A lack of news coverage could cause major psychological problems for the attention-loving President Donald Trump.
Mary Trump, the president’s niece and a clinical psychologist, has claimed that the media’s pullback from covering the president in the wake of his media ban could push him over the edge.
“We are going to see that he cannot handle it,” she said in a conversation with Wajahat Ali on his show The Left Hook.
“I have no doubt that we will see lots more lashing out on his failing social media site,” she continued.
Trump, 80, banned reporters from outlets including Politico, MS NOW and CNN, saying that he simply did not like their coverage of his administration and revoked their access passes to the White House.
On Monday, news organizations that provide White House pool coverage—audio and video of the president’s public events accessible to all media outlets — announced they would not cover the president while the ban remained in place.
The boycott’s timing coincided with the UN General Assembly and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington.
“I think he is not going to be able to last. He is not going to be able to withstand it,” she said of the lack of coverage.
One press event Monday had visuals carried live but no audio feed, so Trump could not be heard.
Mary Trump, a long-time critic of her uncle, described the moment as “paradise,” and said it was a glimpse into the world as it could be, if the media refused to cover Trump on his terms indefinitely.
“Donald, because he is so good at ruining everything, has painted himself and the entire right-wing media echo chamber into a very bad corner. And it is kind of fun actually, except for the fact that everything is terrible,” she said.
And she warned that with the midterms looking like a potential blue wave, Trump was “more dangerous than he has ever been.”
“People might be saying, well, how is that possible? He is so obviously in cognitive, psychological, emotional, and physical decline. He is weak. He is pathetic. He has painted himself into a corner.”
But, Mary Trump pointed out, “he still has the nuclear codes. He is still engaged in this horrific war of choice against Iran, which we have already lost. He is at the United Nations threatening to annihilate an entire country, which is not good rhetoric to hear from anybody.”
She said her uncle’s irritability and erratic behavior would only get worse.
“The more he is allowed to roam free and be unconstrained, the worse his condition gets. The more he is going to start sensing that he is losing control of things. There is only so much you can protect a person who is as extremely online as he is from the reality of the numbers.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who is known for his habit of using slurs and insults to respond to criticism, told the Daily Beast that “Mary Trump is a stone-cold loser who doesn’t have a clue about anything.”
Still, Trump’s numbers are abysmal. His personal approval is the lowest it has ever been.
Recent polling suggests Republicans could lose Senate seats they usually take for granted, including one in Kansas, where voters haven’t elected a Democrat in almost a century.
Trump’s First-Amendment-skirting ban on journalists from CNN, Politico and MS NOW, was temporarily overturned on Thursday by a Trump-appointed Washington district court judge, Timothy Kelly, with a hearing on September 28 that could see it permanently felled.
