What’s more mysterious are the roots of his vast insecurity — his compulsive need to trumpet his wealth, his smarts, his popularity. What is he compensating for?
When Hollywood wants us to understand a character, it gives us a Rosebud — an event or an object, like the wooden sled in “Citizen Kane,” that reflects the character’s essence. Mr. Trump’s Rosebud moment, I learned recently from a story on WNYC, happened one day in 1964, when he accompanied his father to the opening ceremony of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
As Mr. Trump recounted the story for Howard Blum in The New York Times in 1980: “The rain was coming down for hours … But all I’m thinking about is that all these politicians who opposed the bridge are being applauded.” Even as a wet-behind-the-ears kid, he wanted the reporter to understand, he couldn’t abide the hypocrisy of big shots. “In a corner,” he continued, “just standing there in the rain, is this man, this 85-year-old engineer who came from Sweden and designed this bridge, who poured his heart into it, and nobody even mentioned his name.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on Nov. 21, 1964. Credit Associated Press
“I realized then and there,” the budding real estate mogul and future Republican front-runner concluded, “that if you let people treat you how they want, you’ll be made a fool. I realized then and there something I would never forget: I don’t want to be made anybody’s sucker.”
.. “Donald must have made a conscious decision that day in 1964 to make sure his name was prominently stamped on everything he built.”
.. “Great salespeople truly understand the people they are dealing with,” Mr. Trump has written. And who are the people that he is closing his presidential deal with? People who are afraid that they are being made suckers too. Mr. Trump’s angry certainty that immigrants and other losers are destroying the country while the cultural elites that look down on him stand by and do nothing resonates strongly with the less-educated, lower-income whites who appear to be his base.
.. Doug: Here’s the irony: Trump IS now ‘the man’ making everyone else HIS sucker.
He is NOT the engineer who designs his buildings: HE is the one who puts HIS name on the buildings and collects the rent and reputation. (and when ventures go belly-up with bankruptcy, someone else takes the hit for it)