ON TRUMP'S "INSECURITY"

To an online poster who claimed that Trump was massively insecure, I wrote this.

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I don't think that's the whole truth about Trump. Consider that he made his bones with his base by being combative with the press. That's an image that, once established, he has to constantly re-affirm in order to keep that base.

Now, it may or may not be true that he's combative in the first place because he's insecure about one thing or another. In fact, I remember some celebrity on an interview show opined that back in the nineties, he'd hung out with Trump a fair bit, and the celebrity claimed that the one thing you couldn't kid with the Donald about was his wealth. More than a few anti-Trumpers have claimed that the real reason he's concealed his tax returns is because he doesn't want it known that he isn't nearly as rich as he advertises.

All that, however, does not change the fact that Trump's followers like the fact that he doesn't just passively accept the abuse of the press-- and I think it was abusive even before he started yelling "fake news"-- and so he constantly jabs back at the press in ways that few Presidents have done. I'm not claiming that he picks his fights wisely, but it's not coming ONLY from insecurity.