Trump cannot perform one of the basic roles of a president: Showing empathy for others who are in pain.

He cannot console anyone.

Consolation and empathy are not part of his emotional makeup.

He can insult, he can sneer, he can boast, he can ridicule, but he cannot console.

When he went to El Paso, he told the hospital staff about the large crowd he had when he last visited the city.

He mocked Beto O’Rourke.

He came to visit those who were hospitalized but he could not stop talking about himself.

Richard Parker wrote in the New York Times about the disaster that Trump created with his narcissism and self-absorption.

From his flight on Wednesday to Dayton, Ohio, to this sprawling high-desert city on the Mexican border, the 45th occupant of the White House not only littered his consolation tour with petty insults — but just to rub salt in the wound, doses of renewed racism. Yet most striking was how alone and outnumbered the president was: rejected, ostracized and told to go home.

The people who streamed the scene of the terrorist attack here — brown, black, white and every hue in between — defiantly defended the nation’s diversity. With no public appearances, the president seemed to shrink, ever more alone as he clung to his white nationalist politics and governance. But he and his supporters were grossly outnumbered. For perhaps the first time in his angry, racist and cruel presidency, the tables were turned in smoldering, righteous popular anger — and he was on the receiving end.

You have to give this to Mr. Trump: He never backs off. He doubles down like a wild gambler in a casino, raising the stakes one more time demanding just a few more chips from the house. Leaving the White House on Wednesday morning, he said, “I think my rhetoric brings people together,” adding he was “concerned about the rise of any group of hate. I don’t like it, whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy.”

Is there some other form of supremacy that escaped the public view?

The man has no manners, no decency, no grace, no dignity, no kindness, no empathy, no moral core.

He is an empty vessel whose only reflex is to lash out at others, as he lashed out at the mayor of Dayton, because she dared to ask him to “do something” to stop the gun violence. Evidently she was not sufficiently deferential.

This man’s need for approval is so vast that no amount of cheering can fill that vacuum. He is a vast sucking sound all by himself. He wants to fill our consciousness at every moment, prevent us from thinking about anything else other than him and his faux grandeur.

He always looks angry. He has money, family, the highest office in the land, yet he is angry. Very angry. Bitter.

He will never find peace. He cannot feel anyone else’s pain nor offer comfort.

He is doomed to walk the earth in search of applause. He cannot live without it.

Not being at peace with himself, he cannot offer it to others.

He will never find peace.