(Please note: some edits were made to the piece below, in the hours after its posting.)
One of the words Donald Trump uses often, as others have noted, is "Sir." He routinely tells stories in which people called him "Sir."
He obviously needs to let people know that he is treated with deference (whether people in fact called him "Sir" or not; I suspect he regularly adds "Sir" for effect).
Another word Trump has used often is "begged." He has made many public comments about those he regards as enemies--people, he has claimed, who had "begged" him for a job, for his endorsement, etc.
I am guessing Trump has made up--or imagined--most of these claims. It is, it seems, another manifestation of his need to show people how powerful he is--that people routinely beg him for favors.
CNN's fact-checker, Daniel Dale, wrote a piece in 2020 about a number of the people who, according to Trump, had resorted to such begging.
One of instances cited by Daniel Dale involved both the use of "begged," and "Sir." Mr. Dale wrote:
After the New York Times reported that former national security adviser John Bolton’s unpublished book alleges Trump said he wanted to withhold aid to Ukraine until Ukraine helped with investigations into Democrats, Trump tweeted – among other jabs – that Bolton had “‘begged’ me for a non-Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying ‘Don’t do it, sir.’”
Yet there are other instances of Trump's invocation of begging, not part of Mr. Dale's report, that have involved an additional detail. This additional detail reveals a great deal about Trump.
The stories involve not simply begging--but kneeling. There is a deep ugliness to the stories.
In March of 2016, Mitt Romney delivered a speech highly critical of then-candidate Trump. He spoke of "the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics." He said: "We have long referred to him as 'The Donald.' He is the only person in America to whom we have added an article before his name. It wasn't because he had attributes we admired."
Trump, as part of his response to Mr. Romney, called him a "choke artist," concerning Mr. Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. But the most self-revelatory thing he said about Mr. Romney was this:
"I don't know what happened to him," Trump said. "You can see how loyal he is. He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees.' He would have dropped to his knees." (Italics added.)
A former aide to Mr. Romney wrote at the time, on Twitter: "I was with Mitt every time he saw @realDonaldTrump, and guarantee Mitt never begged Trump. Wish I could have recorded Trump kissing Mitt's ass."
There is also the following, about Elon Musk, and Trump. While Mr. Musk is today a vocal supporter of Trump--and who, like Trump, routinely spreads falsehoods and conspiracy theories (in Mr. Musk's case, on X, the platform he owns)--they were not always as friendly. (Anderson Cooper referred to the following story on one of his weeknight programs on CNN last week.)
In 2022, Mr. Musk said, online, that it was "time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset."
As reported by The Hill, Trump, in a caustic reply, posted the following on his social media site Truth Social:
“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” Trump asserted.
In December of 2020, the month after the presidential election, and not long before he left the Trump administration, Attorney General William Barr, in an Associated Press interview, disputed Trump's claims of election fraud. He said that "to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
According to Michael Wolff's book, Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, as reported by Business Insider, Trump was (not surprisingly) infuriated by Mr. Barr's comments. The Business Insider story included a quote from Trump which appeared in Mr. Wolff's book:
Trump [wrote Business Insider] also appeared to acknowledge at one point that he had lost the election to Joe Biden, saying, "If I had won ... Barr would have licked the floor if I asked him to. What a phony!"
"Licked the floor": a variant of Trump's assertion that people would have dropped to their knees and begged.
In July 2022, Trump gave a speech to the conservative group Turning Point USA, in which he said that "Americans kneel to God, and God alone."
Unless, of course, they're kneeling to him.
In October of 2023, after Kevin McCarthy was removed as Speaker of the House, Republican Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota was nominated for the post by the House Republican conference.
Trump objected, and made phone calls to House members. He criticized Mr. Emmer on Truth Social, calling him a "Globalist RINO." In a January, 2024 piece, David A. Graham of The Atlantic wrote: "Among the complaints: Emmer had voted to certify the 2020 election of Joe Biden, and he had not yet endorsed Trump's 2024 race. Emmer quickly realized he couldn't win and decided to drop out." Mr. Graham cited a Politico story which reported that Trump told a confidant: "He's done. It's over. I killed him.'" Mr. Emmer later endorsed Trump's candidacy.
A January, 2024 New York Times story (also cited by Mr. Graham) said this:
“They always bend the knee,” Mr. Trump said privately of Mr. Emmer’s endorsement, according to a person who spoke to him.
