A desire to be taken seriously
Let’s go back back back in time, to April 2011.
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.
Well that hasn’t worked out well.
‘… like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?’
‘… and these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night…’
(Cackles…)
I’m really gonna miss Bamz.
Seriously, I’ve confessed before, tho’, I actually find that _painful_ to watch. Same as the Ricky Gervais character on The Office, same as a lot of people who, okay, are kinda awful, but clueless, and put on the spot for it…
You’d _think_ what with the whole dangerous damned demagogue show Trump’s been doing the last little while, I’d have more contempt than pity…
But weirdly, yeah, still got some of the former…
He looks so… small. So pathetic. So _sad_ through much of this. The debate last night, he’s doing I can’t remember which ‘everyone hates you’ attempt on Ms. Clinton, and it was just like watching a kid in the schoolyard, saying that _loudly_, you figure, so no one would think too hard about _him_.
Not saying he’s not still damned dangerous. But yeah, you _can_ be both pathetic and that.
(… heh… some of the latter…
… damn you, Freud.)
Kind of ignores the whole context of Trump’s birtherism, which is why Obama was fully justified at teh time in making Trump look foolish.
It gives the piece a weird slant, and Trump deserves zero empathy.
Or is it for revenge?
I agree with Latverian Diplomat. A person can have a desire to be taken seriously, and not manifest it in assholery. I have a desire (unmet) to be taken seriously, and I approach that desire by doing things that are worthy of taking seriously (i.e. as a scientist). He could be taken seriously if he had done like Obama, for instance, who spent time as a community organizer helping people.
I know too many people like Trump to have any sympathy or empathy – they have none for others.
Someone pointed out that Trump’s older brother would have inherited the family standard, had he not died prematurely, which meant it fell instead on Donald’s shoulders, and he’s been trying to fake looking worthy ever since. Basically, he’s still trying to live up to his daddy’s expectations, and is desperately afraid that he can’t. Which would explain a lot.
Sounds like Bush 43, and we all know how well that went.
I gave up trying to live up to my father’s expectations many years ago, when I discovered his expectations included my being a “girl” all my life. Forget about Dad, just be who you are.