Writing in the New York Times this Thursday, Dan Barry says that in the wake of the 2020 election, President Trump has run head-first into the epithet he's long used to slander others.
"Loser."
Speaking to the Times, former Trump business associate Jack O’Donnell pointed out that the first thing Trump calls someone who's wronged him is "loser."
“That’s his main attack word. The worst thing in his world would be to be a loser. To avoid being called a loser, he will do or say anything," he said.
In reality, Trump has been a loser many times over. "In fact, his greatest success flowed not from real estate but from the creation of a popular alternate-reality television persona — Donald Trump, master of the boardroom — that he ultimately rode to the White House," Barry writes. "But his famous aversion to the label of loser has now reached its apotheosis."
Trump's combative personality was once a quirky trait of a "self-involved New York developer," writes Barry, but now, that trait has become a national embarrassment, "nearly upending the sacred transition of power and leaving the world’s foremost democracy — grappling with a deadly pandemic and a teetering economy — with a leader who refuses to concede despite the basic math."
"Such behavior by the president reflects a binary-code approach to life that spares no room for nuance or complication. If a person isn’t a one, then that person is a zero."
Read the full article over at The New York Times.