Some readers of this blog gripe occasionally that it spends too much time and consumes too much emotional energy beating up on Donald John Trump.

To which I say: Too bad; there will be plenty more on its way in due course.

Thus, I want to share some more thoughts from a man who dislikes the president of the United States as much as anyone. I get David Cay Johnston’s bias. He also is a long-honored journalist who has studied Trump up close for three decades.

He answered the question “Is Donald Trump an ideologue?” this way:

No. That’s the whole point of the first chapter of my book, “President Like No Other.” The 44 previous presidents were all over the map. There were smart people and dumb people, there were people of impeccable integrity such as Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, there were absolute scoundrels like Warren G. Harding. We had a murderous racist in the White House whose painting hangs in the Oval Office, now looking down on Trump. What distinguishes all those presidents, particularly Chester Arthur, the one closest to Trump, is that they tried in the context of their times to make America better.

Donald Trump is a man with this desperate need for adoration. He is an empty vessel, the exact opposite of Henry David Thoreau — a “life unexamined.” His only philosophy is the glorification of Donald.

Read the entire Salon article here.

Johnston’s final quote gets right to the heart of why I and many others have opposed the very idea of Donald Trump serving as president.

He has built his entire professional life and career with one purpose: self-enrichment. Trump has succeeded. He tells us so whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Trump’s self-worth is all important. It seemingly matters more than the suffering of others, or the grief of others, or anguish of others.

On Memorial Day, for crying out loud, the president tweeted some hideous message about how those who had fallen in battle would be thrilled that the nation’s economy was doing so well. Of course, Trump took all the credit for that, giving new emphasis to the “me” in “Memorial Day.”

The absence of public service throughout the entirety of this man’s life is painfully evident whenever he opens his mouth.

Ideology? He doesn’t possess one.

As David Cay Johnston has noted so accurately, he thinks only of himself and how he can burnish his own image.