There wasn’t a lot of laughter during this week’s presidential debate, but one moment that drew laughs jumped out at me. Hillary Clinton was noting that anytime there’s a conflict that fails to go Donald Trump’s way, he reflexively insists it was “rigged” against him.”He lost the Wisconsin primary; he said the Republican primary was rigged against him,” Clinton said. “Then Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering; he claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged against him.”At this point, Trump quickly interrupted, not to deny the charge, but to confirm it. “Should have gotten it,” the Republican said, referring to the Emmy, and prompting laughter from the audience.It was a lighthearted moment about a serious subject: Trump has a problem accepting responsibility when things don’t go his way. But the exchange did get me thinking: are the Emmys really on Trump’s enemies list?As it turns out, yes. The Washington Post had an interesting report this week, explaining that Trump wanted his former reality show, “The Apprentice,” to win an Emmy, and when it didn’t, he launched a feud with the Television Academy.
By 2011, Trump had had it. “The Apprentice,” coming off its 11th season, hadn’t received a nomination in years. He went on YouTube to blast the Emmys, saying “fewer and fewer people” watch the show “and for good reason.” The academy awards the wrong shows and people, Trump said, and “it’s really not a good operation.””The public is smart. They know it’s a con game. I remember when I was originally nominated, everybody thought that ‘The Apprentice’ was going to win. It was the hottest thing on television, virtually,” Trump said in 2011. “Well, it didn’t win. They picked another show that frankly has been nominated many years and it’s like, an irrelevant show. I’m not talking about myself. I’m not talking about ‘The Apprentice.’ I’m just saying the Emmys have a become boring, boring, boring show, totally predictable, and they’re picking the wrong people.”Then Trump discovered Twitter, which made it even easier for him to complain about the Emmys
And this doesn’t even include his many tweets about the awards.Obviously, the presidential candidate’s thoughts on television awards are hardly an important campaign issue, but note the similarities between his Emmy complaints and the resentment he feels towards, well, practically everything else.Newt Gingrich, a leading contender for Trump’s vice presidential nomination, offered an interesting insight into the GOP candidate’s persona the other day.
The former House speaker and top Trump surrogate told the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker that the Republican nominee loses his cool in response to “anything which attacks his own sense of integrity or his own sense of respectability, and he reacts very intensely, almost uncontrollably, to those kinds of situations.”These rather harsh comments follow a Fox News interview last week in which Gingrich claimed that the Little Trump was “frankly pathetic” for attacking House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) for neglecting to congratulate him on his performance in the second presidential debate.While Gingrich noted that he admired Big Trump for disrupting the presidential campaign with his unorthodox behavior and far-reaching policy ideas, he said that the real estate mogul too often became embroiled in embarrassing public spats.”There’s also a part of his personality that sometimes gets involved in petty things that make no sense, and I think that that’s what I was talking about when I talk about there’s a big Trump and a little Trump,” Gingrich said.
Little Trump, unfortunately, wanted an Emmy and didn’t get one. The resentment will never go away.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."