Trump's Fatalist Philosophy & Living in the Moment

In his days on the top, he had often shared with interviewers his views of life, and while his imagination routinely ran away with him in these celebrity sessions, his oft-repeated philosophy had the ring of ingrained true belief to it.

He told one reporter in the midst of the bank brouhaha:

“I take things very much as they come. I deal with the cards that are dealt me. And I think I do it well. I’m very much a fatalist. I always have been but I’m more so now.”

In an interview a year before Donald’s downfall, onetime Trump confidant Tony Schwartz said:

“There’s a part of Donald in the rare moments when he’s not moving at about 140 miles an hour—and I have heard him articulate it in those moments—that he assumes on some level that this is a big bubble, and it’s going to burst at some point.

He is very fatalistic. He will say ... as fast as you skyrocketed up is how fast you can plummet. He has told me he’s looked at what happens to people who’ve been at the center of attention one day when their deals are working, or they’ve just accomplished something of moment.

One of the people he looks at as a perfect example is Jimmy Carter. Here’s a guy who was President and the day Ronald Reagan took over consigned him to a level of anonymity that you otherwise might associate with a traveling salesman.”

[....]

Donald conceded: “I don’t know. It just all sort of happened.” Of course, if his success was merely a consequence of fate, that same fate was also a ready explanation for failure."

[....]

To this fatalism was added a theory of genetic determinism, a set of principles that were as close as Donald ever got to grappling with the complexity of life.

He had begun years earlier talking about the shaping power of heredity.

“You’re either born with it or you’re not,” he said. “Ability can be honed, perfected or neglected.

But the day Jack Nicklaus came into this world, he had more innate ability to play golf than anybody else.”

Donald loved to tell the tale of a friend with an IQ of 190 whose nerves were shot worrying about a puny home mortgage.

“Yet here I am,” he concluded, “buying the shuttle, the Plaza, and I don’t lose an ounce of sleep over any of it. That’s lucky genes.”

Perhaps because of this credo, Donald never had any patience with the past or interest in the future.

“He is the most present human being I ever met,” said one intimate.

“He lives entirely in the moment. He doesn’t define himself through relationships or through some spiritual interests or concerns.

He defines himself and redefines himself from day to day by what happens in his life.”

'Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth' by Wayne Barrett
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ECV4H0G