It’s hard out here for a pompous narcissist. Donald Trump lives for positive validation from whatever ignorant or corrupt source he can scrape it off of – Vladimir Putin, Rush Limbaugh, white nationalists, etc. But given the massive failure of his bizarro administration, kind words and tributes are hard to justify unless you’re a dedicated Fox News Trump-fluffer.

Consequently, Trump resorts to exalting himself every chance he gets. Much of that is done by posting videos by his favorite Fox News bootlickers and retweeting Pizzagate conspiracy crackpots who have an undying adoration for their Dear Leader.

Trump is also fond of spotlighting polls that he thinks put him in a positive light. More often than not, they don’t. For instance, Trump frequently boasts that the ultra-biased, right-wing pollster, Rasmussen, ranks his approval rating highly. But while Rasmussen’s results are always better for Trump than reputable pollsters, they are almost always below fifty percent. How is that brag-worthy?

On Monday morning Trump wandered off the ranch to find a poll by a source that he commonly refers to as “fake news.” The Suffolk/USA Today poll posted a result that tickled Trump’s ego bone. So he rushed to tweet out the news that he actually believes makes him look good:

Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, “50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Mueller’s investigation is a Witch Hunt.” @MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

Wow, indeed! The first thing of note about this is that it’s just one poll. Most other recent polls show that the American people trust Robert Mueller and believe his investigation is fair and warranted. They even believe convicted liar, Michael Cohen, more than they believe Trump. However, even with regard to this poll, Trump is reading it selectively and ignoring any part of it that doesn’t feed his monstrous appetite for acclamation. According to USA Today, the poll also found that:

“The survey shows a nation that remains skeptical of Trump’s honesty and deeply divided by his leadership. A 52 percent majority say they have little or no trust in the president’s denials that his 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow in the election that put him in the Oval Office.”

So a majority of respondents do not believe Trump’s denials of collusion. And the fifty percent who say that the Mueller probe is a “Witch Hunt” – versus forty-seven percent who say it isn’t – needs to be put into context. There’s a three percent margin of error, so the poll could just as likely be fifty percent saying they don’t believe it’s a witch hunt, and only forty-seven percent who do. Either way, an overwhelming majority of eighty-two percent say it is important that the report be made public. This is the report that Trump recently tweeted should not even exist.

The reason Trump is so afraid of the Mueller report is not because he knows what’s in it. It’s because he knows what he has done. And if the truth comes out, he knows he’s screwed bigly. So he latches onto these distortions of reality as a defense mechanism because, otherwise, he couldn’t face the harshness of the real world and its consequences for being a deceitful, corrupt, self-obsessed, aspiring tyrant. So he spins reality in a way that makes it possible for him to survive, while also giving his Deplorables their own mental life preservers. Welcome to the world of cult psychology.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.