Is Donald Trump The Modern King Lear?

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child”

- King Lear, Act I sc. 4

Many have commented on Ivanka Trump and her relationship with her father, Donald. Some have questioned whether the relationship was an appropriate one for a father-daughter relationship. Trump’s comments about Ivanka have run the gauntlet from “she is a nice piece of ass.” To calling her “hot.”

Source: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/donald-and-ivanka-trump-moments-that-totally-weird-us-out.html/

Yet little is said about his relationship with Tiffany. There seems to be some distance between them. There are times when she seems to be on the ”outs” with him. Source: https://youtu.be/ot-Rhb6FjlQ

In coming across the stories of these two sisters, Ivanka and Tiffany, I thought of Shakespeare’s play, King Lear. There seem to be many parallels between the two stories. Here are the major characters of Lear.

“King Lear: King of Britain, childlike, passionate, cruel, sympathetic, a very complex character, Lear expresses violent impetuosity and eventually goes mad during the course of the play…

“Goneril: The eldest daughter of Lear, Fierce, calculating, spoiled and selfish, cool and sarcastic, obsessed with power and wealth, she betrays her father, leaving him in the elements during a storm and then conspiring to kill him during the action of the play. She is married to the Duke of Albany, but she is in love with Edmund…

“Regan: The second daughter of Lear, She is almost indistinguishable from her sister, Goneril. The major difference is that Regan is anxious and shows a particularly devastating ability to inflict violence when she kills a servant and assists her husband in gouging out one of Gloucester’s eyes. She is married to the Duke of Cornwall, but is in love with Edmund…

“Cordelia: The youngest daughter of Lear, She is so honest and genuine that she is willing to lose everything in order to avoid the spectacle that Lear proposes for the division of his kingdom and refuses to play the game of flattery. She is banished and accepts her fate. She leaves her home to marry the King of France. She later returns in an attempt to save her father but is unsuccessful. Cordelia is the classic martyr character, although she never complains about the treatment she is forced to bear…

“King Lear is driven out into the cold and descends into madness due to the “monster ingratitude” of his eldest daughters. The question to consider is how much of this ingratitude is Lear reaping what he has sown. He starts the play as the head of a great empire. His tyranny is on full display when he banishes both Kent and his beloved Cordelia for their perceived assault on his authority…

“Lear’s rightful place is to be King and cherished by his daughters. When Cordelia can’t satisfy Lear’s need for praise; the storm of madness begins. The storm reaches its apex when his eldest daughters abandon him. It is only after Lear loses everything that he is able to learn that love between parent and child is not expressed by heaping praise but by ultimate sacrifice. 

The story while tragic is ultimately a story of redemption and the triumph of love over greed and pride. Lear reconnects with his beloved Cordelia and dies with her cradled in his arms, as he must have held her so many times in her childhood.”

Source: https://www.classictheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/King-Lear-Study-Guide.pdf

Although the two stories are not in complete parallel with each other, it seemed that there are enough similarities between the trump saga and the tragic story of Lear.

Donald Trump has many of the characteristics of Lear. He is narcissistic, seeks unmerited praise, cruel and childish. His boorish bullying seems at times insane. Like Lear, he never meets the qualities and characteristics needed to serve his country. He sees his worth as coming from Ivanka who seems to combine the qualities of Goneril and Regan. She appears more than willing to indulge trump in flattery and praise.

Tiffany in my view reflects many of the qualities of Cordelia. She is her own person does not seek to capture the limelight of the trump family and like Cordelia, accepts her fate and is banished, probably by choice, from the trump family.

We will have to wait to see if the story of Lear plays itself out in the trump saga. If it does we can predict that at some point Ivanka will turn on trump. She may desert him in the midst of storm and turmoil. 

Trump on the other hand may seek the counsel and solace of fools just as Lear did. He may at long last come to to a realization of a wasted life and like Lear find final redemption but I wouldn’t bet on it.