{"id":144777,"date":"2025-09-09T19:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T19:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/144777\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T19:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T19:21:07","slug":"u-s-open-proves-if-you-want-to-know-the-measure-of-the-man-that-is-donald-trump-count-his-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/144777\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Open proves if you want to know the measure of the man that is Donald Trump, count his friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first boss in New York City <\/a>was the kind of man I could not stand. Not even for a moment, and I know for a fact that I wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

While he wouldn\u2019t shut up about something that was NSFW<\/a> long before NSFW ever existed, I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cLet\u2019s get drinks,\u201d you went. You sat in a booth, nursing a beer, while he sloshed and sputtered and thought of you as a \u201cfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about him lately because in many ways he reminds me of Donald Trump<\/a>. 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, \u201cGood to see you again!\u201d<\/p>\n

No, Trump was flanked by staff and loyalists<\/a> like his loathsome press secretary, Karoline Leavitt<\/a>, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. <\/a>There was his \u201cgay friend,\u201d Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent<\/a>; his envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff; and Susie Wiles, his chief of staff. All of whom work for him.<\/p>\n

They are also people who are dependent on him. People who are subservient to him. People who \u201cyes\u201d him on a daily and hourly basis. People who are in a position, like I was many years ago, who can\u2019t say no to him.<\/p>\n

I could practically hear the setup prior to the trip north to Arthur Ashe<\/a> Stadium. \u201cWhat are you doing Sunday?\u201d he asks, while they hem and haw. \u201cWant to go to the U.S. Open with me?\u201d 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 \u2014 at least that\u2019s what I saw from the images that fed my feeds.<\/p>\n

Immediately after Carlos Alcaraz won, CBS cut to Trump, and I was furious. \u201cWhy are they spoiling this moment by showing Trump.\u201d But after I got to thinking about it, the visual was telling. There Trump was standing and looking irritated, grimacing<\/a> as Alcaraz, a young Spanish man, won the match.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz is the type of guy that Trump\u2019s ICE thugs arrest. Was Trump pissed that Alcaraz beat a non-Hispanic man? While the crowd cheered and his \u201cfriends\u201d clapped politely, Trump sulked, his face sour, and he was definitely not clapping.<\/p>\n

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

But back to his \u201cforced friends.\u201d This is Trump\u2019s life. He doesn\u2019t have any friends, and there\u2019s lots of reasons for that. When I spoke to one of those former friends, Anthony Scaramucci,<\/a> who served very briefly as Trump\u2019s communications director during his first term, he told me that all of Trump\u2019s \u201cfriendships\u201d are transactional. There is no such thing as long-term friends in Trump\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the first time Scaramucci talked <\/a>about Trump\u2019s relationships. And this isn\u2019t the first time that Trump having no friends<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

When he gets what he wants, he discards people like flat tennis balls. Remember his \u201cbro\u201d phase with Elon Musk<\/a>? Musk practically moved into Mar-a-Lago<\/a> for a time. Trump hawked Teslas<\/a> in the White House driveway. They even played at being fight buddies at a UFC match<\/a>. And then, poof. Gone. Just another \u201cfriendship\u201d evaporated.<\/p>\n

Or think about his dinner last week with the tech titans. Silicon Valley\u2019s most powerful CEOs showed up to break bread with him, but these aren\u2019t men who would choose to spend time with Trump otherwise. It\u2019s revolting to see how Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>, Sam Altman<\/a>, and Tim Cook<\/a>, for example, all fawned over Trump<\/a> with glowing comments.<\/p>\n

When they left, I’m sure they were laughing behind his back. If Trump weren\u2019t the president, they wouldn\u2019t get within a mile of him. They weren\u2019t at the White House to share a laugh or to swap stories. They were there because he holds power, and because power attracts sycophants.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>: Robert F. Kennedy Jr<\/a>., Kash Patel<\/a>, Tulsi Gabbard<\/a>, and Marco Rubio<\/a>. You expect me to believe Rubio and Gabbard are UFC superfans? Please. I guess they couldn\u2019t come up with an excuse fast enough to get out of going.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t there because they wanted to be. They were all there because Trump wanted to fill a row with his \u201centourage,\u201d and saying no wasn\u2019t an option.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s 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 \u201cold cronies.\u201d Just paid staff and political ladder climbers.<\/p>\n

I also got to thinking about the few people who\u2019ve come close to being his \u201cfriends,\u201d and they are as despicable as he is. Jeffrey Epstein,<\/a> who once boasted of being Trump\u2019s \u201cclosest friend<\/a>.\u201d Roy Cohn<\/a>, 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<\/a>, and their friendship was widely reported on.<\/p>\n

More recently, there was Roger Stone, convicted of felonies until Trump commuted<\/a> his sentence. The axiom is so worn, but oh, so true with Trump and his \u201cfriends”: Birds of a feather flock together, until they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Why would anyone want to be friends with him? He\u2019s a malignant narcissist, which is the worst kind. When I spoke to the author of Apprentice in Wonderland<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s the kind of \u201cfriend\u201d who can\u2019t ask a question about you because he doesn\u2019t care. He\u2019s also cruel, a racist, and mean-spirited, whether on stage or on his social media rants. And maybe worst of all, though it\u2019s all terrible, he carries with him a foul, peculiar odor<\/a>. Imagine being trapped in a box seat with that.<\/p>\n

So when you see him glad-handing at Mar-a-Lago or grinning at a fight, don\u2019t mistake the people beside him for friends. They\u2019re not. They\u2019re hostages. And they\u2019re either seeking access, protection, or bragging rights. They want to say they know the president. That\u2019s desperation, not friendship.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a moment in the 1987 film Throw Mama From the Train where Anne Ramsey\u2019s character explains why her son doesn\u2019t have any friends: \u201cHe\u2019s fat and he\u2019s stupid.\u201d It\u2019s crude, yes, but when it comes to Trump, it lands, because there\u2019s not a cruder individual on earth, sans my first PR boss.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s that old line from E<\/a><\/p>\n

benezer<\/p>\n

<\/a> Scrooge<\/p>\n

in A Muppet Christmas Carol: \u201cIf you want to know the measure of a man, count his friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from theLGBTQ<\/a>+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com\/submit<\/a> to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My first boss in New York City was the kind of man I could not stand. Not even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[2073,12,14185,99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-144777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-friends","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}