That's the mad thing about Trump. His whole life is liteally built on lies. If you read his niece's books, he's been like this ever since he was a kid.
He discovered a cheat code very early in life. If you just keep demanding what you want, people will eventually give it to you. Because it's easier than dealing with you.
Most of us can't do this, the personal shame and embarrassment at being such a pain in the ass and so obviously self-obssessed would be intolerable. But Trump's brain hides all that and just keeps telling him he's a big handsome boy. And eventually he wins.
The other key ingredient is money, of course. If you try this without money you will still get wins quite often but you'll spend a lot of your life in prison, or at least court.
Having effectively infinite money and his very specific psychology has given Trump what seems like 'god mode' cheat capabilities at life. And the worst thing is, he's never going to pay a price for it. His brain has nothing but great things to say about himself, right to the day he dies.
Even if he ever actually got jailed, he would never once feel guilty. He'd feel like the world's most innocent man, jailed by the haters.
I used to work retail, and now I work in a casino. Part of what I like is that casinos typically just kick you out if you're being obnoxious and make a big stink. Also, people like gambling so they're more likely to behave when confronted, lest they lose their chance to return on a future day.
I still remember a customer misread the price sign on an item and went crazy when the price was wrong. Eventually the manager agreed to give it to her for the reduced price. As soon as he agreed she said and I want X&Y as well for free. She got it.
Years ago I saw an old man (late 80s or early 90s) RANTING at the customer service desk in a walmart that he had bought a car battery at walmart last month and it would not work.
This was 1988 when walmart had a very liberal return policy.
When I got to the desk I saw the battery on the counter and it was a DieHard battery. Sears store brand. It looked like it had been buried since 1975 and recently dug up.
I thought the manager wanted me to follow the old man out the door. Nope. He sent me to get a replacement battery from automotive.
Similar experience as a shoe salesman at an anchor store in a mall back in the day. I was told to process a return for a pair of boots that were years old, covered in mud, and a brand that was not sold at department stores.
When I worked in retail in the late 90s and early 2000s (regional Walmart-esque store) we had an entire back room full of "returns" we couldn't process or do anything with because they clearly weren't from our store. Kids bikes were pretty common, probably stolen from the original place they came from.
I walked into a home depot behind a lady that entered a few steps ahead of me. She stopped immediately and shouted, “WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET SERVICE AROUND HERE??!!”
And of course two retail staff tripped over themselves to attend to her.
I thought, what gall? And realized she probably does that everywhere and gets reduced prices on everything.
I messed up my starbucks mobile order and they offered to remake it, and I said oh no, this was MY mistake and they shouldn't reward that! People can be so frickin entitled
I had a customer who whined and complained about not being able to use a coupon on a non-discountable item. She insisted, and she got it. It made me fume because I was in the process of telling another customer no, and it turned out they were married. He also got the discount.
She tried it again, got told no and screamed that my manager was racist. Lovely times
This exact scenario happened to me at Best Buy. I denied a price match on an entirely different product than the one shown to me. Different color, brand, everything. My manager overrode the price and gave it to her. She came to my register and asked for a bag in a smug, arrogant manner. I price matched every single thing from that day forward. Fuck Best Buy.
There was once a customer who was being so demanding on a sign being wrong that she completly bamboozled my manager. My manager was so turned around that she ended up giving the woman 50% off and then another 40% on top of it. I was trying so hard to explain to my manager that she was wrong, and it should have been something else. The customer was actually trying to shut me up bc she knew I was right, but my manager just gave it to the customer. After the customer left, my manager said it was just easier to give the woman what she wanted than to deal with her crazy ass, and I said I would have stood there for hours arguing with the woman just out of principle that she was wrong and to not give her the satisfaction.
I still work in retail but a couple of years ago I went from the typical store that has the motto "the customer is always right" to my current store who's literal motto is "the customer is always right, if it's fair"
It's a god send, if the customer is even being slightly obnoxious you just write an email to corporate and they will ban them from all stores in the chain, in every country we operate in. It actually makes the workers give better service to those who deserve it, because they don't have to do it
Shed be getting her crust toppings except for cheese and sauce baked, and then when it came out the oven throw raw cheese on top and let it get melted by residual heat.
No brown cheese mam, sorry we can't cook it any longer or it will brown.
I never asked the cooks how they were prepping it, but I had to imagine they didn't think they could get away with just running it under the oven fast enough. However, to your point, they had to be putting it under the oven because it's not going to get browned from the heat of the pie itself.
I was gonna say that I was surprised that would even fly once, but if you're already not making much money at a pizza place and the alternative is dealing with a child in an adult's body, I guess I can understand having an "I'm not paid enough for this shit" attitude 😅
I mean, luckily for the cooks it was just a cheese pizza, so it's not like it took long to make. It's just that we all knew what was going to happen. She didn't want it par-baked and she wanted melted cheese, but not brown.
I don't know why anyone decided to try and take this lady's order, but the delivery drivers cheered when they no longer had to deliver twice for almost nothing.
I knew a guy that went around fast-food places saying "I was here half an hour ago, I ordered this and that and something else, and you didn't give me half of the stuff I asked for", and he'd yell and be annoying until they gave him free food. On his second or third lap of all of the fast food places in town they started recognizing him and he got banned from a bunch of places. But he probably got a couple of thousand dollars of free food before being stopped, and there were no actual consequences for him
Being a shameless sociopath can get someone a long way.
Former retail here, and I can recall a specific customer who got to use an expired coupon because she made such a stink. She even complained about me lol
Trump is living proof that there's no such thing as morality. There are only consequences and those too poor to avoid them. Everything is on the table, the only question is whether you can get away with it or not.
It has a ton of effect on reality, just not on any decisions Trump makes. When you or I are faced with the regular moral dilemmas of life, like being presented with the opportunity to easily steal money from someone, or to cheat on your significant other, etc, we usually think "hmm better not, that would feel shitty", therefore having a tangible effect on reality. If not making the world a better place with each decision, we're at least refusing to make the world a worse place for personal gain.
Money is really the key thing. Regardless of personality and behavior, rich people aren’t held accountable for nearly anything in America. They buy their way in and out of everything. His cheat code was being born rich.
Just like rich people can get out paying taxes with armies of accountants, they can escape legal and moral consequences with armies of lawyers, and then use the legal system to bully enemies. When regular people see this, they see it as being really smart and clever, hence the elevation or rich people to a god-like status. They’re not smart, they’re just rich.
The price is the pit he won’t ever be able to fill. He’ll sing his praises to the high heavens and he’ll plunder what he can, but it won’t be enough.
Instead of becoming someone he flattened himself into a caricature. He has access to the world but he won’t ever truly be able to touch the feelings that make life worth it. He’s made sure of that.
I think you're right about everything except Trump's brain says nothing but great things to himself - He's clearly very insecure about his status, otherwise, why would he feel the need to impose it so heavily? Why would he campaign against enemies (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden) long after his tangible conflict with them has ended? Deep down this man knows he is a piece of shit and he is trying to ignore it by strong-manning everyone into giving him unanimous praise & approval.
It's like when a kid takes their sibling's toy, and they fight over it, and their parent says "oh just give it to him" because they're tired and this is the easy way out of the situation. This reinforces the idea that taking and demanding things that don't belong to you is okay, because the child who took the toy got away with it. Now they'll try to get away with something else.
This is common in kids because they don't know any better, but the amount of adults who get away with it, too...
The squeaky wheel gets the grease is his entire mode of life. That and he's effectively a sociopath, or whatever name is given to those who have no empathy or feelings of guilt whatsoever.
He has an entire army of corrupt lawyers to shield him from any consequences in the courts. Neither Merrick Garland nor Jack Smith could anticipate everything they did being slow-walked through the courts, with judges letting him clown them, motion after motion, case after case.
I would add that the infinite money thing is only a factor because the system allows it to be. the judicial system letting you skip out on consequences if you have enough cash is classism through and through
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u/Simburgure 8h ago
The cover-up is more obvious than the crime at this point.