From what I understand, he’s been like this the vast bulk of his life. For example, back at Wharton he was evidently a dreadful student, but Fred’s money was enough to prop up his degree, anyway. In that situation I think most people would otherwise have been somewhat or very much humiliated by crashing out like that, but for him, it was one in a long series of situations, feeling empowered by exceptionalism, considering himself ‘special’ for being able to break the common rules with impunity, and do whatever he wanted. Just look at the beauty pageant shenanigans and countless other examples to see situations where embarrassment just doesn’t seem to register with him. All part of the elitist mindset of ‘rules and norms are for other people; they don’t apply to me.’

For decent people, I’m sure it makes perfect sense to otherwise interpret much of that as an embarrassment kink, but (again) I think it’s more a case of it largely not registering with people like that. Also kind of goes hand in hand with being a professional bullshit artist– as in, they can do the worst things right in front of you, with the confidence of being able to persuade you that you didn’t actually see what you just witnessed. And its not just being a good BS artist at that point; it’s also a case of being backed by real wealth, power, influence, and underlying threats, persuading loads of people to keep showing him the knee even years ago. And that gets normalized over time…