During a CNN interview Sunday, D'Antonio told host Ana Cabrera that Trump is "stewing" over the funeral that some are calling the largest group of powerful resisters yet.
"This is a man who is really impatient when anyone else has the public's attention," D'Antonio explained. "He is so devoted to drawing attention to himself that he has to be restrained from tweeting when it would be against his own interests. I think that even the act of going golfing during the ceremony yesterday demonstrated who he really is."
D'Antonio went on to say that Trump is a kind of person that didn't even have the "grace and sense of respect" to stay out of town at Camp David and "reflect on the awesome responsibilities he shoulders as president but generally shirks."
He noted that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's appearance at the McCain funeral had to have been awkward hearing the veiled insults of the president. Though, he also said that her presence likely did more benefit Trump than hurt it.
"You know, I think this is something that gets lost in our consideration of this issue and that is that this was a loss for all of America and really for the world when you heard the outpouring of esteem and affection for John McCain from all quarters including from his captors in Vietnam," D'Antonio said.
While the world had great respect for McCain, it served as quite the contrast to Trump. Attending the funeral was something D'Antonio called "wholly appropriate" because "it's what grown-ups do."
"I think it pointed up the president's absence but in many instances, Ivanka is the person that represents humanity in place of the president," he continued. "And she was forming that performing that task yesterday. I think it was to his benefit she [did] so. Just as it was to his benefit that Mike Pence delivered an address on Friday."
However, D'Antonio noted that conservative The Washington Post Jennifer Rubin talked about Pence being "a spineless representative of a president whom he claims sent him to do this duty." He noted that there was no one in the room who believed Trump intended to honor McCain in any way.
He went on to say that the lacking success over the summer has to make Trump feel isolated, particularly "when you consider that so many members of his cabinet are gone." At the same time, the vast majority of the staffers that came in at the beginning are also gone.
"There's no one who, I think, can advise him in an effective way," D'Antonio said. "And when people get this isolated, they become even less controlled if they suffer from the pathology that the president suffers from. This is a profoundly narcissistic person who thinks it's me against the world."
He suspected that when Trump got word of Meghan McCain's speech "it bothered him to no end."
"You know, this is a woman who was expressing profound grief and profound love for her father and affection for her country and, as you mentioned, this was part of a resistance, I think," he closed. "It was a resistance to Donald Trump personally, and he's got nowhere to go. Where will he turn for the kind of rational support and guidance that all presidents need? I don't think there is anyone who is going to speak truth to him."
Watch the full commentary below:
