Donald Trump, Prince of Self-Pity

 

Frank Bruni

The size of the crowd at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta last month rivaled the turnout for Donald Trump days later only “because she had entertainers,” Trump told the audience at his event, referring to the rappers Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion. “I don’t need entertainers.”

Translation: Harris cheated. Even so, she didn’t get the better of him.

She isn’t really Black but “happened to turn Black” over the course of her political career. That’s what Trump said at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, insinuating that Harris had performed a melanin metamorphosis and was falsely improvising identities to contrive some perk unavailable to him.

Poor Trump. Always forced to compete on an uneven playing field.

Of all his feats of projection, which is psychology’s term for seeing your own methods and motivations in someone else, none fascinates me more than his incessant insistence that every one of his adversaries — that everyone, period — is the beneficiary of some scheme or scam that puts him at a disadvantage. If he triumphs nonetheless? It’s a testament to his peerless might. If he doesn’t? It was never a fair fight.

He’s the prince of self-pity, the bard of bellyaching, reportedly worked up over the imagined injustice or trickery of Harris’s late replacement of President Biden on the Democratic ticket. According to an article in The Washington Post this week, he told an ally: “It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too.”

The more assertively Trump presses a complaint, the more you know it’s bunk. He operates on the theory that if you’re selling falsehoods, peddle like the wind; your audience might well assume that you’d never speak that extravagantly and be that audacious if there weren’t some legitimacy to your claim.

So it is with his underdog yap — his pantomime of Cinderella when he’s really her wickedest stepsister.

He was born to a rich family. His father’s money and connections greased the start of his career. Legions of lawyers helped him skate away from bankruptcies and bad behavior. The moral cratering of the Republican Party gave him license to do and coup as he pleased. Friendly judges — including on the Supreme Court — afforded him impunity.

And, of course, he’s the schemer. I direct you to the “perfect phone call” that prompted his first impeachment. To the Big Lie that prompted his second. To lesser shadiness galore. Cutting corners is his cardio.

But woe is Trump! The Justice Department targets him as it does no one else. (That would be news to Hunter Biden.) The media simply blows kisses at Democrats. (News to Joe Biden, now cheering Harris from the sidelines.)

According to Trump’s public statements or emails sent by his campaign, top Republicans in Georgia are conniving to ensure his defeat there, Democrats from coast to coast are rigging the vote, plutocrats are showering Harris with such a deluge of campaign contributions that she’s basically buying the election, and on and on.

The forces arrayed against him are infinite and omnipotent. And Harris, as a Black woman, has a first-class ticket to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She can bask in tokenism and entertainment-industry love while he struggles for a mere sliver of the spotlight.

When children exhibit persecution complexes this severe, they’re sent to their rooms or to a therapist. Trump may be sent to the White House — for a second time. Woe is us

THE NEW YORK TIMES