Starved for attention Trump is 'like a glutton yanked away from the buffet': columnist

After pursuing a Bloomberg report of Donald Trump's days at Mar-a-Lago where associates of the former president attempted to paint a portrait of a man luxuriating in daily praise, columnist Frank Bruni wrote that he read between the lines and came away believing Trump is miserable with his current lot.

According to Bloomberg's Joshua Green, "At every moment of his day, Trump is bathed in adulation. When he enters the dining room, people stand and applaud. When he returns from golf, he's met with squeals and selfie requests. When he leaves Mar-a-Lago, he often encounters flag-waving throngs organized by Willy Guardiola, a former professional harmonica player and anti-abortion activist who runs weekly pro-Trump rallies in Palm Beach."

Bruni, for his part, isn't buying it.

"That wasn't my main impression or the moral I took away from the story, which was published in Bloomberg," the columnist wrote."I stopped at, and dwelled on, this passage: 'He'll show up to anything. In recent weeks, Trump has popped into engagement parties and memorial services. A Mar-a-Lago member who recently attended a club gathering for a deceased friend was surprised when Trump sauntered in to deliver remarks and then hung around.'"

"Sounds to me like a man with an underfed appetite for attention. Sounds like a glutton yanked away from the buffet," Bruni suggested.

According to the columnist, all evidence seems to suggest that Trump is having a problem with his departure from the public eye, accompanied by his banning from every major social media platform.

"Trump's is a tale of how much a man will do to be noticed, how much he can do with that notice and — the current chapter — what happens when that notice ebbs. Yes, he personifies the American obsessions with wealth and with power. But more than that, he personifies the American obsession with fame," he wrote. "It's an obsession now starved. Facebook revoked Trump's access. Twitter, too. He no longer leads the news every hour on CNN and MSNBC, and there are now newspaper front pages aplenty without his name in any headline."

Adding, "there's a personal psychodrama going on," Bruni suggested, "In his head he can probably already hear that magic MAGA applause. It's stuck there like the chorus of a Top 40 song, but he wants it performed live, in an arena as mammoth as his neediness. The substitute for that applause? Deference. He demands it every bit as much as he ever did and arguably grows more furious than before when he's denied it."

"Has he settled comfortably into a routine? Or has he sunk uncomfortably into a rut?" Bruni wrote before concluding, "I lean toward the latter, which is as dangerous for us as it is for him. No good comes of an ego as ravenous as his. He will make a meal of the Republican Party — and of American democracy itself — if he can."

You can read the whole piece here.