Donald Trump has always had his fair share of dissenters. His unlikely candidacy and eventual win was met with plenty of vitriol and hatred. But now that Trump has vaulted into the office of the presidency, the heat has been turned up.
It is not unprecedented for the President of the United States to have a rocky relationship with the media and the public. What is clear, however, is that the amount, the pace, and the personal level with which Trump has responded to his critics is something we have never seen before.
As soon as Trump was sworn into office, his administration has sought to delegitimize and threaten any person or organization that has dared to undermine Trump’s authority. The fixation on the crowd size of Trump’s inauguration and the insistence that it was the “largest ever” by Trump himself, despite substantiated claims running counter to that, was just one of many outbursts Trump has had. This, combined with Trump’s repeated attacks on SNL, a partisan late-night comedy show, demonstrates that anyone who publicly humiliates or criticizes Trump has the ability to get under his skin.
Numerous sources and leaks within the White House portray the President as a thin-skinned narcissist obsessed with his popularity and the country’s acceptance of him. This might seem like an unfair or extreme characterization, but Trump’s repeated Twitter rants, press conferences, and the words of his surrogates demonstrate that Trump will not tolerate anyone or anything that is critical of him.
Donald Trump signed an executive order last week which gave chief strategist Stephen Bannon a spot on the National Security Council, a move which has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans alike. Multiple reports have alleged that Trump did not know what he was doing when he signed the order, and because of this, Trump has been cast as a puppet of Bannon’s who is willing to sign whatever the former head of far-right Breitbart news has put in front of him. Amidst all of the judgment and joking about “President Bannon,” Trump has again taken to Twitter to fire back, this time claiming, “I call my own shots…and everyone knows it”. For Trump to write on Twitter ensuring people that he is not just a pawn in Bannon’s master plan suggests a profound level of insecurity and frustration.
All of these examples, combined with the entire Trump team dismissing all opposition as “fake news” show that less than a month into Trump’s term, Trump is already frustrated and irritated by his detractors and cannot accept any negative caricature or portrayal of him. He is willing to insult and aggravate anyone who does not go along with all of his plans, exhausting all of his political capital in the process. Anything the media and other individuals are doing to embarrass Trump is clearly working already.
Having this kind of attitude towards his critics will not serve Trump well in the long term, as fighting battles with the likes of Meryl Streep and the cast of Hamilton does not help at all with achieving policy goals. However, it seems Trump has been provoked beyond the point of reconciliation and there is no end in sight to his Twitter tirades and denial of any news reported by the mainstream media.