After Trump’s Inauguration, There Is No Limit on His Ego

Timothy Cardinal Dolan invokes God’s blessings on an unimpressed Donald Trump. Photo: Kenny Holston/AFP/Getty Images

It is customary for human beings inheriting enormous power over others to show a bit of humility before exercising it. This is why presidential inaugurations include ritualistic invocations of national traditions, hallowed precedents, and divine favor. Those staging the second inauguration of Donald Trump did their best to surround the man with reminders that he stands in the shadow of leaders much greater than he can rightly claim to be, and in the presence of institutions, from Congress to the courts to the armed forces sworn to defend the Constitution, that constrain his authority. The reality that Trump doesn’t recognize any such restraints was made most evident by his reluctance to bow before the supreme authority of God Almighty, as he stood open-eyed during the invocations of the deity to bless his puny human efforts. Indeed, he seemed to regard God as a peer or perhaps as an aide in his confident assertion that the Lord of Hosts had saved him from assassination out of divine concern for his holy role in restoring American Greatness.

His inaugural address in its entirety followed suit. This was not a man afflicted by a single doubt, possessed of any impulse of generosity towards his adversaries, or awed in any respect by the responsibilities he was assuming. His very first words after the introductory salutations promised a “golden age” for our country, a “thrilling new era of national success;” his return to power meant that “sunlight is pouring over the entire world.” Challenges to this glorious destiny will be “annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing.” Every presidential election winner claims some sort of right to implement an agenda, but has any new president — including those facing civil war, world wars, or Great Depressions — ever described his mandate in so absolute a manner?

Our recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal, and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.

This makes more sense when you remember that Trump imagines himself to be America’s great persecuted hero: “Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history.” Seriously? More than Lincoln, whose time in office started with secession and ended with assassination? It’s true that no president has been hauled before the bar of justice for alleged misconduct even remotely as often as Trump. And it’s presumably because he now nestles again in the protective fortress of presidential immunity that he calls on Americans to refer to his arrival at a safe harbor as “Liberation Day!”

This man’s narcissistic determination to identify the nation’s destiny with his own is probably the main reason for his habit of alleging completely undocumented and massive voter fraud by his opponents even when he’s an election winner. No victory is ever enough to give him the license to rule that he craves:

 As our victory showed, the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society. Young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, urban, suburban and rural. And, very importantly, we had a powerful win in all seven swing states and the popular vote. We won by millions of people.

In the popular vote, he won by far fewer “millions of people” than his last two opponents, or the last four presidents. Even after a post-election honeymoon, his favorability rating remains underwater, as it has been for his entire political career. No one is challenging his right to govern, but it’s not even remotely enough for him; he desires a mandate from the whole people, a mandate from heaven. Perhaps he needs that in order to pursue such ambitions as the renaming of seas and mountains, the reconquest of long-lost territories (like the Panama Canal), and the fresh conquest of Mars! Donald Trump doesn’t want to be adjudged a better president than his predecessor, but as the architect of “the greatest four years in American history.”

After this remarkable exercise in relentless rhetorical hubris, how can anyone be confident that the 47th president will temper his plans, withhold his wrath, respect the coequal powers of the Congress or the courts, or bend to the popular will? The real Liberation Day is Trump’s own; he will never again have to worry about an election, an intraparty challenge, a criminal indictment, or the subversive activities of the “deep state.” He’ll pursue his dark dreams exactly as far as he’s allowed to do by the alleged gate-keepers of the law and the Constitution. And the lassitude, even the complacency of an American public happy to be relieved of the passions of an insane 2024 election year will give our narcissist in chief even greater reason to celebrate his own kingdom, power and glory. Lord help us all.