As a Presidential candidate, President and ex-President, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.

From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him. 

Donald Trump

The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them. 

Among his targets:

• Hillary Clinton
• President Barack Obama
• Actress Meryl Streep
• Singer Neil Young
• Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Comedian John Oliver
• News organizations
• The State of New Jersey
• Beauty pageant contestants

Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:

• Women
• Blacks
• Hispanics
• Asians
• Muslims
• The disabled
• Prisoners-of-war

As a Presidential candidate and President, he showed outright hatred for President Barack Obama. For five years, he slandered Obama as a Kenyan-born alien who had no right to hold the Presidency. 

Barack Obama

Trump’s all-out effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act—nicknamed “Obamacare”–was driven by his mania to erase every vestige of the Obama Presidency.

As President, he bullied and insulted even his own handpicked Cabinet officers and White House officials.

• His press secretary, Sean Spicer, quit on July 21, 2017. The reason: He believed—correctly—that his loyalty to Trump had become a one-way street. Trump kept him in the dark about events Spicer needed to know—such as an interview that Trump arranged with the New York Times—and which ended disastrously for Trump. 
• Trump waged a Twitter-laced feud against Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. Sessions’ “crime”? Recusing himself from any decisions involving investigations into well-established ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign.
• Trump publicly said that if he had known Sessions would recuse himself—because of his past contacts with Russian officials—he would have picked someone else for Attorney General.
  
• Trump repeatedly humiliated his chief of staff, Reince Priebus—at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, 2017, Priebus resigned.

Trump’s is now attacking Fox News Network—which throughout his four-year Presidency gave him unstinting praise and put a favorable spin on everything he did.

But that changed on Election Night, 2020. Chris Stirewalt, Fox’s political editor, was the first newscaster to accurately project Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona. 

Trump was furious. After the election, he attacked Fox and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax. 

Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.

“Many will disagree, but @FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd,” Trump tweeted.

“They repeat the worst of the Democrat speaking points, and lies. All of the good is totally nullified, and more. Net Result = BAD! CNN & MSDNC are all in for the Do Nothing Democrats! Fox WAS Great!”   

And he’s attacked the top executives of Fox with—for him—the worst insult of all: RINOS [Republicans in Name Only].

* * * * *

As Americans have watched Trump’s behavior with morbid fascination, many of them have asked: “What makes him do the things he does?”

It’s a question asked—and answered—in the 1993 Western, Tombstone. And the answer given in that movie may be the answer to that question.

Tombstone recounts the legendary blood feud between the Ike Clanton outlaw gang and the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil—in  the famous gold-mining town in 1880s Arizona.

Wyatt Earp has been challenged to a gunfight by quick-trigger gunman Johnny Ringo. Although he impulsively accepted the challenge, Wyatt now realizes he’s certain to be killed. Thus follows this exchange with his longtime friend, the pistol-packing dentist, John H. “Doc” Holliday: 

WYATT EARP:  What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?

JOHN H. “DOC” HOLLIDAY: A man like Ringo….got a great empty hole right through the middle of him. He can never kill enough or steal enough….or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.

EARP:  What does he need?

HOLLIDAY:  Revenge.

EARP:  For what?

HOLLIDAY: Bein’ born. 

Donald Trump was born into a world of wealth and privilege. His father gave him $200 million, which he channeled into a real estate empire. He has claimed to be worth a billion dollars.

He has been linked—often by his own boasts—to some of the most beautiful women in the world. He has been a major force on TV through his “reality show,” The Apprentice. He has literally stamped his name on hundreds of buildings. 

For four years he held the Presidency of the United States, the most powerful office in the Western world. 

Yet he remains filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone. Upon taking office, he offered nothing positive in his agenda. 

Instead, before, during and after his Presidency, he has focused his efforts on what he can take from others. At the top of his list: The Affordable Health Act, which provides access to medical care for millions who previously could not obtain it. 

As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”