A conservative columnist attempted to explain the difference between respect and fear in an open letter to President Donald Trump.
The Bulwark's Mona Charen noted a comment the president made earlier this month in an Oval Office address that touched on his longstanding obsession with being respected, but she said that Trump fundamentally misunderstood the concept.
"Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart — that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we’d be better off without — perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass," Charen wrote.
"Sorry, that’s not true," she added. "They despise you on two levels."
Presidents enjoy leverage over most everyone that comes with the power of the office, but she said Trump squanders that power in trivial ways that demeans himself and his position.
"Yes, when you use that leverage to extort lavish praise from people, they will offer it," Charen wrote. "But they don’t mean a word of it. Not a word. And in their hearts they hate you for demeaning them in this fashion instead of treating them with respect."
Trump is further despised for his extravagant need for attention, the columnist wrote, adding that his emotional defect was obvious to everyone but himself.
"With every renaming of a building you are sending up a signal that screams 'I am so insecure!'" she wrote. "And here’s the truth: You cannot piggyback on the respect John F. Kennedy earned by slapping your name on the arts center that was named by statute to be his living memorial. Your name may be side by side with his on the marble for now, but in our hearts, we will never respect you. Quite the opposite — for all of your depredations and twice on Sunday for attempting to hijack someone else’s honor."
Trump's thirst for attention and respect is as laughable as it is obvious, Charen wrote.
"The 'Gulf of America'?" she wrote. "Musing about absorbing Canada into the United States whether they like it or not? Decorating the Oval Office in a Saddam Hussein aesthetic? Threatening to expropriate Greenland from our ally Denmark? Truly great nations don’t need to prove their manhood by lording it over smaller ones. Imposing tariffs on islands inhabited only by penguins? Panting after a Nobel Peace Prize so flagrantly that you’re claiming to have settled eight wars? In two of those cases, there was no war. In the other six, the conflicts are either ongoing or were largely settled without you. Offering meme coins for sale to the highest bidder? Auctioning off pardons to criminals and leaders on the take? You bet they’re laughing."
Despite his bluster, the columnist concluded, Trump had dragged the nation down with him into his worst fear.
"His worst fear has already come true," read the column's subheadline.
"There has never been a president who has made the United States less respected than you have," Charen wrote. "We are, to borrow a phrase, disrespected like never before. Whether your twisted ego can recognize that is open to question, but what is not debatable is that virtually the whole world knows."