When Trump finally falls asleep at night he may dream of vanquishing a group of attacking thugs or being in a boxing ring intimidating his opponent with his snarling face and rippling muscles. He may also have dreams about leading a SWAT team raid against undocumented immigrants.He didn't need to be dreaming when he pretended to beat up Vince McMahan and shave his heard.
You've probably seen the video of Trump knocking Vince McMahon down, sucker punching him, and then shaving his head. Click here to see it again. Here's an article about it.Here are some screenshots:
I knew two or three schoolyard bullies in grade school. They literally pushed kids around or even punched them so hard they fell down. This gained them their status as rulers of the playground with their own posse of bully wannabes.
They were what you'd call tough kids. They weren't among the popular kids, some of whom were athletic and played sports and the bullies didn't mess with them. Others were outgoing and had a clever sense of humor. Some drew other kids to them because of their empathy.
Few of the victims of the bullies fought back because the bullies rarely attacked people they thought could to put up a credible fight.
I don't see the young Trump as having had the personality to be popular with other kids. He was probably egotistical and was driven to prove himself and stand out among his classmates. Not having the disposition or social skills to be popular be turned to bullying.
Accounts of Trump's childhood say he was a bully when he was growing up.
Trump can't literally beat up or push people to the ground anymore. Still, he wants to do this in other ways.
Of course he did engage in faking it when he body slammed and sucker punched Vince McMahon and pretended to humilate him by shaving his head. It is worth watching him do this to consider he's about to be president again. His fake fighting meets a deep need in him for being like Bruce Lee taking on and beating multiple opponents at once.
I won't bother posting a collection of his absurdly priced NFT images depicting him as a muscle bound superhero. With him it's been about image and posturing over the past four years using words and intimidation to bend people to his will.
Trump has revealed his fantasies about how he sees himself. He's old. He's out of shape. He has a lot of unhealthy execss fat. All this is relevant because as president he has effective ways to be a bully without getting down and dirty in a schoolyard fight.
He only wishes he could look like Pete Hegseth. It takes work to have a muscle-bound body like his, or Marjorie Taylor Greene's for that matter. Maybe it's naive on my part to think he'd be less malevolently dangerous if he actually was still reasonably physically fit. To compensate for this he now will be able to take vicarious satisfaction in expressing his cruelty by the deceptively benign sounding term "executive orders."
You can bet that if Trump looked like Putin with his shirt off, you'd have seen photos of him like these of Putin's famous shirtless horseback riding photos. Still, Putin's physical fitness along with his martial arts expertise (he may or may not have a black belt) has the ability to beat up rivals if he needed to. This hasn't made him less of a ruthless despot, so there's this to consider.
I view Trump as someone whose insecurity is deeply buried in his unconscious. This is what Mary Trump said about him:
The deeper cause is his insecurity. This is a man who knows on an unconscious level that he is absolutely nothing of what he claims to be.” (Reference)
According to reports, by the time Trump was in the military academy he maneged to pull off becoming a bully:
One popular narrative about Donald Trump's early years, though, is that his stern workaholic father essentially rejected him when he was a young boy. When he was just 12 years old, the behavior issues of the boy who would become president prompted his father to send him away to the New York Military Academy in Upstate New York. There, as Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio wrote for Politico last year, the boy would be confronted with "an aggressive and isolate subculture that prized physical toughness and defined manhood in the basest terms" until he graduated and went to college.
By all accounts, Trump excelled in this environment, taking on leadership roles and playing baseball and basketball. Still, the boy he was before he enrolled at the military academy — often described by people who knew him as a bully — closely resembles the man he is today. Except for the fact that, now, Donald Trump arguably wields more power and influence than anyone else in the world as the president of the United States. Reference
Trump became more of a bully when his wealth enabled him to do this. Before he entered politics he bullied his way to becoming a billionaire. "The Art of the Deal" shows some of this. In addition in recommending using hyperbole and deception he reveals how he liked to be aggressive. Here are examples:
On fighting back: "[W]hen people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. The risk is you'll make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don't recommend this approach to everyone. But my experience is that if you're fighting for something you believe in — even if it means alienating some people along the way — things usually work out for the best in the end."
On competing: "I'm the first to admit that I am very competitive and that I'll do nearly anything within legal bounds to win. Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition." Reference.
You can see some of this bullying in this collection of clips from The Apprentice.
Like everyone, Trump's personality was shaped by his childhood experiences. Today the country is paying a price for the man whose father never gave him the unconditional love any child needs. I see him as wanting to please his bullying father. What better way to do this than become a bully himself. This backfired as a young child since he was sent away to boarding school when he was 12.
Here's what Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio wrote:
Fred Trump was a fiercely ambitious man who worked seven days a week and devoted few waking hours to his role as a parent. Although he pushed his son Donald to prevail in every arena—to be a "killer" and a "king"—Fred didn’t actually tell the young man how to achieve this destiny. His way of paying attention to his children was to let them watch him at work. Reference.
This is what he wrote about Trump's bullying:
While Fred Trump was busy scheming and manipulating, his son developed into a bullying and out-of-control little boy. As Donald recalled to me, he loved to fight—“all kinds of fights, even physical”—and the teachers and administrators at the private school he attended in Queens, New York, couldn’t manage him. The situation was quite embarrassing to Donald’s father, who was a major benefactor for the school. In exasperation, he abruptly removed his son from the family home, which was a mansion attended by servants, and handed him over to the New York Military Academy in Upstate New York. Upon arrival, twelve-year-old Donald was put into uniform and assigned a tiny cell-like room. In the days, weeks and years to come he would have to cope with an all-male culture of competition and hierarchy where physical abuse, carried out by the students and the adults who supervised them, was part of the routine.
This is the man who will soon be president. Instead of a schoolyard posse to stroke his ego if he gets his way with his nominations he will have people like Kash Patel, Thomas Homan, and Pete Hegseth there to assist him in his bullying. His has his Congressional sycophants and the oligarchs beholden to him. They will be partners in his bullying.
The Trump we see today is someone whose personality was shaped growing up in dysfunctional family.
For more about this read "Making the man: to understand Trump, look at his relationship with his dad" from the Guardian.
Update: Compare the 2017 photo of the smiling Trump which was selcted for the official photo with the one selected for 2025. It is similar to the defiant glaring mugshot photo. He seems to be saying like a bully would "mess with me at your own peril."
My version:
Personal story: My own experience with a bully was in eight grade when one of them got me in a bear hug and was squeezing me so hard I could barely breathe. Out of a need to survive, without any forethought, I instinctively kneed him in the groin as hard as I could. He crumbled to the ground in pain curled in a fetal position. A group of the most popular girls saw all this. I discovered from one who was a good friend that they were really impressed. That is until I got so frightened he'd get up and beat the crap out of me and then I started to cry. That ruined my chance of being the underestimated Mighty Mouse of the school. Long story short - he never messed around with me again. I only wish I could have restrained my tears. ----------------------------------------
