NYTimes | Donald J. Trump
arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April
2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries
who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat
beside his host, Lally Weymouth, the journalist and socialite daughter
of Katharine Graham, longtime publisher of The Washington Post.
A short while later, the humiliation started.
The
annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that
year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own
presidential bid, as a punch line.
He
lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation
on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled
his reality show, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
Mr.
Trump at first offered a drawn smile, then a game wave of the hand. But
as the president’s mocking of him continued and people at other tables
craned their necks to gauge his reaction, Mr. Trump hunched forward with
a frozen grimace.
After
the dinner ended, Mr. Trump quickly left, appearing bruised. He was
“incredibly gracious and engaged on the way in,” recalled Marcus
Brauchli, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, but departed
“with maximum efficiency.”
That
evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away,
accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political
world. And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is
driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and
bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.
That
desire has played out over the last several years within a Republican
Party that placated and indulged him, and accepted his money and
support, seemingly not grasping how fervently determined he was to
become a major force in American politics. In the process, the party
bestowed upon Mr. Trump the kind of legitimacy that he craved, which has
helped him pursue a credible bid for the presidency.
“Everybody has a little regret there, and everybody read it wrong,” said David Keene, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union,
an activist group Mr. Trump cultivated. Of Mr. Trump’s rise, Mr. Keene
said, “It’s almost comical, except it’s liable to end up with him as the
nominee.”
