THERE'S SOMETHING THAT MATTERS MORE TO TRUMP THAN EGO GRATIFICATION

You think President Trump has had a poll bump? Trump's uptick is tiny. This is a poll bump:

Gov. Cuomo is getting high marks for his coronavirus response from typically hard-to-please New Yorkers, according to a Siena College poll released Monday.

A whopping 87% of New Yorkers approve of the job the governor is doing to address COVID-19 outbreak in the Empire State, the poll found....

A plurality of voters from every corner of the the state approve of his handling of the crisis, including 95% of Democrats, 87% of independents and even 70% of Republicans....

Cuomo has also seen his overall approval rating among New Yorkers soar from the mid-forties in February to 71% in this past month.

By contrast, Trump is averaging 50.6% approval for his handling of the coronavirus according to the Real Clear Politics average, and his job approval average is 47.3%.

Don't you think Trump would love numbers like Cuomo's? Don't you think he'd love broad-based adulation? The template is right there for him to follow. Given his massive ego, you'd think he'd follow it instinctively.

But he won't follow it, which means that something is more important to this raging egomaniac than ego gratification:

Bullying people.

Trump loves praise, but he has a compulsion to fight with people in ways that regularly cost him the opportunity to be praised. This has been true throughout his presidency. How many people have said that if Trump started his presidency pushing broadly popular proposals -- a big infrastructure bill, tax increases on the rich -- he'd be riding high in the polls now and a shoo-in for reelection?

It's true, but he couldn't do it. In part it's because he'd thrown in his lot with the vicious partisans of the Republican Party, who would have been maximally resistant to such proposals. But he could have worn them down, the same way he's worn them down on trade.

He didn't want to. When Trump discovered Fox News some years back, he discovered a world of permanent combat. If you're a Fox News Republican, you get up every day and fight your enemies to the death, using the lowest, meanest tactics available to you.

For Trump, it's heaven.

Trump would rather fight than win by not fighting. He loves to be loved, but he loves hating and hurting people even more.