CNN’s Don Lemon believes Trump’s constant bragging masks deep insecurity, an idea expressed by  by Dan McLaughlin:

Despite being born to wealth, he’s lived his whole life as the nouveau riche kid from Queens whose fame, fortune, Ivy League degree, fashion-model wives, TV shows, casinos, beauty pageants, football team, political largesse . . . none of it could get his old-money Manhattan society neighbors, the smart kids, the political movers and shakers to treat him as a peer, an equal, a man of consequence

Trump’s small active vocabulary and simple sentence structure may have caused elites to view him as dumb, and his ridiculous hair likely made them laugh at him. Jimmy Fallon claimed that when Trump appeared on Saturday Night Live, he didn’t realize people were laughing at him, not with him.

Adding insult to injury, cultural elites absolutely worship Obama, viewing him as the greatest writer to occupy the White House since Lincoln. “Your my hero” gushed literary superstar Jonathan Franzen when he was summoned to the White House to meet his God. British novelist Martin Amis is so fiercely protective of Obama’s legacy that he compares him to a family member.

Trump is HBD aware, so being considered so inferior to a near-black man may have been painful. The New York Time‘s Charles M. Blow argues:

Trump wants to be Obama — held in high esteem. But, alas, Trump is Trump, and that is now and has always been trashy. Trump accrued financial wealth, but he never accrued cultural capital, at least not among the people from whom he most wanted it.

Therefore, Trump is constantly whining about not being sufficiently applauded, commended, thanked, liked. His emotional injury is measured in his mind against Obama. How could Obama have been so celebrated while he is so reviled?

The whole world seemed to love Obama — and by extension, held America in high regard — but the world loathes Trump.

Obama was a phenomenon. He was elegant and cerebral. He was devoid of personal scandal and drenched in personal erudition. He was a walking, talking rebuttal to white supremacy and the myths of black pathology and inferiority. He was the personification of the possible — a possible future in which legacy power and advantages are redistributed more broadly to all with the gift of talent and the discipline to excel

It didn’t help matters when then President Obama decided to rub it in at the 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner.  McKay Coppins writes:

On the night of the dinner, Trump took his seat at the center of the ballroom, perfectly situated so that all 2,500 lawmakers, movie stars, journalists, and politicos in attendance could see him….But as soon as the plates were cleared and the program began, it became agonizingly clear that Trump was not royalty in this room: He was the court jester. The president used his speech to pummel Trump with one punchline after another…When host Seth Meyers took the mic, he piled on with his own rat-a-tat of jokes, many of which seemed designed deliberately to inflame Trump’s outer-borough insecurities: “His whole life is models and gold leaf and marble columns, but he still sounds like a know-it-all down at the OTB.” The longer the night went on, the more conspicuous Trump’s glower became. He didn’t offer a self-deprecating chuckle, or wave warmly at the cameras, or smile with the practiced good humor of the aristocrats and A-listers who know they must never allow themselves to appear threatened by a joke at their expense.

Instead, Trump just sat there, stone-faced, stunned, simmering — Carrie at the prom covered in pig’s blood.

Legend has it that Trump was so humiliated that he took his revenge by succeeding Obama as President and undoing his signature achievements. It is a revenge he continues to seek as long as Obama reigns as the World’s most worshiped person.

Packing a strong dose of EGI, CNN’s Don Lemmon was having none of it. The anchor recently decided to use his power as a media figure to hit Trump where he felt it would hurt most. Staring straight into Trump’s face through the television camera, and telling him (in-front of millions of viewers) that Obama is smarter than him, more educated, better looking, far more self-made, has a more accomplished wife, and punked him over the birth certificate issue (a reference to the 2011 White House Correspondence dinner when Obama mocked Trump for falling for the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya).

If Lemon was trying to get Trump to leave Obama alone, he may have had the exact opposite effect. A few days later Trump was accusing Obama of pushing the Russia-gate conspiracy as a way to undermine Trump’s presidency. Dubbed Obama-gate, Trump called it the Worst political crime in American history by far, and is now demanding that Obama testify before congress.

But with the coronavirus continuing to threaten Trump’s re-election, Obama may have the last laugh if his VP pick Joe Biden takes over as President in November, and Obama emerges as the power behind the throne.