DONALD J. BIEBER?

Katie Rogers of The New York Times writes:

In a 12-hour span this week, President Trump promised that the war with Iran was ending soon. He picked a fight with the pope on social media. He threatened to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve. He posted an illustration of himself receiving an encouraging hug from Jesus Christ.

This is what it looks like when Mr. Trump is under pressure and burrowing his way into a more flattering news cycle. And anyone who has been paying even a little bit of attention over the past decade can pinpoint where we are in a well-established routine, when, intentionally or not, the president tosses out little rhetorical grenades meant to shift attention elsewhere. (It often works: Remember last week, when he threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization?)

... What makes this different from all the other times is that he cannot post his way out of a war he started without congressional permission or without the support of voters.

It's the same old same old from Trump, and also it isn't. I agree with Stephanie Grisham, whom Rogers quotes:

When the moment calls for him to put the phone down or back away from a critic, he hits back harder.

“He’ll double down, lie more and say that everything’s perfectly fine and great, and then do all his bonkers postings,” said Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary for Mr. Trump.

But she added: “He’s being erratic, even for him.”

Is he being dementia erratic? Or experiencing some other form of mental illness that's new, or at least worsening?

Trump's White House is a massive flattery bubble -- but outside its walls, Trump knows how many people dislike him. I think, consciously or otherwise, he's looking for evidence that he can still get away with anything. So he's acting like a self-indulgent pop star.

I'm not a Justin Bieber fan, but a few days ago I found myself reading this account of Bieber's appearance at Coachella, and it made me think of Trump.

Three years after retreating from the spotlight, [Bieber's] Saturday night set was set to be his biggest performance in years.

What fans hoped for, it seems, was vintage Bieber. They wanted the hits: “Baby,” “One Less Lonely Girl,” “Sorry.” They wanted nostalgia; they wanted a dance party. They wanted a pop star with a microphone headset and a flock of backup dancers. They wanted choreography.

Bieber had other ideas.... The singer appeared on stage alone, with a pink hoodie pulled over his head and sunglasses across his eyes. He selected his backing tracks manually from a Mac on the side of the stage. Occasionally, he scrolled through comments on the Coachella livestream to pick his next songs....

Things got weird a third of the way through the set when Bieber started playing through his old material. Or rather, his computer did. The singer sat perched in front of his Mac, searching for his old music videos on YouTube. He shared his computer’s screen so that the crowd could see.

When he clicked on the video for “Baby,” the audience’s reaction was immediate....

And then, after a minute, he pulled the plug. He searched for another song, “Favorite Girl,” and did the same routine: one minute, then on to the next.

One possible reaction to being a massive celebrity is that you might indulge yourself the way Bieber did just to prove to yourself that your fans will stay on board, and also to draw attention to yourself, at a time when you seem to be past your peak and less able to make the world pay attention to you. And you feel you can get away with self-indulgence because you've been told you're great by the flatterers who surround you.

You become late-period Elvis, stumbling through "Are You Lonesome Tonight?":



Elvis had drug problems, and Bieber has spent time in rehab. Bieber also -- like Trump -- got away with a lot when he was at the peak of his popularity. Here's Bieber in 2013:

In a video posted Wednesday by TMZ, a young man the publication identified as Bieber appears to be urinating into the yellow plastic mop bucket as his friends cheer him on.

"That's the coolest spot to p**s, you know, you will forever remember that," someone tells a staffer as the man identified as Bieber is shown from the back. "You're not going to remember him p***in' in the restroom. Everybody does that."

The publication reported Bieber was exiting an unidentified nightclub through the restaurant kitchen at the time.

At the end of the video, the man identified as Bieber is seen spraying a photo of Bill Clinton with a cleaning solvent and saying, "F*** Bill Clinton," the publication reported.

You might even get this way if you're a leading figure in a subculture. I'm thinking about the time when Bradford Cox, the frontman of the acclaimed indie-rock band Deerhunter, responded to a heckler by leading his band in an hour-long version of "My Sharona." About halfway through,

Cox instructed–rather, demanded–that the bewildered crowd take off their clothes and shake their chairs above their heads, all the while shouting “seemingly intoxicated defenses about his art” and simulating felatio. The nightmarish charade reached a screeching, welcomed, and equaling head-scratching end when Cox invited the remaining spectators on stage, triumphantly proclaiming that the show was “the death of folk music and the birth of punk.”

He later told Pitchfork, "I am a terrorist. As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity."

None of this diminished his standing in the indie-rock world, and Deerhunter went on to release three more acclaimed albums before Cox, who's struggled with depression, went into semi-retirement.

When you're a star, they let you do it. And if they let you do it, that means you must still be a star.