When I retired from elementary school teaching two years ago, I thought that I had heard the last of kids whining about who likes who.
Hah.
Silly me. Little did I know that this country would be electing a 70 year old with a fake tan and the maturity of a fourth grader.
President Trump is already world famous for his pouting, his whining and his excruciatingly thin skin. His Twitter rants are fodder for comedians and political opponents alike. Every time he thinks he’s been disrespected, criticized, mocked, questioned or not adored, he has a meltdown.
But when someone likes little Donny, he’s all smiles. Remember what he said about Vladimir Putin last fall? He told NBC’s Matt Lauer:
“If he says great things about me, I’ll say great things about him.”
See, with someone who’s emotional development peaked at about age 10, it’s all about being “liked.”
Just the other day in an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, Trump stated that he is sure that former President Barak Obama “likes me.”
Um. Sure?
You’ll remember, I’m sure, that Donald Trump spent most of the last eight years claiming that Obama was not a legitimate President because he wasn’t born in the U.S. No matter how much evidence he was shown, Trump kept on pounding the theme of Obama’s “missing” or “fake” birth certificate.
But that doesn’t matter in the world of the fourth grader. Whatever he did to upset someone in the classroom doesn’t really matter. He just wants to be liked.
And if he’s insecure and completely self-centered, that fourth grader is able to convince himself that the other kid likes him anyway.
That’s our President. Talking about the former President now, he told O’Reilly:
“It’s a very strange phenomenon. We get along, I don’t know if he’ll admit this, but he likes me…”
Even O’Reilly was skeptical. He interrupted to ask how Trump knew that the former President “likes” him. Trump answered this way:
“I know because I can feel it, that’s what I do in life, it’s called, like, I understand.”
You know, he’s so special. Bigly special. He has superpowers that the other kids don’t have. He can feel that President Obama “likes” him.
The reality, of course, is that Barak Obama is an adult. A mentally healthy, professional, world leader type adult. He would never act petty or say anything snarky in public about the new President, no matter what he thinks in private.
Featured image by Karl-Ludwig Poggemann via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
