Parnell: Trying ‘Trumpidence’ when it comes to friends and colleagues would save so much angst

Imagine how liberating it would be to have Trump-level confidence when it comes to friends and colleagues, writes Kerry Parnell.

As the late Queen once noted, “recollections may vary”.

And Donald Trump, at least, is not having a bar of the claim the monarch didn’t like him. This week, the ex-president responded to stories Queen Elizabeth was less than impressed with him on his state visit to the UK in 2019.

According to a new biography, she is said to have “particularly disliked” Trump’s habit of looking over her shoulder, as though searching for someone more interesting to talk to. To be fair, it’s unlikely there would have been anyone he would blank the Queen for, at her own state banquet, but there you are.

Craig Brown, author of upcoming book, Voyage Around the Queen, reveals, “A few weeks after Trump’s visit, for instance, she confided in one lunch guest that she found him ‘very rude’: she particularly disliked the way he couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder, as though in search of others more interesting.

“For his part, Donald Trump was confident he had been her favourite guest ever,” he writes.

That’s something Trump is sticking with.

Donald Trump still claims he was Queen Elizabeth’s “favourite president”. Picture: Chris Jackson/Pool/AFP

“I heard I was her favourite president,” he told the Daily Mail this week.

“It was totally false. I have no idea who the writer is, but it was really just the opposite.

“I had a great relationship with the Queen. She liked me and I liked her. She said it to friends of mine that, ‘President Trump was my favourite president,’” he said.

Trump, true to form, simply batted it away as nonsense, thinking, “Of course she liked me, how could she not – I’m superb.” Picture: Olivier Touron/AFP

Whether that lunch guest who blabbed to Brown – the satirist and author of the equally funny biography of Princess Margaret, Ma’am Darling – remembered correctly, or put a spin on it, we don’t know. Only her close family, and presumably her diaries and letters, could reveal the truth.

But I love that Trump, true to form, simply batted it away as nonsense, thinking, “Of course she liked me, how could she not – I’m superb.” He certainly adored her, calling her, “a great, great woman” at the time.

Imagine how liberating it would be to have no insecurities about what others think of us.

Perhaps we should all try Trump-level confidence – Trumpidence – when it comes to friends and colleagues. It would save so much angst.

There’s nothing worse than the realisation you are in an unbalanced friendship, where you like or respect someone more than they do you.

Even in my fifties, I’m tortured by the mate who’s always “too busy” to meet. I really enjoy her company, how could she not, mine – what’s wrong with me? (Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question.)

There’s nothing worse than the realisation you are in an unbalanced friendship, where you like or respect someone more than they do you. Picture: iStock

It’s confronting – no matter how much you pretend to be impervious, you inevitably lie awake in the small hours workshopping the personality failings that lowered your comrade-credit-score.

The same goes for workmates – why did that colleague take against you; why does one boss think you’re a brainiac and another a blockhead? Instead of questioning whether you are truly at fault – who has time for that – we could instead travel with Trumpidence, assert we’re a genius, everyone loves us and chalk the rest down to fake news.

That’s my plan, signed, Australia’s funniest columnist.

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