Donald Trump is the contemporary master of a little-used literary device: the narcissistic third person. On the indictment of Paul Manafort: “There's not even a mention of Trump in there.” On the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 election: “Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?” Even his very first tweet, back in the innocent days of 2009, employed this peculiar mirror-gazing perspective: “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman ….”
Like so much else that Mr. Trump favors — red baseball hats, caps lock — referring to oneself in the third person has, these past few years, come to seem tainted, almost pathological. It has entered the cultural lexicon — suitable only for the toweringly grandiose (LeBron) or the deeply immature (Elmo). When the writers of a drama wish to signal that someone is soon to die of tuberculosis, they have her cough blood into a handkerchief. When they wish to signal that someone suffers from a terminal case of self-regard, they have him refer to himself in the third person.
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