Chunk 27: This isn’t going to end well.

It was the photo of Donald Trump standing on the Truman Balcony that finally got me.

Returning from Walter Reed Medical Center, having removed his mask to offer a big thumbs-up to the world’s media, the most famous man in the world bathed in the glory of the moment. Never mind that, at precisely the same time, he was personally spreading a deadly pathogen that to date has killed 210,000+ of the citizens he purports to lead. This was his moment and he was running with it.

It was perhaps the most bizarre balcony display since Michael Jackson waved his third child, the unfortunately nicknamed “Blanket”, from above a Berlin hotel railing back in 2002. Jackson later admitted it had all been a “terrible mistake”. Don’t hold your breath for Trump to admit likewise.

The President would actually do well to take heed of Jackson’s example, because the similarities between him and the late King of Pop are actually quite stark; these two self-made men whose savvy media skills once helped earn them tremendous wealth and power.

Remember, back in the 80s, before Jackson’s career fell off a cliff, when there were tabloid rumours that he slept in an oxygen chamber and wanted to buy the elephant man’s bones? It was all part of an image of his own creation, a fantasy that fed the “Wacko Jacko” myth and helped keep him in the public conscience he craved, feeding his ego and earning him millions and millions of dollars.

Remind you of anyone?

As has just been revealed by a recent New York Times’ investigation, Trump’s image was equally as fancified. Bouncing between bankruptcies, he only played the part of a successful businessman on “The Apprentice”, when the reality behind the show was far different, with claims that Trump’s original run for president was more out of a desire to relaunch his fading brand than serve his country.

But beyond fame and fortune, what Jackson and Trump have in common is a fate that has befallen so many celebrities before them: you can only feed the beast for so long before the beast bites back.

For Jackson, the intrusions into his increasingly odd personal life became all-consuming to a point where, instead of controlling the media, it began to control him. The speculation about his appearance, finances and sexual proclivities wouldn’t abate. Was it any wonder he turned to drugs?

For Trump, it’s been a slightly different path. Desperate for attention, he gambled everything on winning the presidency and, perhaps even to his own surprise, won. But only now are we seeing at what cost. How many of his endless stream of lies have come in reaction to covering up his tracks from the people my mum used to call “nosey parkers”?

And, as Jackson learned the hard way, these people are never, ever going to stop coming after him, well after he has the entire United States Justice Department to defend him. Like Jackson, Trump’s desperate need for attention will probably be the thing that finally does him in.

Whether singing “Heal the world” or being leader of the free part of it, both stories seem destined for an unhappy ending.