EMPTINESS:

The 45th president is often described--and sometimes praised--as "authentic." That compliment, if it is a compliment, is not truly deserved. In many ways, President Trump is not the man he seems. He was not a great builder, not a great dealmaker, not a billionaire, not a man of strength and decisiveness.

But there is one way in which he truly is authentic: He is never able to play-act the generous feelings that he so absolutely lacks. "To show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy." In that one sense, Donald Trump is not false. He does not feel sorrow for others, and he does not try to pretend otherwise.

Trump's perfect emptiness of empathy has revealed itself again and again through his presidency, but never as completely and conspicuously as in his self-flattering 2018 Memorial Day tweets. They exceed even the heartless comment in a speech to Congress--in the presence of a grieving widow--that a fallen Navy Seal would be happy that his ovation from Congress had lasted longer than anybody else's.

It's not news that there is something missing from Trump where normal human feelings should go. His devouring need for admiration from others is joined to an extreme, even pathological, inability to return any care or concern for those others. But Trump's version of this disconnect comes most especially to the fore at times of national ritual.

Donald Trump cares enormously about national symbols--the flag, the anthem--when he can use them to belittle, humiliate, and exclude.

Trump has called for revoking the citizenship of those who burn the flag. He has suggested that NFL players who do not rise for the Star-Spangled Banner should be deported. He scored one of the greatest victories of his presidency when the National Football League submitted to his demand to punish players who did not stand at attention for the anthem. Vice President Pence ran the victory lap for Trump on this one.

But when it comes time to lead the nation in its shared rituals of unity and common purpose, Donald Trump cannot do it. He is, at most, president of slightly more than half of white America, and often not even that.

Tweet   @brothersjudd