Donald Trump is leading most polls for the Republican presidential nomination, but his brash talk and hardline policy positions have many journalists and commentators on both the right and left calling him a gross bully.
Since launching his unlikely campaign in June, Trump has made a series of controversial, if not entirely “conservative,” comments that have both motivated his supporters and stirred up his detractors, largely in the press, left and right.
“We have seen the likes of him before, in the United States and elsewhere: narcissistic bullies who rise to prominence by spreading lies, appealing to fears and stoking hatred,” the Washington Post said on Monday, citing Trump’s calls for mass deportation of illegal immigrants and to reinstate “waterboarding” of suspected terrorists.
On Sunday, the executive editor of the online news site The Daily Beast called for a boycott of Trump-branded products and real estate, charging that anyone who purchases or patrons them is “supporting racism.”
John Avlon, the editor in chief of the website, defended the controversial remark, writing on Twitter, “A core part of our mission is to stand up to bullies, bigots and hypocrites.”
Last week, Peter Suderman of the libertarian Reason magazine called Trump “an insolent bully” for stating that he would like to see Muslim worship centers in the U.S. shutdown if they are deemed a threat.
Trump is notorious for striking back hard whenever he’s attacked by one of his GOP rivals or when he’s the subject of what he calls “unfair” news stories. But at least one expert on bullying says that it’s a term that may be inappropriate for a presidential candidate who stakes out controversial policy positions.
“Having a difference of opinion, even one that is the antithesis to someone else’s opinion, is not a sign of ‘bullying’,” Glenn Stutzky, an instructor at Michigan State University, told the Washington Examiner media desk. “Bullying is a set of behaviors, attitudes and approaches to life.”
Stutzky, who specializes in human behavior, called it “unproductive” to label a person a “bully” and said “bullying is all about power, the imbalance of power and how that power is used.”
Whether there is an “imbalance of power” between Trump and his targets is probably a matter of opinion to be debated by his fans and his opponents.
To Trump’s followers, he’s viewed as an outsider fighting against the status quo: a federal government that’s too inept and a culture that’s too politically correct. And Trump has said he always thinks of himself as the “underdog” in any fight.
But to his critics, Trump is a celebrity with big name recognition, stirring up the fears and anxieties of mostly white, uneducated voters and turning them against vulnerable minorities and other conflict-averse parties.
In September, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank advised the other GOP presidential hopefuls to treat Trump as “the schoolyard bully he has been acting like.”
A September blog post at New York magazine said Trump “acts more like a bully than a ‘traditional’ presidential candidate” because he “gleefully flouts all of the usual rules of political and social decorum, constantly launching attacks — many of them rather offensive — against both his political rivals and members of the media he believes have treated him unfairly.”
John Fund at the conservative National Review said in August that Trump is “Someone who can’t control his language and constantly belittles and bullies everyone he doesn’t like by flinging insults…”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not return a request for comment. But Trump did address the “bully” label during an interview in August.
“I’m not a bully,” he said on NBC’s “Today.” “In fact, I think it’s just the opposite way. I’m not a bully.”
