[redacted] on Ukraine: “They’re all corrupt and they tried to take me down.”

(photo courtesy of pixabay)

The President, of course, is a master of projection and some Ukrainians are corrupt, so that statement is understandable.  But “they tried to take me down”?  It seems that an investigative journalist publicized the fact that Paul Manafort had been on the payroll of a deeply corrupt previous Ukrainian administration to the tune of $12.7 million– his job: to massage the image of a corrupt candidate for President electronically to make him over as an honest, corruption-fighting statesman.

As a result of negative publicity about this revelation, Manafort was forced to quit as [redacted]’s campaign manager.  He was later caught up by the Mueller investigation and is now serving 7+ years in prison for tax fraud, among other things.  But that was the only thing that happened before the 2016 election in which someone from Ukraine played a role.  So why does [redacted] think “they tried to take me down.” ?

He thinks that the Ukrainians did the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server hack and fingered the Russians.  He thinks the DNC’s server is physically in Ukraine (that part is original with him).  What’s more, he thinks that this was done in the service of the DNC, although exactly why escapes me.  He also thinks that the British spied on him at the behest of the Obama administration, or Obama personally in his mind.  He thinks that the original tip from an Australian diplomat –that a Russian source had told a Republican operative that the Russians had obtained a large trove of Democratic emails– was orchestrated by someone in the Australian government who disliked him.  All of these disjointed “facts” are part of a huge conspiracy theory, or family of theories, that [redacted] believes in.

The conspiracy theories are in service of the denial of two things: first, the fact that the Russians materially aided his election victory in 2016; and second, the fact that he lost the popular vote by 2.8 millions in that election.

These beliefs are part of a paranoid personality style which fits in well with his malignant narcissism.  So, we have a troika of mental disorders: narcissism, sociopathy, and the “Dunning-Kruger” effect gone wild.  Everything is about “Me!  Me!” (he practically shouted that while pounding his chest in front of reporters yesterday), he is incapable of believing that he can ever do wrong, and he is the only true expert in every known field of expertise.  And he is President.  This will not end well.