Trump’s Dominant Ego Camouflages Cowardliness and Cruelties

By Ralph Nader

May 16, 2025

Dictator Donald Trump’s ego has gone global and dominates the news cycle.  His domestic opponents are left with too little too late rebuttals and, again, are victims of his genius in diverting and distracting them and the media.

Take his “triumphant” trip to the wealthy Arab Nations in the Gulf. Their rulers flattered him 24/7 as the boss of the world while he flattered them in return for their business deals (some benefitting him and his family) and arms purchases.  Trump enjoys being in charge. But he wasn’t.

Before, during and after his trip, Netanyahu remained his MASTER on the matters that count to the Israeli perpetrator of genocide. Trump said nothing serious about a ceasefire, nothing about opening the border to Gaza to thousands of waiting trucks (paid for by the U.S. taxpayer) carrying food, water, medicine, and other critical necessities for the starving, dying, besieged Palestinians in Gaza, nothing about the demands that Netanyahu lift his ban on American and other Israeli and foreign reporters going independently into Gaza.

The media interpreted his skipping visiting Israel as a snub when it really was a clever way to avoid facing up to Netanyahu, especially for breaking the January ceasefire that Trump took credit for, and starting the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Trump took Netanyahu breaking “his truce” as an affront to his famous ego by cowardly shutting his mouth.

To further favor Netanyahu and his U.S. domestic Lobby, Trump told the new president of war-torn Syria to make peace with Israel and join the Abraham Accords, negotiated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. At the same time, Israel is using American-made F-16s to bomb Syria (without provocation) hundreds of times while seizing more and more of powerless Syria’s territory!

Domestically, Trump every day boasts about MAGA as he is Wrecking America.  Simultaneously, second thoughts are seeping into his MAGA crowd and among the “Amen” sycophants that make up the GOP in Congress. They’re starting to say, in so many words, “Hey, we didn’t vote for this or that.”

Now Trump, aside from his delusionary rhetoric, is playing a Zig Zag game which indicates he senses when he is going off the cliff. His polls are dropping slowly and will drop further when the tariff-induced prices start climbing and the economy signals the dreaded stagflation on the horizon.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and its so-called leadership is still backing and filling, despite powerful demands at packed Town Meetings in their Districts for their members of Congress to be “comprehensively aggressive,” as one Democratic voter put it.

First, they need to consult the dictionary so that they can discover the words that fit Tyrant Trump and the poisonous tusks of Felon Musk. Political cowards have trouble using plain, strong language to depict Trump’s fascist dictatorship moving into police state seizures of innocent people for using their freedom of speech.

They can learn from some of their predecessors like underdog Harry Truman in his 1948 presidential race with poll-favored Thomas Dewey. Here is “Give ’em hell Harry” speaking to 90,000 farmers and their families in a field in Dexter, Iowa:

“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? … These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men…. They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship…. I’m not asking you just to vote for me. Vote for yourselves!”

When Trump, in 2016, started using MAGA as his constant slogan, the Democratic Party paid a consultant to later come up with the yawn-inducing slogan: “Build Back Better.” Kamala Harris used “the opportunity economy” as her catchphrase instead of the electric rhetoric and kitchen table agenda of Bernie Sanders – still the most popular politician in America.

Trump gives the Democrats so many unexploited opportunities. Three examples:

First, the Dems have missed making a big deal out of Trump/Musk shielding the biggest sources of their alleged interest in “rooting out waste, fraud and inefficiency” in the executive branch. They do not touch “corporate crime” ripping off Medicare, Medicaid, et al. for tens of billions of dollars yearly, or huge amounts of corporate subsidies, giveaways, brazen tax dodges, and the bloated, unauditable military budget that Trump wants to increase by $100 billion more than requested by the generals.

Second, he keeps shouting “impeach,” the judges who cross him.  The Democrats should return the favor by filing Impeachment articles in the House against Trump (See: the 22 Impeachable Offenses). Instead the so-called Democratic Party leaders are clamping down on the tiny number of House Democrats who want to do just that.

Third, the Democrats have failed to mobilize their voters into a powerful grassroots force or even encourage their partisans to do so on their own, as did the “Tea Party” in 2009 against Barack Obama. (Call it the “Coffee Party” to waken the population – liberal and conservative working families – both strip-mined by the plutocrat/oligarch Dangerous Donald.)

Trump recently bloviated “I Run the Country and the World.” The “Coffee Party” masses can focus all their growing pain and suffering from Trumpism with the outcry he well understands “YOU’RE FIRED.” (See my recent column: “YOU’RE FIRED!” –GROWING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE REJECTING TRUMP.)

As the marches, rallies, and town meetings swell, the demand that Trump be fired will boost popular support for his Impeachment and removal from office, as happened with Nixon in 1974 for far lesser transgressions. “Impossible,” you say? Not when the Congressional Republicans see the polls and economic recession dragging their sagging political future for 2026 by continuing their allegiance to Trump.