Donald Trump's absolute worst trait

A very personal reflection on why I HATE bullies

(Donald Trump)

Something happened over the weekend that really bothered me.

Here’s how the Washington Post reported it:

A few hours after [Joe] Biden had given a sweeping denunciation of [Donald] Trump, calling him a sore loser and a threat to American democracy, the former president made fun of Biden’s childhood speaking impediment.

“Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing,” Trump said to a chuckling crowd on Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa. “He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy.”

“’He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” he continued, pretending to stutter. “Couldn’t read the word.”

Trump, of course, is aware of the fact that Biden struggled with a stutter throughout his childhood. And how hard he worked to overcome it. And how it still defines — and haunts — him. (If you have never read this John Hendrickson piece in the Atlantic on Biden’s stutter, you need to. Immediately.)

And while there are plenty of things to go after Biden about — the economy, his handling of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the border etc. — attacking him on his stutter is appallingly below the belt.

This is FAR from an isolated incident. In fact, in that same Iowa speech, Trump also mocked the late Arizona Sen. John McCain who was unable to lift his arms over his head following years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

Here’s how the Independent reported on Trump’s remarks on McCain (and the Senator’s vote against repealing Obamacare):

“Obamacare is a catastrophe; nobody talks about it. You know, without John McCain, we would have had it done,” Mr Trump said.

“But John McCain, for some reason, couldn’t get his arm up that day, remember?”

Mr Trump then mimicked the late politician by pointing his thumb down.

Most famously/infamously, Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a condition known as arthrogryposis.

(Trump later tried to insist he was not mocking Kovaleski. I’d recommend you read the Washington Post’s Fact Checker on that.)

He has mocked Chris Christie’s weight. Suggested that Nikki Haley is dumb. And that Carly Fiorina is ugly.

The simple fact is that Donald Trump is a bully. Or, as conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg put it last year:

The Trump campaign’s theory of the race is simply an extension of Trump’s worldview — that politics isn’t primarily about ideas or policy but bullying and intimidation. Trump acts like the Biff Tannen character from “Back to the Future” (not entirely coincidentally, as Biff’s character was reportedly based on Trump), who dominates the nerds and normal kids alike by his sheer willingness to be an immature jerk.

For those of you unfamiliar with Biff Tannen, watch this.

Now, I have written about Trump as bully before.

In 2018 — after Trump bullied ABC reporter Cecilia Vega in a press conference — I wrote this:

The President’s rise in the 2016 presidential race was fueled in no small part by his remarkably well-honed bullying instincts. There was “low energy” Jeb Bush. And ‘Lyin’” Ted Cruz. And Rand Paul, who Trump could say a lot about but decided not to because the Kentucky senator was irrelevant in the presidential race. Trump, during the campaign, turned name-calling and taunting into a political strategy. As long as they weren’t the ones being bullied, people kind of liked it – “He tells it like it is!” and all that.

And, last year, I wrote this of Trump:

The best way to understand Donald Trump is as a sort of super bully.

He has an intuitive grasp of weakness and insecurity — and once he finds it, he goes at it relentlessly. And he doesn’t stop until he’s destroyed you.

All still true!

What I have NEVER done before, though, is talk (or write) about why Trump’s bullying hits me at a deeply personal level.

But I figured now is a good time and here is a good place to do just that.

Let me start here: Growing up, I was never the most popular kid. But I wasn’t a pariah either. I was a decent athlete (basketball, mostly because I am tall). And was funny(ish) — mostly in a smart-ass, sarcastic way that functions as a defense mechanism for the insecure. I never thought all that much about friends. I had enough.

Then, in 9th grade, I went to a Catholic all boys school. (I was in public school before that.) And everything changed.

I am not sure when it happened but, suddenly, I became the target of a bully. His name was Ben. (I, of course, remember his last name but won’t share it here.) He was in 9th grade like me. He was a small kid — far smaller than me. (I was then around the height I am now: 6’3’”)

I never knew then — and still don’t know today — why he picked on me. As in why he “chose” me out of all the other kids in the grade (and at the school). I mean I was skinny (those were the days!) and I had pretty bad acne. But, like, that was true for about 50% of my class. We were 9th grade boys!

I lived in fear of Ben. He would find me in the halls. Taunt me. Threaten that he was going to hurt me. I went from liking school (as much as any teenager does) to dreading it. I would get a nauseous feeling in my stomach when it came time to switch classes. (He would always make sure to run into me in the hallway.)

I never really told anyone about it. I mean, my friends who went to school with me had some sense of it. But I never told my parents — even though Ben dominated my thoughts.

I switched schools after two years — ostensibly to play basketball but, really, to get away from him. My life changed dramatically for the better. My confidence returned. I found a great group of friends. I got into college. My life went on.

But, for years after 9th and 10th grade, I would think of Ben. Occasionally someone — not knowing our history — would share some update about him. (We grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone.).He didn’t enjoy the same successes I was having — and that thrilled me. I reveled in every little failure he had, believing it was karmic retribution. And at least part of me used Ben as a way to push myself to succeed, as a way to show that he was wrong about me. That I wasn’t some loser, some victim.

I know my experience isn’t unique. Bullying is a major societal problem. One out of every 5 students report to being bullied at some point. And, since the early 1990s — when I was going through my issues with Ben — we have come a long way in terms of recognizing and addressing the dangers of bullying.

Which, I guess, is what disappoints me so much about how successful Trump’s bullying has been for him, politically speaking.

Because I like to think we’re better than that. That, yes, bullies like Trump have always (and will always) exist but that, as a community, we have grown more advanced in our understanding of why what they are doing is so hurtful and wrong.

Except that, we haven’t. People laughed when Trump made fun of Biden’s stutter. Same thing happened when Trump mocked McCain’s arms. And when he calls Haley “birdbrain.” Or makes fun of Christie for being overweight.

The typical response to someone like me — pointing out that we are rewarding a bully when we laugh at his antics — is to say something like “Get over it, snowflake.” As in: Toughen up. If you can’t take a little mockery, then that’s on you.

Which, well, no. I am here to tell you that bullying almost ruined my life. I went from a happy kid to a miserable one. I worried all the time. I thought I had done something wrong — even though I couldn’t figure out what it was. I got over it, yes. But I never forgot it — and how it made me feel.

No one — and I mean NO ONE — should want that in a leader. It’s not what leaders do. It’s the worst of us, not the best of us.

This has zero to do with Trump’s politics. Or even with what he has done as president or will do if he is elected again. (That’s a whole different subject.) This is entirely about human decency. How we choose to live in the world with each other. And how the actions of a 14 year old bully named Ben changed my life and how I see the world.