Kena Betancur/Getty Fourth Estate When Trump Erupts What sets off the president, and why?

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

A Trump eruption usually starts with a burp of sulfur and then, in a burst of pyroclastic glory, up goes a torrid spume of lava blocks, pumice, gases and obscenities. His most recent detonation came on his trip to Davos, reports Bloomberg News, and the cause was word that an associate attorney general had called the plan to release the Nunes memo without proper Justice Department and FBI review “extraordinarily reckless.” To Trump, this was a grave affront—another effort by the Justice Department and other elements of the “Deep State” to undermine his exposé of the politically motivated witch hunt against him.

Trump erupts with such regularity that he’s like one of those impossible-to-pronounce Icelandic volcanoes whose ceaseless activity makes even occasional periods of dormancy newsworthy. His eruptions range from the megacolossal, as in the Nunes memo example, to the mundane, as when his attack on New York Times journalists as “fake reporters“ was described by celebrated volcanologist Maggie Haberman of the New York Times as an eruption.


Trump really loses it when he senses betrayal, sniffs out signs of disrespect or finds himself sharply contradicted, and his reaction can arrive without notice. White House chief of staff John Kelly hit all three of those tripwires this month when he told Fox News that Trump’s view of a border wall was not “fully informed.” According to a Jan. 26 New York Times piece, Trump “erupted in anger watching news clips” of the Kelly interview and directed additional flumes of molten rock at his chief of staff in this tweet: “The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it.”

Like a lot of rich people, Trump is accustomed to getting his way. After a year in the White House, he still seems stunned that merely saying something doesn’t make it so. Expecting that the Nunes memo will be published because he wants it published fits this expectation. He’s made doubly furious because when he gets blocked he thinks it makes him look weak. He’s also sure to detonate if others get the credit he thinks he deserves, as happened when Steve Bannon was viewed as the “real” president. Finally, there’s Trump’s staged rage, the sort he directed at cable anchor Megyn Kelly for days after the first Republican debate, which seems too premeditated to be connected to his anger neuron.

People who have worked closely with Trump say that he uses his temper to communicate. Where others might speak sharply or sarcastically to make emphatic points, he hollers. In most instances, the outrage soon passes, his people say. “If he doesn’t get mad, it means he doesn’t care,” one anonymous source told CNN in September. According to the network, Trump’s preferred curse word is the “tried-and-true F-bomb.”

To hear Trump tell it, his anger is strategic. By running hot all the time, he keeps everybody on edge and eager to cool him down. “Sometimes I use anger in a controlled way to make a point when I am negotiating,” Trump wrote in his 2007 book Think Big. “In those situations, I am using anger for an effect, to further my goals. Using anger constructively is another form of mental toughness that you need to succeed.”

Yeah, maybe, but his anger-for-effect rationale doesn’t seem to apply to many of the verbal beatings he’s meted out during his presidency, especially the ones given to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Last March, Trump “erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials” after White House Counsel Donald McGahn failed to prevent Sessions from recusing himself from the Russia inquiry, as the New York Times has reported. Then, “Mr. Trump unloaded on Mr. Sessions … for recusing himself from the Russian investigation,” the paper continued. Another Trump “eruption” came three weeks later when FBI Director James Comey said there was an ongoing investigation of the links between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. We all know where that eruption ended—with Comey’s firing. A week after the Comey firing, “Mr. Trump erupted at Mr. Sessions” once when he learned that Feputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. By the time Trump finished, a moat of lava had formed around the White House.

Other press sightings of Trump “eruptions”: After Trump spoke with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull; after he banished then-press secretary Sean Spicer and other senior aides from Air Force One; a few days after a State Department official met with a North Korean peer; after the revelations from Michael Wolff’s book were excerpted; and after he learned the direction the bipartisan DACA negotiation was taking. According to NPR, “Trump used vulgar language” while erupting over DACA. Of course he did.

Trump’s instant access to his fury extracts from those around him—and those across the table negotiating with him—a high price. No debate with him is limited to facts, logic and argumentation. By bundling his emotions into every interaction, Trump’s narcissism has become the world’s primary reference point. Whether the topic is the wall, the budget, the Mueller investigation or North Korean missiles, he holds the world hostage with his outbursts. Just like the way that Icelandic volcano stopped a goodly portion of the world’s air traffic back in 2010. Whatever it was called.

******

I once lived atop a live volcano. Scream something at me via [email protected]. My email alerts stink of magma, my Twitter feed flows like lava and my RSS feed imagines itself a collapsed caldera.