Like a wounded animal, Donald Trump retreats to his natural habitat

Toronto Star · Éric Blais · 2026-11-06 10:15 UTC

When our sense of worth takes a blow in one area, we rarely confront it head on. We retreat to another where we still feel competent.

On the eve of an election his party was about to lose, Donald Trump stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial and held up an enlarged photograph of a rusted pipe, then another. For 54 minutes, he delivered his closing argument by speaking about the shade of blue he chose for the bottom of the Reflecting Pool and the new bubblers to fight the war on algae.

For years, anyone who couldn’t fathom how this man reached the White House was said to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. It was an armchair diagnosis and plenty of his critics have returned the favour, diagnosing him from afar with every disorder in the manual.

I’d rather do what ethologists do. They watch the subject in his habitat for 72 hours and note what he does under stress.

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