“Not narcissism — strategic sadism.”
SNAP benefits are hours from cutoff. Military families line up at food pantries. OMB drafts reduction-in-force orders: permanent layoffs. Trump sees all of it and smiles. On Halloween night, while Rachel in Kansas packs her third tote from the Stronghold Food Pantry³, Trump stands under imported crystal and calls the shutdown “a masterpiece.” Someone laughs too loudly, the way people do when they know they shouldn’t.
The party has a name: The Crash Never Happened.
Guests are told to dress like survivors who got richer. The champagne coupes have gold-leaf rims. The cake is shaped like a bull market, its horns gilded and its belly hollow.
When asked if the optics concern him, Trump leans back and says, “They should be grateful I’m not billing them for the show.”
For him, the shutdown isn’t failure. It’s theater. The government stops paying people; he fills the stage with sequins. The pain isn’t a byproduct. It’s the price of admission.
Trump doesn’t merely tolerate suffering. He uses it. Maybe enjoys it more than he knows.
Dr. Justin Frank, in Trump on the Couch, writes that humiliation, not persuasion, is Trump’s preferred instrument.⁴ His niece Mary Trump, a psychologist, calls him someone raised to believe that “empathy is weakness, and cruelty gets rewarded.”⁵ Others go further. “He doesn’t hurt people to feel powerful,” says Dr. Bandy Lee. “He hurts them to remind you that only he can stop the pain.”⁶
The shutdown becomes his experiment. Will the public blame him? Will Democrats cave? Will federal workers crack? Will the lights still look good on camera?
“He turns a national crisis into a lighting test.”
The second party is quieter.
No banner this time, just a press embargo. A few nights after the Gatsby gala, with SNAP offices bracing for chaos and TSA officers calling in sick en masse, Trump throws a Tribute to Liberty dinner by the pool. The centerpiece? Thirteen women in flag-themed swimsuits performing synchronized routines under red-white-blue floodlights.
Sousa blares over speakers. The water ripples like taut silk. The swimmers salute. The guests clap. Trump sits in a high-backed chair beside a bronze fountain shaped like an eagle. He doesn’t clap. He just watches.
The routines end with a flourish: each woman floating backward into the shape of a Liberty Bell. A staffer snaps a photo for his Truth Social account. It’s captioned, “America is Beautiful. Shutdown is Fake News.”
“When I throw a party,” he once said, “I make it a punishment if you weren’t invited.”⁷
Outside the compound, federal workers choose between medicine and rent. Inside the pool, flags glisten. Water curves in synchronized arcs. One swimmer’s cap slips; no one seems to notice.
“While they starve, he stages a pageant.”
There’s a long history of rulers who turn cruelty into performance.