THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE, Donald Trump has felt himself to be disrespected. The son of a real estate developer who built cheap rental housing in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, Trump was sneered at when he crossed the East River to make his name in Manhattan by building glitzy hotels and condominiums.
Even after he had success, sophisticates dismissed him as a “short-fingered vulgarian” and headline-hungry tabloid whore, and the derisive laughter rang in his ears when Trump Airlines and his garish Atlantic City casinos went bust.
Nobody took him seriously when he repeatedly mused out loud over the past 30 years that the country was poorly led by weak men, and that his toughness and negotiating skills were just what America needed in a president.
It was this disdain from the elites, intellectuals and insiders that drove Trump to make his improbable run. President Obama may have delivered the pivotal insult at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 2011, when he got revenge for Trump’s “birther” campaign by ridiculing him as a conspiracy theorist and reality TV buffoon, as 2 500 insiders roared with laughter.Reaction
Did anyone else notice Trump’s reaction? Trump just sat there, stone-faced, stunned, simmering – Carrie at the prom covered in pig’s blood.
It’s sometimes said that Trump has no core political views, no grasp of policy, no position that he won’t reverse 15 minutes later; he’s changed party registration at least seven times. But there is a central driving force in Trump’s life, just as there was in his campaign: shame.
He intuitively grasped and channelled the rage and resentment that millions of Americans felt about being shut out and left behind, and offered them his hunger for revenge. That was the platform on which he ran: You think
you’re better than us?
At noon on January 20, President Trump’s new reality show, Elections Matter, made a debut. Not coincidentally, this is the same time that Americans collectively should begin to hold their breath.
– CHARLES KNIGHTON
