OPINION —
It is a little-known (except to everyone) fact that President Donald J. Trump does not merely possess an ego. He is in a long-term, exclusive and extremely public relationship with it. It’s the most enduring relationship in his life.
It is not unusual. I handled the investments for wealthy individuals for 40 years; they all have egos. You fail without one. Some couch it by hiring PR firms to promote themselves, and they sit back with an “aww-shucks” attitude. They do the “classic humble” brag.
Not Trump. He is in your face and right out there with his ego. Some find it refreshing (it was in the brochure). Some think he uses it to troll his opponents. Others think it might be his downfall.
I have always given him rope on it. Trump’s ego arrived first. It was already fully formed, tanned and wearing a red hat. He built a brand on it. Everything became “Trump” — towers, steaks, hotels, water, a university that taught advanced self-aggrandizement and condo flipping.
The man does not describe things. He inflates them until they require their own ZIP code. A crowd is never merely large. It is the largest crowd in the history of crowds. His hair is not hair, it has its own foreign policy. If you do not like it, there is Hell Toupée. It leans forward like it is late for a meeting with destiny.
The tan is not a tan. It is a ceasefire agreement between several colliding shades of orange that could not decide who was in charge.
Social media was invented so the ego could stretch its legs.
Family members are not just relatives. They are limited-edition product extensions. Sons become spokesmen. A daughter becomes a senior advisor. The last name is not a name. It is a trademark that files lawsuits.
I have felt his wrath. In his first term, I was barred from a White House briefing for a Georgetown board I was on when one of his staffers looked up what I once said on Gutfeld:
“Trump looks like a lookout for a massage parlor in Staten Island.”
World leaders, like Polish President Karol Nawrocki, know how to play him. At the U.N. last week, Nawrocki asked him to fund a U.S. base in Poland named “Fort Trump.” He quickly said, “OK, you had me at ‘Fort Trump.’”
This ego is why we are not going to get out of this war with Iran any time soon. Trump cannot stand people thinking he did not win. He does not lose. He just sometimes “wins differently.” He said there would be unconditional surrender, but to be fair, he did not say who would surrender. It has been dragged out so long that neither he nor the Ayatollah can remember whose turn it is to launch an attack.
People love it or they hate it, but almost no one looks away. That is the real superpower. Not the deals. Not the rallies. Not even the hair. It is the ability to make an entire country argue about one man’s opinion of himself.
Trump’s decisions are almost always directionally right. I’d vote for him again, as Dems’ decisions are adrift. Policies, not personalities, matter. Trump followed up on his campaign promises. He closed the border, implemented DOGE until he hit the Deep State wall, opened up drilling, freed speech, jettisoned DEI, brought crime way down and improved morale in our military.
Like any president or politician, you have to double-check his numbers. With Trump, though, if the numbers disagree, the numbers are losers.
An inflated ego stops you from accepting feedback, admitting mistakes and learning new things. It attracts sycophants. That is the real risk with him (and us): no one is there to tell him “No.”
When he kicked CNN, PMS-NBC, ABC and other major liberal reporters out of the press room, White House doctors had to keep Trump alive by showing him old network clips of himself.
He wants everything named after himself, even the new Washington Commanders’ NFL stadium. Don’t we already have an Orange Bowl?
The Arch de Trump he proposed in D.C. is moving forward. Trump loves McDonald’s, so the motto on his arch should read “Over Eight Million Deported.”
