The Inner Monologue

Some readers may wonder why I write so much about Donald Trump.

The answer is simple. I find him fascinating.

In my lifetime, I have never witnessed an American president so openly willing to challenge the boundaries of acceptable presidential conduct, personal decency, and political accountability.

Other presidents have had their scandals. Their ethical lapses. Their moments of dishonesty, selfishness, and questionable judgment. Some tried to hide them. Others weaseled their way out of responsibility. Still others brushed them aside and hoped the public would forget.

Trump is different.

He doesn’t simply deny controversy. He often embraces it. He makes it part of his political identity. What would once have been a career-ending embarrassment for another politician can become another applause line at a Trump rally.

And that is fascinating.

My interpretation of Trump’s public behavior is that personal loyalty, personal advantage, and personal recognition consistently take precedence over the traditional obligations of public service. His defenders see a fighter willing to defy a corrupt establishment. I see something considerably more troubling: a political figure whose conduct repeatedly raises the question of whether any institution, principle, or individual should matter more than himself.

But there is another dimension that interests me even more.

Trump doesn’t appear content merely to win the game. He seems willing to destroy the game itself.

The rules, the referees, the institutions, the traditions, and even the legitimacy of the competition become expendable whenever they stand between him and what he wants.

That distinction matters.

A politician who cheats to win still acknowledges, however reluctantly, that there is a game worth winning. A politician who attacks the legitimacy of the game whenever he loses threatens something much larger than any individual election.

And then there is the question of compassion.

I have watched decades of public appearances, interviews, speeches, and political performances. I struggle to identify moments in Trump’s public persona that strike me as unmistakably selfless compassion, offered without an accompanying personal or political benefit.

That is an observation about his public behavior, not a claim that I can know his private thoughts. Perhaps those moments exist beyond the cameras. Perhaps people who know him privately have witnessed a very different man.

But the contrast between the traditional expectations of presidential empathy and the persona Trump presents to the public remains extraordinary to me.

I am not interested in diagnosing him. I am interested in understanding what happens when a democratic society encounters a leader who so openly challenges its assumptions about character, accountability, truth, and power.

How much can institutions withstand? How much will supporters excuse? How far can established norms bend before they cease to exist? And what does the public’s response reveal about the society itself?

Those are enormous questions.

They are also endlessly fascinating ones.

I write about history, religion, economics, science, politics, human behavior, and the peculiar contradictions of civilization. Donald Trump sits at the intersection of an astonishing number of those subjects.

So, yes, I write about him frequently.

Not because he is the only important subject in the world. Not because every problem begins or ends with him. And certainly not because I believe every accusation against him is automatically true.

I write about him because his public life provides an extraordinary opportunity to examine the relationship between personality, power, institutions, and the people who sustain them.

There will eventually be a time when Donald Trump is no longer the central figure in American politics. When that happens, historians will spend generations examining what occurred, why it occurred, and what it revealed about America.

For now, we are living through the events they will study.

And I happen to enjoy writing about fascinating things.

So expect a great deal more about Donald Trump.