Donald Trump is a bully. He is and always has been. No doubt he always will be.

But last night on MSNBC, Joy Reid said something that I truly believe may wind up being one of the two or three most salient points about Donald Trump that I’ve yet heard: For all his bluster, for all his bullying, Trump almost never confronts anyone to their face.

Rachel Maddow and Reid were discussing Trump’s recent visit to Flint, Michigan, where he attempted to make a political speech and was immediately shut down by the pastor of the church he was speaking at. Trump backed down and then later attacked the pastor via Twitter. Reid began her comments by saying:

“He had this incident at the church. He is speaking before a stone-faced, not interested, sparse group of mostly African-Americans, sort of a youngish — mostly African-American crowd. The headline moment was when the pastor said, ‘This is not what we asked you to come here for. You are not supposed to make a political speech.’”

Then Reid perfectly summed up the dichotomy that exists within Trump:

“Donald Trump the blusterer is not the same guy when he is in front of the audience he is insulting when he is in front of the Mexican president. When he is confronted by anyone. When he is confronted, he backs down and then turns around and tells a story about how tough he was. The more he puts himself in front of audiences of color, the more he shows off he is passive and aggressive. He is only aggressive when he is not in the presence of the person he is bullying. When he gets in front of the person that he previously insulted, he becomes incredibly passive.”

Yes! Exactly! Because inside of every bully is a sniveling coward. Trump talks tough, but I’m willing to be that if you confronted him with credible force, he’d wet himself and run away. Do we want a man this fundamentally screwed up to control our nuclear arsenal?

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org