The Lessons Winners Never Learn

By LONNIE KING

In 2015, at a campaign event in Iowa, Donald Trump dismissed Senator John McCain — a decorated war hero who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war, and presidential candidate in 2008 — by saying:

“He lost. … I don’t like losers.”

It was a short remark, but it said a lot. It wasn’t just an insult to McCain; it was a window into a worldview. The kind of worldview that celebrates victory as the only proof of worth — and treats failure as moral weakness.

That line has echoed in my mind lately, not because I’m shocked by it anymore, but because it perfectly captures how fragile our national understanding of success has become. If you only value “winners,” then you never learn what losing can teach you. And if you despise “losers,” you’ll spend your life running from the very experiences that build character.

What’s fascinating, though, is how inconsistent that worldview really is.

McCain, the so-called “loser,” lost to Barack Obama — the clear “winner.” And yet Trump didn’t admire Obama either.

To this day, he still invokes Obama’s name as the scapegoat for nearly every national problem.

It makes you wonder — if he loves winners and hates losers, why does he seem to resent both?

The answer, I think, lies in fragility. When your self-worth depends on always being the biggest winner in the room, even someone else’s victory feels like a personal threat.

Contrast that with Obama’s words:

“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”

That’s not just a political difference — it’s a philosophical one.

It’s the difference between ego and growth, between seeing life as a scoreboard and seeing it as a classroom. True leaders — and true humans — understand that we are shaped by what doesn’t go our way.

Failure is a Teacher, Not a Verdict

Maya Angelou said, “It may be necessary to encounter defeats, so you can know who you are.”

Michael Jordan admitted that his greatness came not from perfection, but from persistence through missed shots and painful losses.

That’s the common thread — failure doesn’t disqualify you.  It refines you. 

It exposes the ego, burns away the illusion of control, and replaces arrogance with empathy.

When someone like Trump mocks “losers,” what he’s really mocking is vulnerability — the very thing that connects us as human beings. And that, to me, is the tragedy of his philosophy. You can build a career on bluster and avoidance, but you can’t build character that way.

And, you know what else you can’t build?  Real personal relationships.  

If everyone you meet in life is just a label — a “winner” or a “loser” — then you never take the time to truly know them:  what motivates them, what scares them, what they value.

Relationships become transactions — something to hold you up or push you forward — and once they stop serving that purpose, you discard them.

That’s a sad way to go through life, because it means you’ve surrounded yourself with people you can use, not people you can know.

Unfortunately, even though it’s a pathetic way to exist, people who live and think that way are often so obnoxious to be around that it’s almost impossible to give them the sympathy they might otherwise deserve for having such a weak and limited understanding of what it means to be human.

The Faith Angle

If you strip away the politics for a second, this whole conversation is deeply spiritual.

Every major faith tradition teaches that brokenness precedes wholeness. You fall before you rise. You lose before you gain wisdom.

Resurrection only means something after crucifixion.

But we live in a culture that worships the highlight reel — and despises the blooper reel.

We edit out the setbacks and pretend our strength was self-made and continuous. That’s not faith; that’s fiction.

And this, to me, is one of the fundamental problems with the current state of American Christianity.

The Bible was written to the subjugated, the oppressed, and the disenfranchised — people who had to learn how to live meaningfully in a world that viewed them as outcasts or failures. It was never meant to be a manual for dominance, but a guide for endurance, compassion, and hope.

Yet the Americanized version of that same faith looks nothing like the biblical model.

It baffles me that figures like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — who describes himself as a devoted Christian — can openly speak about the “dangers” of losing political power, as if his faith depends on who holds the gavel.

Christians, in my view, were never called to chase political clout or to be seen as “winners” in the world’s eyes. The power of faith has always been found in humility, not hierarchy; in service, not status.

A Better Definition of Success

True success isn’t about how loudly you can proclaim victory — it’s about how humbly you can grow from defeat.  It’s not about never falling down, but about refusing to stay down.

So when I hear someone say they “don’t like losers,” I can’t help but think: they’ve already lost something far greater — the chance to become wise.

Grace and grit to you! —LK