Thread by @msbellows

Let's talk about kids being bullied, shall we? Here's a 2016 WaPo article about Trump's childhood. It has lots of interesting factoids about what young Donald was like: washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl…
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https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1092838636763127808

"Once when [a neighbor] left [her son] in a playpen in a back yard adjoining the Trumps’ property, [she] returned to find Donald throwing rocks at her son. 'She saw Donald standing at the fence,' Dennis Burnham said, 'using the playpen for target ­practice.'"
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"Donald was among a group of boys who pulled girls’ hair, passed notes and talked out of turn."

"After he yanked her pigtails, Sharon Mazzarella hit Donald over the head with her metal lunch pail."
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A neighbor's mother "warned... 'stay away from the Trumps.'
'Donald was known to be a bully, I was a little kid, and my parents didn’t want me beaten up.'"
"Donald spent enough time in detention... his buddies nicknamed the punishment “DTs” - short for “Donny Trump"
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Trump once "tried to push a fellow cadet out a second-floor window, only to be thwarted when two other students intervened."
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“He was a loudmouth bully.”
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"Donald and his friends were known to ride their bikes and 'shout and curse very loudly,' said Steve Nachtigall, who lived nearby. Nachtigall said he once saw them jump off their bikes and beat up another boy."
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"The shops also sold switchblades... and the boys, imagining themselves as gang members, bought knives to fit the part." (That's when Trump's dad decided to send him to military school.)
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Now, all of us did things as kids we regret. People grow and change. But Trump has said: "When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.”
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And we've seen how he treats people as an adult: calling them names, mocking a disabled reporter, showing no empathy for struggling federal workers or children separated from their families.

So for this unregenerate bully to call out bullying at the #SOTU is... off.
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Two other fun stories from that piece, unrelated to bullying:

1. In military school, Trump "liked to screw an ultraviolet light into the overhead socket and lie down for a tan. 'We’re going to the beach,' Trump would announce to his roommate."

"Good genes." Heh.

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2. Once, an older kid "led Trump on a sewer ad­ven­ture during which 'it was pitch black and you couldn’t see the entrance.'

“The thing that amazed me,” Briggs said, “was that Donny wasn’t scared. He just kept ­walking.”

INTO A SEWER.

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