Despite our President’s despicable behavior, IMHO, he is a wounded, broken soul needing healing from lack of love
By Norma Adams-Wade
Texas Metro News
Warning: If any of you tells another soul that I said this, I will deny it to your face and call you a liar.
But here is my embarrassing, private confession. Although I hate everything Trump has ever done or said – his behavior, actions, attitude …… I still have sympathy for the childhood he experienced and the negative impact I believe his childhood had on his life and the seemingly loveless monster he appears to be today. I feel sorry for him.
There. I said it out loud. Now, let me quickly explain.
While you are now labeling me gullible, naïve, and childish, allow me to say that I am convinced the current President of the United State is damaged goods. Like a person crippled with a permanently impaired leg, Pres. Donald J. Trump is limping through life behind a smug face of superiority and a secret, inside wounded psyche resulting from a loveless, psychologically-abusive childhood.
I am not the first to say this publicly, but although Trump’s parents were financially rich, research seems to prove that his parents were largely devoid of demonstrative love and affection and lacked much as positive parental role models.
I believe that is one reason why our president excessively craves and demands attention, groveling, loyalty, and praise. I believe he is subconsciously attempting to fill a void from childhood that so far has not been filled. Again, that makes me feel sad for the little unloved boy who lives inside of this grow man who heads our nation. I will not get into the negative impact those wounds have on the rest of us who live in this “great nation.”
“Hurt people hurt people”
I was just thinking…psychologists and pundits have long quoted the adage “hurt people hurt people” – meaning that someone who has been hurt by others will in turn hurt someone else. I believe Trump – who records show endured an emotionally-abusive childhood, and sometimes physical punishment, both at home and in a military-style boarding school — is one of the hurt people who constantly hurts others; i.e. attempting to possess, rename, and ultimately demolish the Kennedy Center in D. C. because, as evidence seems to indicate, he wants it to be a monument to himself instead of the late U. S. president John F. Kennedy Jr. And that is just ONE of too many other examples to attempt to name.
Let’s unravel how Donald Trump came to be. Media has unraveled much of his childhood history. Here are three essential factors in his development:
Dad
Media and researchers’ describe Donald Trump’s Dad, Fred Trump, as a hard-nose millionaire real estate businessman who tried to hide his own German ancestry. Reports of Trump’s dad being arrested at a KKK rally in 1927 fueled reports that he was a participant — a report that President Trump’s father later denied. In police records, the home address of the person arrested was the same address where President Trump’s dad lived. Trump supporters say those records were inconclusive that the dad was at the KKK rally to support or participate with the Klan.
Historians say President Trump’s paternal grandfather Friedrich Trump, skipped mandatory military service in his homeland of Bavaria, Germany in the late 1800s. Records state that Trump’s grandfather faced legal troubles when he returned, and as a result of dodging the draft, was kicked out of the country again. Historians say Trump’s father, Fred, also received several draft deferments for employment reasons, and that Fred helped his son Donald avoided military service by securing a medical report that Donald had bone spurs.
Observers could say that even today, Trump still is trying to gain his late father’s approval who historians say frequently instructed his son Donald to “Be a king. Be a killer” – meaning to be high-minded and ruthless.
Mom
Various historians described Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeonTrump, as “a marginal figure,” “an afterthought” in the background, “detached,” and scarcely mentioned in records of family activities. She came to America from poverty in Scotland in the 1930s and started her life in the U. S. as a domestic servant. After she married Trump’s father, she became a socialist and civic volunteer working with and financially supporting charities. But she was described as “ghostly absent,” “a mystery,” and distant parent, even less loving to the children than their stern but rich father.
Being sent away
Biographers say Trump – the second son and fourth of his parents five children — rebelled against his father’s stern hand and lack of affection, although as an adult, Donald Trump gained high status in his father’s real estate business. Biographers also say that because of disobedience at school and home and a rebellious attitude, Donald Trump’s dad sent him away to military-style boarding school at age 13. At the school, abusive punishment by school authorities continued, and Trump learned to survive by his own style of bullying and aggressiveness, historians say.
Results can be hope and action
The man who sits in the Oval Office today seemingly is a result of these early childhood occurrences. Yes, I hear you saying– it does not matter how he began. I hear you say the public must deal with who Donald Trump is now as leader of the Free World. I get that. But that embarrassing, secret soft spot in my heart will not toughen up. IMHO, our national president is broken, damaged — maybe even beyond repair. But former president Barack Obama and the late civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson taught me to believe in hope.
Pres. Obama said this in speeches and in his book, The Audacity of hope: “Hope is that thing inside us … something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.”
Rev. Jackson expressed the popular rallying cry, “I am somebody!” But in various speeches, he also said this of hope: “We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.” I hold on to that optimism.
Norma Adams-Wade is a Dallas native and a UT Austin journalism graduate. Retired Dallas Morning News senior staff writer. A founder of the National Association of Black Journalists. adamswade15@gmail.com
