Times are tough for narcissists on the public stage – the ascension of The Donald has created so much noise and bedazzlement that you have to work a lot harder to get noticed.

Trump is a large, orange object who eclipses the sun for everyone else on the sociopathic spectrum, forcing them into a kind of arms race of outrageousness.

Home-grown narcissist Salim Mehajer, so textbook that psychiatry students could easily dispense with the chapter on personality disorders and just follow his Instagram account instead, has been trying very hard this week to grab attention.

So hard that one nearly feels sorry for him, except that is exactly what he wants.

The former Auburn deputy mayor has posted to social media a photo of himself in a white terry towelling robe, with an intriguing caption.

"It's always been a fear of mine partaking in surgery on risky areas, however, I can comfortably say I have never, ever felt as safe as I did in the hands of Dr Michael Biggs of North Shore Neurosurgery," he wrote.

"Who would've thought being ill could feel this good?"

Who indeed. No word on how Dr Biggs has received this endorsement, but he can rest assured that if anyone can get #neurosurgery trending on Instagram, it's Mehajer.

But Mehajer is not the only big personality tap-dancing for media and public attention under a vast Trumpian shadow.

Graduated prime minister Kevin Rudd, labelled a "psychopathic narcissist" by former Labor colleague Kristina Keneally (among others), last week popped up in New York to bite back at his old foe Malcolm Turnbull.

In what would have been surely labelled a "bitch fight" had the personalities involved been lady-ones, Turnbull trolled Rudd by lashing out at the former PM's border protection policy, which he said was the biggest failure in the history of the Commonwealth.

One half expected Rudd to call a joint press conference with Amal Clooney to refute the claim, but perhaps his pulling power has diminished since the glory days when he used actress Cate Blanchett as a source of what the experts call "narcissistic supply".

Instead, Rudd convened an exclusive interview with Sky's Kieran Gilbert.

He used it to accuse Turnbull of kowtowing to the right of his party in refusing to endorse Rudd in his bid to become UN Secretary-General.

He said Turnbull's claim that Rudd lacked the temperament to be a good Secretary-General was "frankly a concocted excuse", although the whole interview itself had the unintended effect of repeating Turnbull's allegation.

In Canberra, the return of Pauline Hanson, our own orange-hued outrage-machine, has left eccentrics like Liberal senator Cory Bernardi and Senator Jacqui Lambie manufacturing conflict just to get a run.

Last month Lambie told Parliament that Bernardi's "mock outrage" over Labor Senator Sam Dastyari's dealings with Chinese political donors was like "an angry prostitute lecturing us about the benefits of celibacy".

She later apologised to sex workers.

Bernardi admonished her by stating there was "an inherent dignity to being a Senator". He was presumably referring to the kind of statesmanlike poise he displayed when linked same-sex marriage to bestiality back in 2012.

He then modelled more dignity by calling Lambie "too thick to pay any attention to … I choose to ignore her".

And yet he didn't ignore her.

We don't ignore these people, because in a fractured and fractious media landscape, with noise coming from everywhere, the person who shouts the loudest, or who says something funny, or silly, or best of all, rude, is the person to whom we swivel our heads.

Which wouldn't be such a big problem if these people weren't increasingly claiming to be the only ones telling it like it really is, unfettered by the rules the rest of us chumps observe.

The public narcissists and others we shall euphemistically call "strong characters" are unconstrained by the laws of political spin, and because we have come to equate political spin with deception, they can assert a claim as truthtellers.

They are putting a broom through the niceties of the political and media elites.

Trump has made this an art form, and what it allows him to do is tell lies in open cover while wearing a mantle of frankness.

Perhaps we think we're saner in Australia.

But remember that Bernardi's 2012 comments on bestiality saw him fired from then-opposition leader Tony Abbott's front bench, which let him off the leash (pun intended).

His weekly newsletter is entitled "Common Sense Lives Here", even though it really, really doesn't.

When truth becomes uncoupled from content, and is instead linked to political style, anything can happen.

What makes this trend even more worrying is that occasionally a fact will come along which proves the case of the self-proclaimed straight-torkin' truth-tellers.

Consider last week's Essential poll, showing one in two Australians favour a ban on Muslim immigration.

Pauline Hanson is now able to say "I told you so" and Bernardi is calling for his own party to adopt elements of One Nation's platform.

In the arms-race of the public narcissists, it all becomes ammunition.