Fake it til you make it

Not exactly the case with regard to a guy who basically inherited everything he has. Still, as an "imposter syndrome" laden failson, Trump is sort of a man for his time, I guess.

But one thing I think that we have overlooked as we see Trump trying to delegitimize others is what I suspect is a feeling he has inside that nothing he’s ever achieved himself has ever been legitimate. This is a person who has never known whether anybody wants to be around him because he’s a person they want to be around or they want to be around his money. And since he’s promoted himself as this glamorous, incredibly wealthy person, that’s the draw he’s always given. So he doesn’t know if he has any legitimate relationships outside of his family, and that’s why he emphasizes family. … He’s always kind of gaming the system—not, in my view, winning on the merits. And even his election was with almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. So he has this deep fear that he is himself not a legitimate president, and I think that’s why he goes to such great lengths to delegitimize even the intelligence community, which is the president’s key resource in security, and he’s going to do this demeaning and delegitimizing behavior rather than accept what they have to tell him.

Once you come to terms with the concept that we are none of us special and all here more or less by accident, you can go two directions with this knowledge. You can recognize that there's no need to prove anything to anyone and our only true imperative is to look out for each other as best as we can. Nobody has to be a hero or anything. It can mean simply staying out of the way and doing as little damage as possible, if you like. It's up to you. No one is keeping score.

The other direction you can go is to take on a narcissistic mission to establish and demonstrate your own validity through continual pursuit of needlessly competitive assholery.   Guess which way Trump went.