My first boss in New York City was the kind of man I could not stand. Not even for a moment, and I know for a fact that I wasn’t alone. He was vulgar, overweight, and perpetually unkempt. He bragged about his sexual exploits with his wife in details that no one ever wanted to hear.

While he wouldn’t shut up about something that was NSFW long before NSFW ever existed, I’d sit there thinking, Who on earth would actually sleep with this oaf? He never missed a chance to lob gay jokes, all of them tired, cheap, and ugly. He also spit when he talked, sweated profusely (well, in his defense, the office was always hot), and had putrid B.O. to match.

Back in the mid-1990s, you still showed some deference to your boss, regardless of how they acted, and you went along to get along. So when he barked, “Let’s get drinks,” you went. You sat in a booth, nursing a beer, while he sloshed and sputtered and thought of you as a “friend.”

But none of us ever thought that way. We endured him. We despised every minute of being with him. We had to pretend we liked him, that we thought he was funny, and worse, we had to fake having a good time when it was anything but. It was pure agony being with him.

And when I finally got another job, I cut him loose immediately. Never saw him again, never spoke to him again, and never missed him for a second.

I’ve been thinking about him lately because in many ways he reminds me of Donald Trump. Over the weekend, my social feeds were clogged with photos of Trump at the U.S. Open. And who was sitting with him? Not old pals. Not golfing buddies. Not anyone from the neighborhood in Queens where he grew up. Or from Manhattan, where he worked in real estate for over 40 years. He was returning to his roots, and there was no one there to say, “Good to see you again!”

No, Trump was flanked by staff and loyalists like his loathsome press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. There was his “gay friend,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; his envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff; and Susie Wiles, his chief of staff. All of whom work for him.

They are also people who are dependent on him. People who are subservient to him. People who “yes” him on a daily and hourly basis. People who are in a position, like I was many years ago, who can’t say no to him.

I could practically hear the setup prior to the trip north to Arthur Ashe Stadium. “What are you doing Sunday?” he asks, while they hem and haw. “Want to go to the U.S. Open with me?” What choice did they have? Just like my boss, Trump mistakes forced company for friendship. And the photos were telling. Trump sat there looking alone, tired, barely able to keep his eyes open — at least that’s what I saw from the images that fed my feeds.

Immediately after Carlos Alcaraz won, CBS cut to Trump, and I was furious. “Why are they spoiling this moment by showing Trump.” But after I got to thinking about it, the visual was telling. There Trump was standing and looking irritated, grimacing as Alcaraz, a young Spanish man, won the match.

Alcaraz is the type of guy that Trump’s ICE thugs arrest. Was Trump pissed that Alcaraz beat a non-Hispanic man? While the crowd cheered and his “friends” clapped politely, Trump sulked, his face sour, and he was definitely not clapping.

I should imagine that if Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was with him (she probably told Trump she was too busy detaining migrants), Alcaraz might have been in some danger.

But back to his “forced friends.” This is Trump’s life. He doesn’t have any friends, and there’s lots of reasons for that. When I spoke to one of those former friends, Anthony Scaramucci, who served very briefly as Trump’s communications director during his first term, he told me that all of Trump’s “friendships” are transactional. There is no such thing as long-term friends in Trump’s life.

That wasn’t the first time Scaramucci talked about Trump’s relationships. And this isn’t the first time that Trump having no friends has been called out. The U.S. Open on Sunday was just a reminder of what an isolated, sad (as in pathetic, not sympathic) figure Trump really is.

When he gets what he wants, he discards people like flat tennis balls. Remember his “bro” phase with Elon Musk? Musk practically moved into Mar-a-Lago for a time. Trump hawked Teslas in the White House driveway. They even played at being fight buddies at a UFC match. And then, poof. Gone. Just another “friendship” evaporated.

Or think about his dinner last week with the tech titans. Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEOs showed up to break bread with him, but these aren’t men who would choose to spend time with Trump otherwise. It’s revolting to see how Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Tim Cook, for example, all fawned over Trump with glowing comments.

When they left, I’m sure they were laughing behind his back. If Trump weren’t the president, they wouldn’t get within a mile of him. They weren’t at the White House to share a laugh or to swap stories. They were there because he holds power, and because power attracts sycophants.

The UFC 314 fight he attended in Miami, with Musk again in tow, told the same story. Trump dragged along a random lineup of his cabinet members: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marco Rubio. You expect me to believe Rubio and Gabbard are UFC superfans? Please. I guess they couldn’t come up with an excuse fast enough to get out of going.

They weren’t there because they wanted to be. They were all there because Trump wanted to fill a row with his “entourage,” and saying no wasn’t an option.

And here’s what makes this whole thing look so abysmal. Trump has lived his entire life in two places, New York and South Florida. Decades in both. If he had actual friends, he could have filled that box at the Open with Queens or Manhattan pals or the UFC fight with Palm Beach cronies. But no. There are no “old cronies.” Just paid staff and political ladder climbers.

I also got to thinking about the few people who’ve come close to being his “friends,” and they are as despicable as he is. Jeffrey Epstein, who once boasted of being Trump’s “closest friend.” Roy Cohn, the famously corrupt lawyer, so unethical he was disbarred for trying to defraud a dying client into leaving him his fortune. Trump talks glowingly of him, and their friendship was widely reported on.

More recently, there was Roger Stone, convicted of felonies until Trump commuted his sentence. The axiom is so worn, but oh, so true with Trump and his “friends”: Birds of a feather flock together, until they don’t.

Why would anyone want to be friends with him? He’s a malignant narcissist, which is the worst kind. When I spoke to the author of Apprentice in Wonderland, who met with Trump nine times while writing the book, I asked him if Trump ever asked him any questions about himself or his lif. He said no, that Trump only talks about himself.

He’s the kind of “friend” who can’t ask a question about you because he doesn’t care. He’s also cruel, a racist, and mean-spirited, whether on stage or on his social media rants. And maybe worst of all, though it’s all terrible, he carries with him a foul, peculiar odor. Imagine being trapped in a box seat with that.

So when you see him glad-handing at Mar-a-Lago or grinning at a fight, don’t mistake the people beside him for friends. They’re not. They’re hostages. And they’re either seeking access, protection, or bragging rights. They want to say they know the president. That’s desperation, not friendship.

There’s a moment in the 1987 film Throw Mama From the Train where Anne Ramsey’s character explains why her son doesn’t have any friends: “He’s fat and he’s stupid.” It’s crude, yes, but when it comes to Trump, it lands, because there’s not a cruder individual on earth, sans my first PR boss.

And then there’s that old line from E

benezer

Scrooge

in A Muppet Christmas Carol: “If you want to know the measure of a man, count his friends.”

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This article originally appeared on Advocate: U.S. Open proves if you want to know the measure of the man that is Donald Trump, count his friends