For most people, addiction happens in private — with only a few close loved ones knowing the truth about someone’s problems with alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or whatever it is that has taken over that person’s life.
But when the junkie is the man currently living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and the drug of choice is adulation, the addiction is painfully public — and painful to everyone in the country.
Donald Trump presided over a garbage fire of a campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, broadcast live over many of the cable news channels he decries as “fake news.” The event was a frightening case study of a man for whom cheers and applause are a powerful high, but one that’s harder and harder to achieve as his addiction worsens.
Here are some of the telltale signs of an addict’s behavior, as demonstrated by Trump:
1. A junkie has to go farther afield to get a fix.
Last year, during the presidential campaign, Trump could go anywhere and get a convention center full of people to cheer him endlessly. (He even got folks in Salt Lake City to line up around the block for an appearance.) Now, with his approval ratings dipping into the 30s, Trump is having trouble finding a big crowd to satisfy his needs. The Phoenix Convention Center was only half full, and nearly as many showed up to protest outside the venue.
2. As the supply gets scarcer, what’s available contains more dangerous impurities.
As those poll numbers continue to decline, the mainstream Republicans who cheered Trump before are less enthusiastic. Who’s still showing up? The “alt-right” — aka white supremacist, or neo-Confederate, or Nazi — folks of the sort who turned out for that “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.
3. The price of the drug keeps rising.
With Trump, the price he’s paying is the growing number of lies he spouts in his speeches and the increased pandering to his rabid white-nationalist supporters. His lengthy defense of his mealy-mouthed anti-racism statements after Charlottesville was capped when he misquoted himself — omitting the “on many sides” part of his condemnation of violence in Charlottesville. And his protestations of not being divisive were undone by his accusation that the media “are trying to take away our history and heritage,” a dog-whistle appeal to white nationalism.
4. The addict reacts with paranoia when anyone tells him he has a problem.
That would be the media, and Trump once again went to his greatest-hits collection of slams against journalists for the simple act of doing their jobs — which is to call out people in power when they’re lying. After slamming CNN for firing “poor Jeffrey Lord” (the Trump surrogate who tweeted “Sieg Heil” to someone criticizing him), and repeating the lie that “the failing New York Times” apologized for its election coverage (the paper didn’t, and it isn‘t failing; subscriptions are way up), Trump tarred all of the media: “For the most part, these are really, really dishonest people. And they’re bad people. And I really think they don’t like our country.”
5. Junkies often wake up with less-than-savory characters.
Quoting Trump directly: “How good is ‘Hannity’? How good is that? And here’s a great guy. And he is an honest guy. And ‘Fox and Friends’ in the morning is the absolute most honest show. And it’s a show I watch.”
6. The next day, the junkie tries to pretend everything’s fine.
Speaking to the American Legion convention in Reno on Wednesday, the day after the Phoenix rally, Trump called for unity. “It is time to heal the wounds that divide us and to seek a new unity based on the common values that unite us,” he said, apparently back on his teleprompter. Never, though, does he acknowledge anything he’s done to make those wounds fester.
When there’s an addict in the family, the family’s response can range from intervention to divorce — but only after they overcome denial and admit there’s a problem. When the addict is the president, and his addiction just gets worse and worse, the only people who can stage an intervention are in the Congress. The leadership there, though, shows no signs of getting past their denial.