The sultan of slurs: Donald Trump explains his passion for putdowns

<cite class="byline vcard">By Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press – 4 hours ago</cite>, August 11, 2015, Source

WASHINGTON - Anyone now professing shock over the symphony of personal slurs from Donald Trump clearly wasn't listening to him before he became a presidential candidate.

For more than a quarter-century, he's chronicled in exhaustive detail his passion for put-downs. He's written, granted interviews, and tweeted repeatedly about the value of vengeance.

That value system doesn't abide turning the other cheek. Rather, it responds to every ounce of criticism with a multi-tonne, Mack truck of ad-hominem degradation.

He even titled an entire book chapter, ''Revenge.''

His current political targets, John McCain, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, and Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, will recognize the modus operandi spelled out in that old book chapter.

''I tell people, 'Get even!' This is not your typical advice, get even, but this is real-life advice,'' he wrote in ''Think BIG And Kick Ass In Business And Life.''

''If you don't get even, you are just a schmuck!''

He starts the chapter by describing his well-documented feud with actress Rosie O'Donnell, and how he silenced her criticism with insults — crude ones referring to her weight and physical appearance and with a cruel suggestion for how she might treat her depression: stop looking in the mirror.

Some of those insults resurfaced last week in the Republican debate, when Fox moderators read them out. That prompted Trump to attack the moderators, and he made an apparent menstruation joke about Kelly.

The outrage was instantaneous.

Trump was disinvited from an event — he responded, of course, by insulting the event host, calling him a ''loser'' in a press release. Rival candidates said he'd finally gone too far — so he countered by declaring that one of them, Fiorina, the race's only woman, could induce a headache with the sound of her voice.

Once again, pundits began writing his political obituary, just as they did when he attacked McCain's war record and then when he publicly released Graham's cellphone number.

One fumed that politics is the art of adding support, not of antagonizing everybody in sight: ''I think that reaction will be quite widespread, and will be quite damaging,'' Fox's Brit Hume predicted after the attack on McCain.

He's been wrong so far.

Trump's still in first place in the Republican field. But Hume might ultimately be proven right, since poll numbers suggest the growth potential of Trump's campaign is limited by the even larger number of voters who dislike him.

In the meantime, don't expect him to change.

His aversion to forgiveness is deeply ingrained. His words in a 25-year-old interview with Playboy magazine are a near-verbatim replica of what he's told political talk shows in recent days.

''When somebody tries to sucker-punch me, when they're after (me), I push back a hell of a lot harder than I was pushed in the first place,'' he told the magazine 25 years ago.

He shares a private anecdote in his book chapter on revenge.

It's a cautionary tale about a superstar athlete, an unidentified basketball player who's supposedly a household name. The athlete told him he'd been ripped off by an agent.

It goes without saying that Trump proposed vengeance. He planned to get a particularly vicious lawyer to help the athlete sue. But the athlete relented, and decided to just let it go.

In Trump's world, there's no place for pushovers.

''He said, 'I can't do it!''' Trump wrote.

''I said, 'That's okay, but never, ever call me again, because you are a schmuck!' I have not spoken to the guy since. He calls me once in a while, but I don't ever talk to him, because he is a loser.

''You have to show people you can't be pushed around.''

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