Trump posed for photo op with Alberta premier with insulting billboard on his head, By Hal M. Brown

 

I don't see anything surprising or particularly wrong with the story above. It makes sense that a conservative Canadian poltician like Alberta's premier Danielle Smith wants to curry favor with Trump. What struck me was the hat Trump was wearing. 

With Trump, vanity is a prominent part of his narcissism. In this way he's more like Narcissus than a garden variety, though toxic, narcissist. Some care about how they look, others don't.  He is what columnist Jennifer Senior called a preening narcissist (read about this here). I have a feeling that Trump likes to wear the cap, especially outdoors where it might be windy, not only because of politics, but because it covers his hair. I shouldn't have to explain why he'd want to do this.

Hat History: Of course baseball caps have evolved from the early days when they were worn pretty much exclusively by baseball players and fans. Now any hat like this is called a baseball cap.

Trump's cap has gotten bigger with larger lettering overt time.

 Now it covers about half his face:

The "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" on the cap is like a billboard. He's not sending the message "make North America great again." He's saying make my America great and make me even greater.

Here's my point. What Trump is doing with the leader of a Canadian province in this photo op is sending his MAGA message of nationalism to her and to all of her country. He is saying, really shouting, "I'm the boss." He wants to be seen as the macho bully everyone fears, not the chubby insecure doofus he'd be if his true self was revealed and he hadn't been gifted a fortune by his father. His narcissism is so deeply ingrained that there's no way he'd admit to himself that without that money it would be highly unlikely he'd be where he is today. He'd probably just be another New York City smalltime slumlord. Just consider what his niece, Mary Trump, had to say about him.

Donald is an extremely insecure person. One of the things he's most insecure about is his level of intelligence. Whenever he feels threatened, whenever he feels outclassed by somebody's superior intelligence or knowledge base, or whenever he feels contradicted, he needs to go on the attack. As he often does, he projects. He attacks the person with the thing he's most insecure about in himself.

For Trump, making America great means riding roughshod over its neighbors and other countries. This is especially relevant for Canada since he has been bloviating about making it a 51st state with the threat of using tariffs as a bludgeon

At least he took his hat off when he met with Danielle Smith indoors:

Inquiring minds may want to know why there's a patio heater inside of Mar-a-Lago. 

Calgary News article Alberta premier talks about 'tariff-free relationship' with the U.S.

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