Note: If you care to watch the Orson Welles film, "Citizen Kane," and you wish to avoid spoilers, come back and read this when you are ready.
The 1941 classic film, "Citizen Kane," might offer an interesting insight into the mind and obsession of Donald Trump.
In the film, Charles Foster Kane is a rich newspaper magnate in New York City who decides to run for Governor of New York State. In the film, Kane is caught in a love affair and is threatened with exposure if he does not drop out of the race. Kane refuses the threat and pushes on. The scandal is published and Kane loses the election.
A parallel between the film and reality occurs when Kane is faced with the decision to either drop out of the race or face the embarassment of his private affair becoming public. Kane says that the only person who can decide best what he should do is Kane himself. There is a stubbornness to Kane's refusal to back down. Stubbornness and pride get in the way of sense, because to Kane, nothing can stop him from winning the election no matter what is printed about him. In the film, this turns out to be false.
The film's character echoes Donald Trump a bit because, after the vulgar and salacious 2005 Access Hollywood recording of Trump and Billy Bush was released, rather than give up, Trump doubled down on his rhetoric, much like the fictional Kane, attacking Clinton with everything he had in him, refusing to admit defeat, and vowing to a never give up.
One wonders if the same stubbornness shown by Charles Foster Kane runs through the veins of Donald J. Trump. We have yet to see the results of the election to see if Trump's strategy is a success or not.
Another similarity is Kane's absolute confidence in everything he does. He loses an election? Kane prints in his newspaper that the election was a fraud.
Trump, in the last few weeks, has been dropping in the polls, and as a reaction to this, he is seeding the clouds of discontent by publicly claiming that if Clinton should win, it will be due to the election being rigged.
Trump and Kane cannot accept defeat. When defeat is looming, they both act in the same way. It's someone else's fault. It's not a personal or professional failing, but a failing of the system or some other scapegoat.
Charles Foster Kane is never shown talking crudely about women, and in fact, he is shown to have a very human side, despite his one example of philandering.
Trump, on the other hand, has bragged of his many "conquests," and even now, as a growing number of women come forward to accuse Trump of inappropriate sexual contact, Trump's main comment is to belittle the women as "ugly," saying he would never do anything with women so "unattractive." (As if to actually admit that if they fit his skewed definition of "attractive," he'd definitely do something to them.)
Kane is never portrayed in such a light. Sure, he lives a tragic life, one without love, and he is ever searching for something only he understands. But Kane's story is one of the well-worn "rise and fall" plot. With Trump, the plot has no end, but it is fascinating to see how two characters; one fictional and one real, cross each other.
It will be interesting to see how Donald Trump handles defeat. If he follows the Charles Foster Kane pathway, Trump will go into exile somewhere, build a mighty palace, and hide from the prying eyes of the world, and die in obscurity.
We should only be so lucky.
(Since writing this article, I found this AV Club blog where it shows that Citizen Kane is Donald Trump's favorite movie. I guess Kane's like is the only one that Trump can relate to. http://www.avclub.com/article/citizen-trump-what-donalds-love-citizen-kane-revea-232301 )
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