How one word explains Donald Trump's entire worldview

"Sucker"

Donald Trump embodies his own biggest fear.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Drake)

When the story of Trump University came out, some of Donald Trump's critics began referring to him as a con artist. Trump is extraordinarily thin-skinned; he can't seem to let any attack roll off him. So last Tuesday he spent lots of time explaining why his various branding ventures — not just Trump U but also Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and many others — were not cons, but the most premium-quality experiences its customers ever had. But I suspect Trump wasn't all that insulted by being called a con artist; his business is about branding and myth-making, and he knows that there's a fine line between a con man and a great salesman. What Trump really couldn't tolerate is being the guy on the other end of the con: a sucker.

The fear of being a sucker seems to be one of the prime motivating forces in Trump's entire life, one that shapes not only his business career, but how he views the country. In the recent biography Never Enough, author Michael D'Antonio singles out an event that occurred when Trump was a freshman in college as a seminal moment. Attending the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge with his father, Trump saw how the elderly architect who designed the bridge, Othmar Ammann, was ignored by developer Robert Moses during the ceremony, not listed among the people Moses thanked. "The lesson Trump took away was that somehow Ammann was to blame for being overlooked," D'Antonio writes. "Trump decided he would remember the incident because 'I don't want to be made anybody's sucker.'" And suckers are worthy of nothing but contempt.

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.