The Oval Office bully: who really is Donald Trump?
Opinion Analysis by Camille Heneine, Staff Writer
October 27th, 2020
Whether you support Donald Trump or despise him, there is no denying he is like no other president. Before running for elections, he had no political network or connections, no previous experience in the field. He wasn’t a top ranked military officer, he never had a high government seat and he never held an elected office position. This almost never happens amongst presidential candidates. What sets him apart from other candidates, other than his very well-known public persona, was his disconcerting personality and his constant brush with controversy. Quite the showman, he frequently found himself deflecting allegations and scandals, many of them related to his attitude towards women.
Being the 45th president of the United States did not dampen a sexist, misogynistic and racist conduct. On the contrary, throughout his mandate, Trump’s outrageous, yet affable behaviour, has managed to fascinate his supporters in a way very few could. His relationship with them verges on fascination: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” said Donald Trump. He is seen as the patriot, the protector, the saviour of America, but this portrait is a hoax. Trump’s only weapon is excellent communication.
Everything he says is embellished. He speaks in metaphor and he flatters his voters who have a “better future” or are “better looking” than others. It is all about the visual. In his speeches, he gives the illusion of honesty, closeness and openness by joking around, calling Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe”, when at the end of the day they are filled with falsehoods and disrespect. This marketing coup is truly the president’s greatest asset as demonstrated by a Quinnipiac University poll where the words “strong” and “leader” were respectively mentioned 64 and 27 times, in response to the question: “What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?”
Without the intention of judging Donald Trump as a President or whether his mandate has strengthened or harmed America and its long-term prospects, Donald Trump’s public behaviour nevertheless leaves us wondering what type of person he is behind closed doors; beyond the image he manufactures. What makes Trump tick?
Sebastian Gorka, his ex-deputy assistant, compares the White House dynamics to a dog fight, Trump will listen to the loudest, the more dominant and ultimately the last person talking in the room. He is easily influenced and makes up his own truth, real or not as it may be. That is why, in order to convince the President, states Antoni Scaramuchi - the short lived White House director of communication – it all comes down to manipulation. Trump is a very capricious, angry and binary person. Things have to be said in a flippant, pictorial way and at random times to register upon his limited attention span. “He’s a seven-year-old” said the writer Mark Fisher.
They all explain that behind the presidential figure, he is very anxious and self-conscious. His lifestyle boils down to sleeping 3 to 4 hours a night and turning on the news as soon as he wakes up. “He has the self-esteem of a pigeon” said Antoni Scaramucci; being deeply insecure, he wants to see how the world perceives him, what people think of him and will watch every interview or news piece about himself.
Trump’s inexplicable personality, racist attitude and patriarchal worldview ultimately comes back to his relationship with his family, but specifically with his father, Fred Trump.
He used to tell his children in life “you either won or you lost”. There was no place for failure or fear. Life wasn’t a place to make any friends. Being a Trump meant being a king. This attitude shaped Donald Trump in “an almost desperate way” said Mark Fisher because he had so little father-and-son moments. To show his father he was worthy of his admiration, his attention, he needed to succeed at everything, get wherever he wanted to go, taking little notice of who got crushed along the way. In addition to all that, he needed to become a personality – something Mark Fisher said came from his mother- a public character, a showman; and that is how he became the person we know today. We recognise the psychological pattern of a child suffering from a huge lack of affection and taking it out on others, the playground bully. The Oval Office bully.
Donald Trump took a liking to power and isn’t planning on leaving the stage anytime soon. With the presidential elections around the corner, Americans need to take a step back and see if this is the man they want as the head of the most powerful country in the world.
Bibliography:
https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-describe-trump-in-one-word-2017-8?r=US&IR=T
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/donald-trump.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/11/politics/donald-trump-businessmen-presidents-history/index.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/donald-trump-scandals/474726/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/difference-between-sexism-and-misogyny
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/marc-fisher/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/donald-trump-scandals/474726/