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Explaining Narcissism and Trump

January 07, 2021

By: Lee LeFever

I write books and run a company called Common Craft. I recently moved from Seattle to a rural island. Here, I write about online business, book publishing, modern home construction, and occasionally, dumb jokes.

In 2016 I started to learn about narcissism and personality disorders and it changed how I think about humanity. I now believe that our personalities are innate and don’t often change. We are who we are, for better or for worse and some people, through no fault of their own, have personalities that are problematic.

When the 2016 Trump campaign started to gain steam, I couldn’t help but apply what I was learning to his personality and became convinced that he was not normal, that he would never change, and would probably cause serious problems as a president. It seemed obvious to me and I felt a great need to share what I had learned.

So I made an apolitical video in Common Craft style that explains Narcissistic Personality Disorder in an effort to warn people about leaders who put themselves above everything else. It’s now our most viewed YouTube video on a daily basis and I continue to believe that, at the heart of our problems is a leader’s destructive personality that cannot and will not change.

Further, I believe some people are innately unfit for positions like the presidency and we need safeguards that, in the future, can prevent them from attaining positions of power. Shouldn’t we demand leaders who are capable of feeling empathy, at the very least?

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