When I listen to Trump Administration leaders perpetually refer to Joe Biden as the source of their woes, I am reminded of the long-standing corporate joke. The joke goes like this: A new executive gets to his new office and finds three, numbered envelopes on his desk with instructions indicating that he should open the envelopes in order when something goes wrong. Sure enough, something went wrong and he opens envelope #1 and it says ‘Blame your predecessor’ – and he does so. Some time passes and he faces another performance hiccup and opens envelope #2 – it says ‘Blame the system’. He skates by on this advice again, until another performance challenge rears its ugly head and he opens envelope #3 – it says ‘Prepare 3 Envelopes’. But when the President himself uses these practices, I feel like he is desperately attempting to place himself on a higher pedestal. Unfortunately for him, narcissism is not the yardstick that the public generally uses to grade government performance. That hasn’t stopped President Trump from attempting to make the the United States all about him.

Like an insecure Roman emperor, the President has begun to obsess about having his name and likeness attached to government assets (much like he did with buildings and golf courses in his business). Within the past two weeks, we have learned that new National Parks passes will have the President’s image alongside the image of George Washington. This follows his Treasury Department’s attempt to place his image on a commemorative 250th anniversary version of the $1 coin (for reference, the bicentennial $1 coin still had Eisenhower’s head on the front and had the liberty bell on the back – certainly not the picture of a sitting President) – raise your hand if you still use $1 coins? No one? This week’s naming idiocy surrounded the addition of Donald J Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center for the Arts (legally named the Kennedy Center for the Arts by Congressional edict, to be a lasting legacy to the late President). If only the financial success of the Center had garnered as much focus for the Trump acolytes on the Center’s Board, as its attendance has plummeted since the Administration’s hostile takeover of the Board.

The President is singularly focused on one thing – himself and the perception of himself. Unfortunate for his self-image, approval polls have been universally negative regarding his performance as President. The most respected of the polls (Gallup and YouGov/Economist), indicate that the President has record low disapproval ratings, with the economy leading the way as the source of disapproval. But no matter how many rants about lower prices (that are contradicted by his own Bureau of Labor Statistics), the response of voters is undeniable. Democratic victories in 2025 have been large, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, flipping seats in state legislatures and winning governorships in New Jersey and Virginia.

With all of this negative feedback, it is no wonder that President Trump took to the airwaves this week to toot his own horn about his ‘accomplishments’. Along with his widely critiqued speed-reading style of the national address, the puffery and downright falsehoods of the speech only managed to produce an array of negative fact-check articles that failed to reflect well on the President – here is one for your perusal. In lieu of actual positive reviews, the President has had his staff produce a display in the White House that can remind him of his views of his predecessors (a Presidential Walk of Fame, affixed to an outer wall of the White House). The explanatory text beneath the plaques are commentaries produced through the filter of Trump-speak, complete with name-calling and comparisons to the current President. The picture of President Biden is replaced with a picture of an auto-pen, to reinforce the idea that he did not have the capacity to hold the office, and the description below includes the continued bollocks about election fraud and corruption – you get the picture. The infantile display is neither worthy of the dignity of the White House nor the tax dollars used to create it.

But the lowest ebb of the President’s narcissism was reached when he chose to comment on the murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner. Instead of merely ignoring the tragedy or sending his thoughts and prayers to the family, President Trump could not help but make the event about himself. He claimed that Reiner (a vocal critic of the President) died as a result of other people’s reaction to his “Trump Derangement Syndrome“. This from the guy who mentioned Joe Biden seven times in his national address this week – sounds like ‘Biden Derangement Syndrome’ to me. His comments about a tragically murdered icon, nonetheless, represent the depths of his inhumanity and further darkens the stain on our country that he reinforces each week.

And the national disgrace continues…