Today is Saturday, October 15, 2022. Just when you thought a dictator like Adolf Hitler was dead and buried all these years ago, now comes a wanna-be dictator by the name of Donald J. Trump who has been accused of using similar tactics as those used by Hitler in Munich more than 80 years ago. In an eye-opening online article for RawStory by Bob Brigham, the parallel is made. The piece is entitled “Legal experts: Trump is employing Hitler’s ‘Munch model’ as he continues his war with the DOJ.”

The similarity is being seen by experts in the never-ending classified documents scandal now swirling around the orange head of the twice-impeached, narcissistic ex-president. Two top legal experts claim that Dumpf’s current document woes are similar to a strategy employed by the German dictator more than 80 years ago in Munch.

The preeminent scholars who penned this analysis is none other than Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe, a frequent contributor to MSNBC, and Dennis Aftergut, a fellow high court litigator. So these are not two loonies with no credentials here making these wild assertions.

The comparison to Hitler is seen in events that occurred in Munich when Hitler, then the German chancellor, met with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 29, 1938, two days before a deadline that Hitler announced for invading Czechoslovakia. When the parties met in the Bavarian capital, everyone signed a “nonaggression” pact that ceded the territory to Hitler without consulting the Czechs. Thus the wily chancellor bargained successfully for something that wasn’t his (a piece of a neighboring nation) by agreeing to yield something that didn’t belong to him (the territory of other neighboring nations, which he agreed not to invade). Of course, the pact would then be ignored by Germany when it invaded Poland in 1939, launching World War II.

In The Bulwark, the two scholars write that “Former President Donald J. Trump is mimicking Munch by leveraging claims to things that aren’t his ( America’s national secrets) against something which does not belong to him (the public order, which he threatens to overturn). On October 8, The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt reported that in 2021, Trump sought to negotiate a deal with the National Archives by which he would return presidential documents (including some marked ‘top secret’) that he had spirited away to his beachfront resort at Mar-a-Lago.” They conclude, “Neither the documents he had stashed at his resort nor those he sought from the Archives belong to him.”

You’ll like this assessment from the two legal experts as to what is motivating this American Caesar: his mental health challenges, they have determined. They write, “Those qualities of character are lacking in the extreme narcissist: One who thinks everything exists to serve his purposes. Such as America’s would-be Caesar. Experts who study disordered personalities understand that narcissists are pure transactionalists.” They also write, “For such disordered individuals, other people, other hearts, other interests do not exist. Nor is there any such thing as an asset that does not belong to the narcissist for purposes of trading so as to advance their own person.” They have hit the nail of Dumpf’s underlying personality here, I would declare.

Tribe and Aftergut argued that a similar dynamic was at play when Dumpf tried to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the phone call that resulted in his first impeachment.

They indicate, “That aid was not Trump’s to hold back. Only a narcissist would think it was. And only a narcissist would be blind to the lethal consequences of withholding aid to a country in Ukraine’s position.”

In conclusion, they warn anyone who might be “in charge of prosecuting the former president to keep in mind history’s clearest example of everything wrong with appeasing a narcissist: the calamity of Munch.” These are very sober words from two insightful observers of Dumpf’s underlying personality disorder and what really compels him to do what he does. No matter what Tribe and Aftergut have observed here about Dumpf, there is only one conclusion to this whole sorry mess: Dumpf must be prosecuted and brought to trial sometime before the next century!

Anyway, it’s getting late here. That is so because Elliot and I entertained our good friend “Mark” tonight at 5:30. This is the first time we’ve had anyone over after the death of our beloved cat Jocelyn last Friday. We all commented on her absence when we greeted Mark at the door. This is our new reality and we have to face it.

For dinner, we had Elliot’s Moroccan pea soup and homemade meatballs with spaghetti. Mark brought a delicious cake that I did not have. We had several desserts that we picked up at the Panepinto Bakery, on Eliot Avenue, where we had breakfast today. I tried the coconut custard pie slice with my coffee.

After dinner, we watched a Jake Gyllenhaal film from 2013 that I taped off one of the premium channels, Enemy, in which he plays two of himself, a mild-mannered college professor by the name of Adam Bell and a two-bit actor by the name of Daniel St. Claire. Shades of The Prince and the Pauper done so many years ago. Here the two men eventually meet and a tense situation ensues when they switch identities to the confusion of their significant others who have no idea which man is which – or do they? The setting of this psychological thriller is Toronto which is photographed through almost a monochromatic lens; the city looks so drab and gray all the time that it adds to the monotony of the two characters’ lives that is upended with the realization of the Doppelgänger effect in the story. All I can say it was great having the double pleasure of seeing two Gyllenhaals occupy the screen instead of one. The ending, though, will leave you totally perplexed. I was discussing this with Elliot after Mark left us around 10.

So if you want to see a thought-provoking film from 9 years ago, watch Enemy and get back to me about the meaning of the last scene that appears to come out of a horror film. By the way, the film was expertly directed by French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve and is based on a 2002 novel by Jose Saramago, The Double.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Stay safe and be well.