Trump Still Believed He Held Foreign Policy Authority After Presidency, Author Reveals

Begrudged, unhappy, and resentful, that's how former president Donald Trump​ left power in 2021. According to a new book, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, by author and Variety's co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh, Trump was seemingly in a delusion that he still had foreign policy powers.

During CNN's The Source, Setoodeh recalled his interview sessions with the Republican front-runner for the book shortly after he lost power to rival Joe Biden. The journalist spoke with host Kaitlyn Collins about the struggle to sit down with Trump for a chat after losing the elections in the Trump Tower in New York. He also revealed that the now-78-year-old couldn't accept his defeat and the media's (mis)representation of him. 

"He was very deflated, he was conflicted, he was angry about the way in which the press had treated him," said Setoodeh referring to Trump's acrimonious departure from the White House. "He still believed that he won the election and he was happiest when he talked to me about hosting The Apprentice. It was the thing that brought him the most joy. We watched clips of the show together, we watched the theme song and he really lit up. We watched the firing of Omarosa [Manigault Newman]." 

However, when it came to the topic of the Oval Office, Trump's mood would shift from joy to hostility. "And then we would talk about what he did at the White House and he would become gloomy and resentful and unhappy and refer to Afghanistan and Joe Biden but he also seemed to think he still had some foreign policy powers and there was one day where he told me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan," added Setoodeh. 

While Collins was taken aback by Setoodeh's claims, the Spokesperson of the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, condemned, "After recognizing the importance of The Apprentice, its significant cultural impact on a global scale, and President Trump’s remarkable role in forever changing the landscape of entertainment, this 'writer' has now chosen to allow Trump Derangement Syndrome to rot his brain like so many other losers whose entire existence revolves around President Trump." 

Trump was visibly salty after losing power to Biden, unlike his wife Melania Trump who seemed calm, at least on the surface. The psychologists Steven J. Rubenzer and Thomas R. Faschingbauer along with 120 other historians and experts rated many past presidents on basic human variability dimensions, going back to George Washington. 

Naturally, these experts also weighed in on Trump's personality and media presence. They found that the ex-commander-in-chief exhibited traits not expected of a US president- "sky-high extroversion combined with off-the-chart low agreeableness," as per The Atlantic. His social ambitions and aggressiveness were always present long before he joined politics. 

Barbara Res, who served as vice president in charge of the construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan in the 1980s, told The Daily Beast, that Trump's emotional core is indeed anger, "As far as the anger is concerned, that's real for sure. He's not faking it."