someone else.
Reads more like a canned leftover from yesterday than a morning thought.