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Quote: Megan Malone What is Donald Trump’s Myers-Briggs Personality Type ؟ The 45th president of the United States is quite an enigma. In watching various interviews throughout his life, one common theme that I noticed is that there is a disconnect between the image he projects and who he actually is. This is common of an Enneagram 3 personality type. So, it’s fairly safe to assume DJT is a type 3. But what is his Myers-Briggs personality type؟ The answer to that is a bit more complex. This past weekend, I watched the 4-part docuseries, Trump: An American Dream, for the sole purpose of analyzing his personality type (yes, this is where I’m at in 2020, send help). The series documents the life of Trump in personal interviews with both DJT and his family, friends, and colleagues. It chronicles his early life in real estate development up until the time he is elected as president of the United States (this is about a 50-year span). After watching the 4+ hour series, I determined that Donald Trump is an ESFP personality type. Donald Trump: ESFP Personality Type I’m going to break down the reasons for this typing in-depth, starting at the highest level of personality profiling, which are the dichotomies (Introvert vs. Extravert, Intuition vs. Sensing, etc.) Extravert: Donald Trump is, as described by friends and family, a showman. They call him a “born salesman” and a public relations guru. His genius is described not in his abilities to strategize and plan, but in his ability to influence people. He is energized by large crowds and has always enjoyed hosting and attending lavish parties with the most important people. Sensing: Unlike his father, who was a more practical and cautious real estate developer, Trump is all about flashy and luxurious details. He wants everything in his environment and in the buildings he develops to scream wealth and fashion. While Trump is also a dreamer, he is much more focused on the present moment and his short-term future plans. He is also more focused on his immediate reality than abstract concepts or ideas. Feeling: This may be the most controversial part of this breakdown, as DJT is commonly typed as a Thinking personality. He does project an image of being tough and aggressive, but I still believe he is a Feeling personality type. He has a deep understanding of how people work and what makes them tick. Again, this is what friends and family say makes him a “genius” in what he does. He knows how to manipulate people and use their weaknesses to exploit them. Despite a tough demeanor, Trump also appears to be an extremely sensitive person. His upbringing with a stern Thinker father may have prevented Trump from developing his Feeling process in a healthier way. Perceiving: Trump is impulsive. Many of his failures in real estate were because he acted on impulse and did not think things through. He is an improviser and is able to quickly adapt to his environment. In interviews, he commonly adapts his answers to questions in ways that favor him, even if it means not really answering the question. Cognitive Function Breakdown Don’t worry — I wouldn’t have spent all day Sunday watching a documentary series about a man I personally do not like, and then another hour writing up this post, just to give you some basic, high-level breakdown. Nope, we’re digging deep. Next, I’ll breakdown Trump’s personality type by cognitive functions. The cognitive functions of the ESFP are: Extraverted Sensing Introverted Feeling Extraverted Thinking Introverted Intuition Dominant Function: Extraverted Sensing Types that lead with an Extraverted Sensing process are focused on their immediate environments and are skilled in their ability to influence these environments Throughout his life, Donald Trump has consistently exhibited leading with this process. Extraverted Sensing types commonly look for feedback for how they are “performing” in their environments. One of the winners of The Apprentice said that when he went to visit DJT at Trump Tower, he discovered that Trump would commonly spend his mornings reading news about himself. As president, Trump focuses heavily on his ratings and what people think of him. Trump is excellent at exciting his audiences and crowds. He understands how to explain things in ways that speak to people’s emotions — whether that be positive or negative. He is attentive to details and it is important for him to have the very best. His dreams were to have the tallest building in New York City, the most expensive piece of land in NYC, and the biggest casino in Atlantic City. He is energized and fulfilled by making his reality the very best that it can be. Auxiliary Function: Introverted Feeling Introverted Feeling is focused on the subjective emotional experience of the individual. As an auxiliary process, this often shows up as the person being extremely charismatic, performative, and manipulative. Again, these were all words commonly used to describe Trump, by the people in his life, throughout the series. Introverted Feeling is individualistic and tends to create the individual’s identity around their convictions. When less healthy, it can show up as the person being extremely one-sided in their beliefs, manipulative, focused on black and white thinking, and appearing very cold and callous. Trump’s identity revolves around his wealth and success, and he will stop at nothing to maintain this self-image. Even if that means throwing other people under the bus or refusing to understand or accept a different perspective. As president, Trump is much more expressive when he is performing (at his rallies, for example). But if you watch nearly any interview with him at other points in his life, he is not emotionally expressive. This is a common trait of Introverted Feeling types as opposed to Extraverted Feeling types, who are more likely to wear their emotions on their sleeves. Trump’s “tough” persona stems not from a lack of emotions, but from a deep emotional belief that who he is, and what he believes, are right. He is unable to let go of his convictions, even if this is to his own detriment or that of others. Tertiary Function: Extraverted Thinking Extraverted Thinking is about making things happen in the outer world and measuring success. I personally went back and forth on whether I thought Trump was an ESFP or an ENTJ because he does exhibit strong use of Extraverted Thinking. However, I do not believe this is his dominant function for reasons I’ll explain below. Instead, I believe that Trump tends to overvalue this function at the expense of the healthy development of his Introverted Feeling function. For this reason, he shows up as an unhealthy manifestation of his ESFP personality type. Healthy Extraverted Thinking shows up in an individual as hardworking, assertive, good at delegating, and creating and managing systems and processes. Trump does not seem to personally care about delegating or creating systems himself, rather he focuses his efforts on finding the right people to do those things for him. While he is an extremely hard worker, again, his skills do not come from planning and strategizing, but from his ability to influence people and get what he wants. This is a common manifestation of Extraverted Thinking in the Tertiary position. When colleagues recounted arguing with Trump or telling him why something couldn’t be done, they said that the response was always just to get it done. Trump does not care about the obstacles in the way of achieving his Introverted Feeling desires, he only cares that he achieves them. He is less concerned about improving the system (like a dominant Extraverted Thinking type would be), but on making the system work for him —whatever it takes. Much of his presidential campaign was focused on removing systems he did not like or think were helpful, but not on ways to improve the systems themselves. The docu-series states that the reason Trump decided to make “Build the wall” a big part of his 2016 campaign was because he noticed that the suggestion got many people excited on Twitter. It was not a strategic decision to improve the immigration process, but an emotional one. Inferior Function: Introverted Intuition Introverted Intuition is focused on the big picture and understanding multiple perspectives. Individuals with strong Introverted Intuition are skilled at understanding how the mind sees ideas, how concepts are interconnected, and how themes will play out in the future. In one interview, Trump states that he tends to focus more on the immediate future than his long-term future. Although he doesn’t know exactly how things will turn out for him, he says he feels positive that things will work out, because in his experience they always have. As an Inferior function, Introverted Intuition can show up as paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories and omens. The individual may make up beliefs that are not true if they support their current belief system. We see this in Trump’s fear and distrust of anything or anyone who does not fully support him. If something does not work in his favor, he tends to favor conspiracy theories over facts and logic. Then, he uses his strong emotional influence to rile up these same emotions among his supporters. He does seem to use his Introverted Intuition to see potential in things and people. But he is much more skilled in bringing something he wants to life, than understanding multiple perspectives and envisioning the ultimate best path forward. The DJT Enigma Donald Trump is not an easy person to type in the Myers-Briggs system. He has even said himself in interviews that he does not think that the way people perceive him is always accurate to who he is—which he likes because he enjoys being viewed as dominant and aggressive. This is likely why there are so many different opinions on what his personality type actually is. I get the sense that even if I were to sit down one-on-one with him and ask pointed questions about his personality, I’d still be left with questions. Ultimately, what is clear from his many interviews and the interviews with others in his life is that Trump is motivated by power and success, and he uses the various aspects of his personality to get what he desires in life. Donald Trump is energetic, charismatic, industrious, forceful, aggressive, callous, and manipulative. In my opinion, he embodies perhaps some of the best — but also definitely some of the worst — aspects of the ESFP personality type.