Trump’s Quip About ‘Opinionated People’ Says A Lot

President Donald Trump made a rather offhand comment during his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Thursday — and experts believe it reveals a great deal about the president’s worldview.

Within minutes of the start of his press conference in the Oval Office with Erdogan, Trump heaped praise on the Turkish leader, calling him a “tough man” and “a guy who is highly opinionated.” Erdogan, who has been in power for over 20 years, has long been accused of undermining democracy, human rights and eroding media freedom and political expression.

Trump then went on to apparently reveal something somewhat introspective: He’s not quite sold on people with a lot of opinions.

“Usually I don’t like opinionated people, but I always liked this one,” he said, pointing to Erdogan. “But he’s a tough one. And he does an amazing job in his country.”

Trump’s admission that he doesn’t like opinionated people comes as many have been sounding the alarm on Trump’s efforts to target his political opponents, his crackdown on free speech and as voters have continued to criticize Republican elected officials for their loyalty — and at times fawning and gushing remarks — to Trump.

Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at The Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, believes that Trump’s quip about not liking opinionated people on Thursday is reflective of his “broader worldview.”

“In Trump’s mind, an individual is only opinionated if they speak out against him,” he told HuffPost. “This, to Trump, is unfair, because objective reality (in his mind) is that he is the greatest president we have ever had and any criticism is unwarranted.”

“As such, fawning compliments, such as those we saw at his last Cabinet meeting, are not opinions, but merely statements of fact,” he continued.

Deepak Sarma, inaugural distinguished scholar in the public humanities at Case Western Reserve University, thinks Trump’s characterization of Erdogan as a “tough man” and as “highly opinionated” reveals how “he envisions himself and how he wished the world would view him.”

“Erdogan, [Vladmir] Putin, Kim Jong Un and other autocrats have long since served as aspirational models for Trump,” they said. “Trump usually does not like such people, and he surrounds himself with sycophants who ought to have no opinion of their own, unless, of course, it agrees with his.”

“Valuing loyalty above all else, Trump’s narcissistic leadership style requires echo chambers and an inner circle that serves to soothe his fragile ego,” they continued.

Sarma said that Trump’s characterization of Erdogan and his “opinionated people” remarks reveal his “Achilles’ heel.”

“Namely that he so desperately seeks to be taken seriously, to be recognized as a bully, that he can be easily manipulated by insincere praise (or gifts) by those seeking his audience,” they said.

Dan P. McAdams, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, told HuffPost that, generally speaking, he doesn’t think “it pays dividends to parse what Donald Trump says in at any given time because he may say the exact opposite thing a short time later. ”

McAdams, author of “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning,” said that Trump lives “in the here-and-now moment, fighting to win the moment and to glorify the self in each moment, moment by moment, day by day.”

“The moments do not add up to make a plot line for his life, but instead each is like an isolated monad,” he said.

McAdams characterizes Trump as an “episodic man” — meaning he wakes up each day with “a fresh new consciousness ready to battle with whatever comes his way now.”

He doesn’t believe the president is ever thinking about the day prior in any given moment. Instead, he thinks Trump is focused on “winning the moment,” and that there’s no “continuity of mind” for him — or at least very little.

“The weirdest psychological thing about Donald Trump — and something that the American people have yet to come to terms with, including his supporters — is that he lives outside of time, with no understanding of the distant past and no concern for the distant future,” he said.

And as it relates to Trump’s recent remarks about not liking opinionated people, McAdams believes the president just doesn’t like opinionated people “when their opinions contradict his own.”

“But he is OK with opinionated people who agree with him on the basics, which probably characterizes Erdogan,” he said.

McAdams pointed out that Trump sandwiched his remarks about opinionated people in between saying, twice, that Erdogan is “tough.”

“Trump identifies with tough men. [He] tends to give them more leeway than those whom he sees to be weak,” he said. “As my Turkish friends say, Erodgan is ‘a little Trump.’ Trump likes little Trumps.”