How President Obama precipitated Donald Trump's serious effort at a presidential bid.
Donald Trump’s Presidential Run Began in an Effort to Gain Stature
By MAGGIE HABERMAN and ALEXANDER BURNSMARCH 12, 2016
Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat beside his host, Lally Weymouth, the journalist and socialite daughter of Katharine Graham, longtime publisher of The Washington Post.
A short while later, the humiliation started.
The annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line.
He lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
Mr. Trump at first offered a drawn smile, then a game wave of the hand. But as the president’s mocking of him continued and people at other tables craned their necks to gauge his reaction, Mr. Trump hunched forward with a frozen grimace.
After the dinner ended, Mr. Trump quickly left, appearing bruised. He was “incredibly gracious and engaged on the way in,” recalled Marcus Brauchli, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, but departed “with maximum efficiency.”
That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world. And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.
…In an interview on Friday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had encountered many who doubted or dismissed him as a political force before now. “I realized that unless I actually ran, I wouldn’t be taken seriously,” he said. But he denied having been troubled by Mr. Obama’s derision.
“I loved that dinner,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “I can handle criticism.”
…
“A lot of people have laughed at me over the years,” he said in a speech days before the New Hampshire primary. “Now, they’re not laughing so much.”
What makes Donald Trump tick?
Egotism.
Where did it come
from?
One theory of the narcissistic personality is that the
narcissist suffers from poor self-esteem due to parental neglect or abuse, and
overcompensates through self-love. A more recent theory is that the narcissist
was raised by his or her parents to think of him- or herself as superior to
others.
<blockquote>
The authors also wanted to determine what differentiated
narcissists -- who tend to be more aggressive and even violent than other
people, and are at higher risk for depression, anxiety and drug addiction --
from people with strong self-esteem. As mentioned above, parents who show their
kids warmth and appreciation without promoting the idea that they are superior
tend to raise children with solid self-esteem.
</blockquote>
Donald Trump was sent to a military academic at the age of
13 because he was very aggressive and destructive, according to Wikipedia.
Also, he had a brother who died from extreme alcoholism. But there is no indication
of how Trump was raised from the article.
I also read a quote from Trump that he feels like he is basically
the same person that he was in fifth grade (10 years old). He seemed to acknowledge his own emotional regression.
<blockquote>
Narcissism, in lay terms, basically means that a person is
totally absorbed in self. The extreme narcissist is the center of his own
universe. To an extreme narcissist, people are things to be used. It usually
starts with a significant emotional wound or a series of them culminating in a
major trauma of separation/attachment. No matter how socially skilled an
extreme narcissist is, he has a major attachment dysfunction.
The extreme narcissist is frozen in childhood. He became emotionally stuck at
the time of his major trauma of separation/attachment.
The protective insulation barrier he constructed is called a false persona. He created a false identity. This identity is not the true person inside. The many types of false personas or identities that an extreme narcissist creates can vary.
</blockquote>
I once read a study of historical figures that seems to reconcile
the two theories of narcissism (parental overvaluation versus childhood
trauma). It argued that the family dynamic of certain people (e.g., Adolf Hitler)
involved 1) a cold, distant disapproving father (or step-father) who might have
even been a violent alcoholic, and 2) a warm, doting mother who whispered encouragingly
to her young boy about his eventual rendezvous with a glorious destiny.
The following article might suggest that Donald Trump fits
this profile, if only somewhat.
Disturbingly, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama fit the profile
more obviously.
Which brings us to the subject of Obama’s prolonged
ridiculing of Trump.
Would Trump do that? Judging from Trump’s history in the
primaries, no. Trump mocks other candidates as soon as they criticize him, and
then Trump reconciles with them as soon as they cease their attack (or as soon
as they lose).
This leads us to the mystery of who the real Barack Obama is, a man
hidden behind layers of projection by the public and behind a false persona.
