Not particularly upbeat
[TERRY] GROSS: Do you have any clues about whether it’s affecting his mental health?
[MAGGIE] HABERMAN: You know, I am of the theory – I know that there’s lots of portraits of him as the mad king and disintegrating and so forth. I think that he is depressed sometimes. I think that he has been very churlish with his staff. But I think that most of what you’re seeing was pretty clear that you were likely to see, or we were likely to see, all along. I do not subscribe to the theory that Donald Trump has changed, particularly. I think he is who he has always been.
GROSS: You say he’s been churlish with the staff. What is the staff telling you about his mood and about how he has been treating them since he lost the election?
HABERMAN: He’s just very snappish. He’s, you know, not particularly upbeat. There are times where he will be, you know, engaged in banter with staff. That has really not been the case. Most staff are staying away from the Oval Office. Whereas, before, it was a place that people clamored to get into because they wanted face time with him. And now people don’t want to be stuck with him in that room because either he will ask their opinion on whether he lost and they don’t want to say that they disagree with him, or because he’s just railing and they don’t want to be subjected to it.
Mind you, option #3, “banter” with him sounds equally rebarbative.
He’s narrowed down the circle of people he trusts enough to talk to. William Barr is no longer in that circle.
I dread to think how he’s treating those poor buggers who can’t decide to avoid the White House and cannot talk back. It must be Hell for the domestic staff right now, and life for them was probably no bed of roses before he lost.
And also they don’t want to get Covid.
Trump has always had an awful attitude to those that do not flatter him. The only change is that as the rats leave the sinking ship, the ration of flattering to non-flattering interactions is getting worse for him and he just can’t deal with it.
His inner Drumpf could well be taking over and trumping his outer Trump. Which could sort of make him the orange equivalent of Castle Frankenstein in Transylvania. Stand by for developments.