The Big Why: What's behind Donald Trump's apparent self-sabotage?

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. I think he measures himself, and others, by power. So the power to impose himself

physically keeps his ego fed. And women are the victims of his physical assertions - he's physically stronger than most of them, and society has been very bad at giving justice to assaulted women, especially by rich or connected men, certainly up to MeToo. So he'd "win" the encounter, and suffer no consequences. If he'd been a poor man, it wouldn't have been so easy - if he'd poor but been in better physical shape, he might have been starting fights with men to "prove himself".

He also asserts his dominance by belittling people. But he defers to dictators, because he knows they have frighteningly real power from fear (rather than the power over toadies that he has). He hates being shown to be stupid, of course - the anger at President Obama's jokes about him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, his hatred of Dr. Fauci for contradicting, with intelligence and common sense, his ideas and decisions about Covid, and other long-term grudges, come from him being shown to be intellectually inferior. He'd love to think he's naturally intelligent (his claims about genes, and his professor uncle, point to this), but reality eats at him.