Donald Trump would make my dog trainer give up
I once had a lovely dog who insisted on jumping up on people to greet them. Our trainer suggested that the next time he did this, I grab his front paws and hold him up, with my face right in his, and praise him until the cows came home. Tell him what a good dog he was, the smartest and prettiest dog in the world, all in that syrupy voice you use to tell your dog he's wonderful. She theorized that he would eventually get his fill of this fulsome (word nazis like me: LOOK! I used "fulsome" correctly!!) praise and would avoid jumping up in order to avoid the humiliation of all that praise.
The people Donald Trump likes around him are trying to train him not to jump up. That weird cabinet meeting where they took turns celebrating the wonder that is DT and now this Scaramucci fellow--those guys are masters of the over-the-top, unbelievable to sane people praise. But how much would be too much for DT? What would it take to make him stop jumping up?
I kind of know. The answer is nothing is too much. I tried the dog training technique with a neighbor kid--just for fun, to see how far I could go--who was about three years old and liked to ride his tricycle in my driveway. I began by telling him what a good job he was doing with his trike, what a big boy he was to be able to do that all by himself. Every day, I piled it on heavier and heavier, and every day he just beamed. After a few weeks, I was telling him that all the other children in the world should just quit trying to ride a tricycle because they'd never be able to ride it as well as he did--or the three-year-old equivalent of that--and he ate it up like chocolate pudding. My husband joined in, and together we filled this kid's head with the wildest adoration a trike-rider has ever received, and it was never too much.
There was nothing wrong with the little boy's psyche; he was three years old, and we must have just hit the sweet spot in his development where he needed what we were giving him. I hope it helped make him strong and confident when he grew up. But DT is 71 years old, and the time for him to become strong and confident is long past.
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