James Grech, the CEO of Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the country, gave Donald Trump an award this week, a bronze trophy that looked like a coal miner with a pick and a headlamp, at a ceremony attended by several Republican members of Congress, Cabinet members, and coal industry executives.

The award, which was created for Trump this year, had a name: “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.” Trump – who has no dignity and no capacity to even pretend like he has dignity anymore – accepted it with glee.

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For the coal company that gave it to him, it was a good trade. Make up an award, pay a trophy shop a couple hundred dollars to make a shiny trinket, and, in exchange, receive $175 million in government money to upgrade coal power plants.

Trump likes awards because they temporarily fill an enormous hole in his soul, one that his family members have discussed in the past. The cavernous aching inside that makes him so pathetically desperate for external validation has its roots in the neglect he suffered in early childhood.

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This is just the latest in the list of fake awards Trump has been given by wealthy and connected people who know he’s an egocentric simpleton who will fall for this trick.

FIFA, the soccer organization, gave him a “Peace Prize” last year. Apple, the corporation, presented him with a glass-and-gold award as he exempted the company from a tariff. The Nixon Foundation last year gave him the “Architect of Peace Award,” and Republicans try to give him awards and nominate him for prizes to curry favor with the GOP’s leader.

He even stole the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup trophy from Chelsea F.C. last year, and it’s reportedly on display at either Trump Tower or the Oval Office.

Foreign countries also know how to play him. Israel gave him two awards so far in his second term – the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor and the Israeli Prize – while several other countries, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have given him awards. It’s such an easy way to manipulate him that it would frankly be a dereliction of duty for the leader of any organization or government to not give him some made-up prize if the body they lead needs something from him.

This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism. Donald is not simply weak. His ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved.

psychologist (and the president’s lesbian niece) Mary Trump

And then there’s the Nobel Peace Prize, which he coveted so much that he even said he was willing to invade Greenland to exact revenge on the Scandinavians who refused to give it to him. Last year’s recipient, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, gave her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump, possibly hoping he would leave her in charge of the Latin American nation after he invaded and deposed its previous leader. However, once Trump got what he wanted from Machado, he left her out in the cold.

Most adults would be ashamed to accept an award that was duly bestowed on someone else. While, as children, they may have cried when another kid got to blow out the candles on their birthday cake, most grown-ups would consider it condescending to be given a prize for nothing.

But Trump accepts all these fake participation trophies, like a 4-year-old being told that he’s special for the first time in his life.

Something is deeply wrong with Trump, and it’s not just his recent cognitive decline. As Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine Professor Bruce Davidson said in a recent media appearance, it’s likely that whatever Trump has going on in his head is just disinhibiting him, making him “more like [he was] beforehand.” This yearning for awards and prizes has likely always been lurking in Trump’s mind, but he had some control over it in the past, at least to maintain appearances.

Trump’s out niece, Mary Trump, has a theory about just that, which she laid out in her 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough. She wrote about her family, calling Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, a “high-functioning sociopath,” whose cruel parenting limited her uncle’s ability to feel emotions.

She also wrote about a tragedy the president faced as a toddler. When he was just two-and-a-half, his mother was hospitalized for a year, and he was left alone a lot of the time. His father, the “sociopath,” wasn’t very caring for his son.

Mary Trump, who is also a clinical psychologist, wrote that this period of early childhood is “the most crucial developmental period in any young child’s life,” and her uncle was severely neglected in this moment. Mary Trump says that her uncle has “psychological and emotional problems.” And her grandmother, Donald Trump’s mother, continued to be ill throughout her uncle’s childhood.

“So he never felt safe, he never felt loved, and I think if you start from that kind of deficit and you never find somebody to fill in the gaps or to heal you, then you are at the mercy of anybody who may find you of use,” Mary Trump wrote.

“Nothing is ever enough,” she continued. “This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism. Donald is not simply weak. His ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved.”

Dr. Kirk Honda, a marriage and family therapist, professor, and podcaster, discussed Mary Trump’s book and provided some more explanation on the psychological theory behind her analysis of how the neglect Donald Trump suffered may be linked to his emotional neediness today.

“People with narcissistic personality disorder typically were treated like this when they were young,” he said, noting that he is simplifying current theory on narcissism. “They were neglected. When you’re emotionally neglected as a child, you have this choice that you have to make. You say, ‘Well, it’s either my fault or it’s their fault.'”

“For people who decide, ‘You know what? It’s their fault. It’s not my fault I’m being neglected, it’s their fault,'” he continued, “the benefit of this approach is that you still maintain some level of self-esteem, or at least a three-year-old’s version of self-esteem. But the con is that now everyone’s an idiot to you, everyone’s stupid, and you can’t depend on other people.”

This leads to the belief that a person is very independent, they need no one and actually can’t rely on anyone since others won’t be there for them, and that they’re superior to others. But that belief is fragile and requires constant validation.

“If other people believe I have a self, then I can believe that I have a self,” Honda continued. “But I have to constantly make sure everyone understands that I am awesome and that I have a self because that’s the only way to distract me from the fact that when I look inward, I don’t see anything.” Narcissists, when they stop trying to get validation and look inward, “it’s terrifying. I’m broken, meaningless, I’m empty, there’s nothing there.”

This is also why narcissists are very worried about other people getting more validation than they get, because it’s a threat to the idea that they are strong and everyone else is weak. That observation seems relevant when it comes to Donald Trump and the prizes he covets; there is no prize he clearly wants more than the Nobel Peace Prize, which his rival, the one person he constantly compares himself to – Barack Obama – won in 2009.

While Trump may have been the victim of his parents back when he was a toddler, he’s 79 years old now, beyond just “an adult,” and he definitely has the resources to find better ways to address his brokenness.

Instead, he’s the most powerful person in the country, inflicting his mental health issues on the rest of us.

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