Having had around 50 years Trumpistry shoved down my throat as one of the side "benefits" of...

[TreasonousBastard]

being a native born New Yorker, I suspect I have some idea what's driving him.

He's just a poor little kid looking for acceptance. But never learned how get it, or what to do with it. "Respect me, dammit!"

His father seemed to be happy just rolling around in the money vault, building the occasional hospital wing to keep certain investigations at bay, but otherwise ignoring the NY real estate hierarchy (which is something worth ignoring) or social scene. Not Donnie, who spent every waking hour trying to get the right handle on publicity to get him in with the real people and the important dinner invitations.

Never really worked, though. His biggest party invitations were to his own parties, and any PR coming from his offices was shunted aside on all but the slowest news days. Pathetic little rich boy nobody liked, but often tolerated. Never up on the dais for awards (unless he gave them to himself) or recognized for anything of value.

Laughed at more than anything else. Obama's swipes at him hurt so much because he new they were true, although he'd never admit it out loud. That dinner where Obama took him apart was just the thing to tip him over into ultimate revenge. Against Obama, the industry that didn't take him seriously, and the society that let it happen.

So, here we are-- President of the US. The ultimate insider. "You wouldn't let me in your club, so now look at my club. And no, you can't come in."

[Bradshaw3]

1. Well said n/t

[lunatica]

2. Bitterness and self pity just oozes out of him

He talked yesterday about the US being the worst hit country as though it’s a personal badge of honor. His ability to persevere in his spin and lying distortions is bizarre. As the deaths mount and surpass the 100,000 he was claiming would prove how well he handled the virus he’ll still brag on himself. He is stuck solidly in the quagmire of his own making willing himself to make it worse. He would kill the entire planet just to keep from admitting the truth. He will go down in history as a famous man no matter how many people have to die.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

14. But history will note, a *repulsive* man, so there's that.

If it’s any consolation. 😟

[mercuryblues]

3. Who wouldn't want to be friends

with a user and abuser? He has been and always will be on the outside looking in. His narcissism does not allow him to think that his behavior are the root of his emotional connections that he's sees with others. So he goes after them and labels them as weak. His habit is to pick them off 1 by 1. Playing them against each other, while leaning back and enjoying the show.

I picked up on that watching the 2016 primary debates. he'd take a shit on the stage then watch all the other contestants up there fight over whether it was true or not, amongst themselves. he would lean back, cross his arms and smile. He won and he knew it.

As presidunce, he still doesn't have the respect he craves. He has people who take advantage of him. People who will act the part to get what they want.

[Submariner]

4. When Biden starts flipping all of Trump's executive orders next January

and starts taking a cutting torch to the Mexico wall, I'm glad presidents STFU for about the new president for about the first 3 years, and thank god we won't have to see any Trump rage tweets until about 2023.

[Backseat Driver]

5. You're being too easy and too kind on that freak of Nature.

Sort of more like what happened when the GOP explored programming an embodied AI bot without a single human characteristic of value. It was far easier and less expensive than programming what constitutes "goodness." Like Westworld hosts, he half-remembers first drinking the bleach and the black light cleanse. However, you are likely correct: During an Epstein-orgy-inspired moment, ever trying to fit in, the dimwit probably volunteered. What could possibly go wrong?

[smirkymonkey]

6. Excellent analysis.

Spot on!

[Siwsan]

7. I agree - the correspondent's dinner roasting by President Obama was the turning point

Especially when put into context with what President Obama was dealing with, at that time, and had to deal with even more, after the event.

[JHB]

8. It isn't just that he didn't get respect. He actively repelled it.

Donald's inability to mingle with other rich New Yorkers in his age group was always framed as "snooty Old Money Manhattanites shutting out a flashy kid from Queens," but by now it's clear that was Trump PR. A normal person with his resources could find inroads, if that's what he wanted.

But Donnie is incapable of even faking having an ounce of class and style. Even though he wasn't in his dotage yet, he still had the crudeness, the tastelessness, the ignorance, etc. that he puts on display every day now.

It's the kind of stuff that violently shoves respect away.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. Personally, I suspect he was just too stupid to know how he stood...

Buying the Plaza seemed like it might be a road into the Helmsley sphere, but he fucked that up royally, blamed it on Marla, and he lost it in bankruptcy court. Every landlord and hotelier was laughing his or her ass off behind his back.

They were also laughing hysterically when he tried to get NBC out of 30 Rock. He was stretched thin buying thin optioning the Penn Cantral rail yards (largest available piece of land left in Manhattan). Was giving everything but blowjobs (and we're not so sure about that) to build his Trump (of course) Television City, with NBC as prime tenant.

Saw the Sterns make a bid to get them into the Meadowlands, but was too stupid to see Hartz Mountain was just being the foil to help juice things along. NBC was never going to move, but did want to get the rent down, so the Hartz bid appears. NBC got the rent down, Hartz got something they wanted without having to build anything big, and Trump was shocked that NBC could be so stupid. Claimed they turned down the chance of a lifetime not moving to the beautiful new center that the city had already told him he'd never get all the permits, easements, and other things he would need and would take years to build even if he bribed every city employee he could find.

And, the asshole investor who noticed that when he bought a stock, it would go up for a while. Wow! So he borrowed a few bucks to buy penny stocks, sold on the way up, and bragged about how smart he was. Trouble, was, the ol' Pump&Dump he claimed to have invented had been used since before the Tulip Bulb idiocy. And it was already illegal. Wall street saw it, though, had some fun for a week or two and shut it down before the Feds noticed it.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

15. Very interesting.

I grew up in NJ. Passed by the Meadowlands often, when my parents and I went into the City.

But I never knew all this. Innnnteresting.

Lord I hate that twisted, pathological POS.

[czarjak]

10. "The American Dream is Dead"... Indeed?

[3Hotdogs]

11. I disagree about people not wanting to be around him. I would.

Who else wouldn't want to maybe learn a thing or two about how to win at golf by playing along side with a player who never lost a game in his lif---

wait... ya mean all's I gotta do is be the player filling in the score card?

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

12. Well yes Treasonousbastard

And that story Trump told at the boy scout convention ,the one where the guy that lost it all was sitting at a table all by himself ,the one he said nobody would stop at his table and talk to because he went bust, that guy was Trump. He just projected into somebody else. He most likely could never let go of the fact that they would stop at the mans table to greet and talk, and bypass Donald Trump. Still by his lies he found himself a way to capitalize on the events at that time. But Really, who could have known lol .

edited to mention the trumpster key words- he lost his momentum. So let yourself in on the fact that Trump became the means to his loss by what he lost or is rapidly losing if it was ever really there to begin with.

[SergeStorms]

13. Daddy was very chummy....

with organized crime figures in New York City. Between Roy Cohn and the Gambino crime family, Freddie and Donnie were very well accepted into the seedy side of city life. Until Cohn was dying from AIDS, then Donnie halted the association tout de suite.

[tom_kelly]

16. Let us not forget

Him calling shows with fake spokesperson personas like John Miller to toot his horn.

[TreasonousBastard]

17. Or his desk phone with 30 buttons on it-- every one with an editor at...

the other end. And he used that one a lot.

One apocryphal story was the cub reporter who rushed into his editor's office with a great scoop- Donald Trump was going to...

"Trump say that?"

"Yeah-- he just called me."

"File it in the round file-- it's just more Trump bullshit."