While I was hardly a regular watcher of The Apprentice, I did watch occasionally, particularly in the early seasons. One thing stood out to me then. The losing team would have a leader, and Trump would ask the leader who was at fault for the team losing. Most of the time, the team leader would blame a team member for being uncooperative, or incapable of performing the task, or some variation of lazy, stupid or ugly.

Once in a while, however, the team leader would reply to Trump that he or she, as team leader, was responsible for the team, regardless of who did what to whom. The leader would take responsibility rather than shift the blame to someone else. In other words the team leader would be a leader.

Trump’s reaction?

You’re fired.

I found this jarring. Even the narcissist known well to New Yorkers as a business buffoon should have known the most basic aspect of leadership responsibility. At the time, I chalked it up to the script and the producers, although I could not fathom why they would want this faux dealmaker to come off as such an ignorant lout, given that he had driven four casinos into bankruptcy, an almost impossible task. How was it possible that firing a team leader for taking responsibility for his team would make Trump look like the mogul they needed to pretend he was?

This came flooding back when I read the letter never sent by General Dwight D. Eisenhower prepared in case the D-Day invasion failed.

Eisenhower’s public confidence did not reflect his understanding that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was a gamble. The seas on the crossing were rough, and the beaches the men would assault were tangled in barbed wire, booby trapped, and defended by German soldiers in concrete bunkers. On June 5, in pencil on a sheet of paper, he had written a message to be communicated in case the invasion failed.

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” it read. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and dedication to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

Ike never delivered the letter as the invasion did not fail, but he was fully prepared to take responsibility if it had. That’s leadership. That’s responsibility. Not only did he not try to slough it off to others, but he extolled the bravery and dedication to duty of those he ordered onto Normandy Beach. “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

As I watched, and grimaced, at Trump’s failure to grasp the concept of leadership and responsibility back when he was the only well-known businessman who had ample time to be on TV as he had little else to do since his business failures, I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. After all, not even Trump, the show pony, could be that oblivious to the burdens of leadership and the duties of responsibility.

I was, as is overwhelmingly clear now, wrong. He takes no responsibility for his choices or actions. He immediately blames anyone and everyone but himself. No matter how flagrant and obvious his failure, he denies it and desperately spins it into some bizarre win. In the mind of the self-aggrandizing narcissist, he can never be wrong and he can never fail. Or at least he can never admit to being wrong and failing.

Sure, it’s clear now, but it should have been clear long before Trump ran for the presidency, long before he was elected. He told us who he was when he fired the team leader for being a leader. We should have listened.