BY JULIE SEYLER

The prospect of the Trump presidency has me in knots. He is so quixotic and chaotic in the way he speaks and the topics he speaks on that it can only be characterized as that kind of behavior that can make one crazy. Trump’s recent on-again/off-again sit-down (can’t really call it an “interview“) with The New York Times speaks volumes as to the single issue that he truly cares about most: himself.

Whether he’s bragging:

So we won that by a lot of votes and, you know, we had a great victory. We had a great victory.

or observing:

I’ve never had a person boo me, and all of a sudden people are booing me. She [Melania] said, that’s never happened before…So it’s something that I had never experienced before and I said, ‘Those people are booing,’ and she said, ‘Yup.’ They’d never booed before. But now they boo.

or whining:

I think I’ve been treated very rough. It’s well out there that I’ve been treated extremely unfairly in a sense, in a true sense.

he’s always contemplating his own belly-button.

I would find it embarrassing if a 10-year old was saying these things to me, but hearing it from the future President makes me think I have boarded a rudderless ship and we are heading straight into a glacier. There are some pundits of journalism who have adopted a “wait-and-see”, “give him the benefit of the doubt” attitude. The problem with that approach is that it focuses on Trump’s words, not his actions. He is masterful at channeling the energy in the room and refracting it back. There is a disconnect from the weight and responsibility of governing a country.

His actions have informed us that he will fulfill the agenda of the alt right and throw lots of meaty bones to the corporate elite (the Kochs), the ruling white (Jeff Sessions), the fascist right (Rudy Guiliani).

[WHAT TRUMP SAID]:

During the Presidential primaries, Donald Trump mocked his Republican rivals as “puppets” for flocking to a secretive fund-raising session sponsored by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire co-owners of the energy conglomerate Koch Industries.

[WHAT TRUMP DID]:

But on Tuesday night David Koch was reportedly among the revellers at Trump’s victory party in a Hilton Hotel in New York.

WHAT TRUMP SAID:

I am going to re-institute a 5-year ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government for 5 years after they leave government service. I am going to ask Congress to pass this ban into law so that it cannot be lifted by executive order.

Which is absolutely hollow when his entire administration is filled with lobbyists from private industry with a vested interest in ensuring government doesn’t interfere with its former employers’ enterprises. Check out some of his choices.

WHO TRUMP PICKED:

Marc Short, who until recently ran Freedom Partners, the Kochs’ political-donors group, would serve as a “senior adviser.”…

For policy and personnel advice regarding the Department of Energy, Trump is relying on Michael McKenna, the president of the lobbying firm MWR Strategies. McKenna’s clients include Koch Companies Public Sector, a division of Koch Industries.

Michael Catanzaro, a partner at the lobbying firm CGCN Group, is the head of Trump’s energy transition team, and has been mentioned as a possible energy czar. Among his clients are Koch Industries and Devon Energy Corporation, a gas-and-oil company that has made a fortune from vertical drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

Another widely discussed candidate is Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of the shale-oil company Continental Resources, who is a major contributor to the Kochs’ fund-raising network.

WHAT TRUMP SAID:

But it’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why.

WHAT TRUMP DID:

Nothing.
Nothing when Richard Spencer, the president of the National Policy Institute, called out “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” and then, “Hail victory!” and proclaimed “I think, moving forward, the alt-right can, as an intellectual vanguard, complete Trump,”.
And don’t tell me that his disavowal at the Times interview counts for anything. He was chided into that and it was a weakling’s mewling words.

It is not to Trump’s political advantage to disown his racist supporters. They energize him. They give him the rah rahs he is so desperate for. Mildly put, this is worrisome. In reality it feels like a horror show because Trump will continue to fulfill his destiny as a man desperate for attention and adoration and as long as his current handlers, advisors and counselors are in situ, they will have their vision of a tax-cutted/regulation free platform economy churning out the bennies for the elites, including the Trump franchise which takes front and center stage. He’ll allow himself to be reined in when it works to his advantage and he’ll let loose like a cannonball when he and his phone are hanging out all alone. Nothing is going to change. He’ll be playing the American public for the next 4 years because he is a master of the bait and switch. The question is what will be the cost when we awake from the nightmare.