Tweet the flattery
Two transcripts from the impeachment inquiry have been made public, I guess with more to follow. One stomach-turning item:
Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told House impeachment investigators last month that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told her she should tweet out support or praise for President Donald Trump if she wanted to save her job, according to a transcript of her testimony made public Monday.
On one level, the higher level, that’s serious bad governance, bad policy, bad dealing with civil servants, all that. On the lower level, it’s the usual absolutely sickening contemptible infantile egotism of this ravenously greedy-for-praise monster. The higher level is vastly more consequential but it’s the lower one that always throws me into rages of disgust. I cannot stand the way he’s always hanging his conceit and need for slavish flattery out there for all to see. I can’t stand his total lack of seriousness. Can.not.stand.it.
Yovanovitch departed Ukraine in May, months ahead of her scheduled departure, after coming under attack from right-wing media, which alleged she was hostile to the president. Her departure set off alarm bells among Democrats in Congress but the State Department said at the time her exit was planned.
Yovanovitch testified to House investigators Oct. 11 that Trump had personally pressured the State Department to remove her, even though a top department official assured her that she had “done nothing wrong.”
If only she had tweeted what an awesome perfect great stable genius and sex god he is.
Just another symptom of his big dictator envy.
I can never get over the buffoonery of demanding constant praise and public flattery either, the lack of which provokes temper tantrums, threats, and sulking.
I’ve read about narcissistic supply of course but I still find it gobsmacking to watch. I can never decide which is more stomach-churning – the sycophants willing to grovel before Trump in this manner or his evident pleasure at the stream of ludicrous puffery that any normal human would laugh at its sheer absurdity.
If one of my team started telling me how honored they were to work for me, thank Jesus for my very existence, praise my great benevolence for bestowing my genius on their undeserving institution and proclaim me to be incredibly beautiful, I’d think they’d lost their goddamn minds.
I know, same here.
Now read the Times story, or the excerpts I give: it gets even worse.
Claire:
Same here. Well, either that or I’d be wondering what I’d done to deserve such a level of sarcasm.
Is it even possible that a person who demands such overtly ridiculous flattery can also believe that it is sincerely given? Maybe it doesn’t matter that it’s false praise, the important thing is that he’s powerful enough to be able to demand and receive the sycophancy. It isn’t so much the adulation he wants, it’s the knowledge that he can get it on demand.
Even if the point of the flattery is to show others how highly people think of him, it would take industrial-strength idiocy to think that anybody is fooled by the display. But what am I thinking? This is Trump I’m talking about.
The above-mentioned Times story covers that. The answer is yes, he can. He takes it very seriously and he gets mad when it’s not as abundant as he was expecting. Yes he really is that dumb.
Just reflecting on this past week…I am very big on praising and complimenting the people I work with; I think it’s an important part of our work culture. But–thinking about it–I rarely, if ever, praise or compliment people senior to me (to be fair that’s at least partly because I don’t tend to interact with them very often). My praise and compliments go almost entirely to my junior staff, who for the most part are diligent, enthusiastic and motivated, and do a lot to keep our projects going and handle stuff that comes up promptly and competently, particularly when I’m not personally around to deal with things that could become crises if handled badly or not handled at all. As far as receiving praise and compliments, I think that’s probably more or less equally balanced among junior staff, senior staff and colleagues.