Good point. Some points Howard Stern makes in this piece about his "friend" The Donald fit with what you say. I would take it further and say people who are popular celebrities, as in: always get attention the "it girl" or "it guy" or have charisma of some special kind, whether they are liked or not. Hence, when someone like Madonna disses him, he calls her "disgusting" as in: she doesn't deserve for people to be interested in her anymore. It's an emotional response from him. "Ratings" are all to him, not along the lines of what you do, but whether you can get eyeballs, he respects people who can get high ratings, they can hit him where it hurts if critical of him. From what Stern says--some of which also appears in a lot of psychological articles on him--he ain't going to let this kind of thing go and act more traditionally presidential.

From all that, I can easily visualize him resigning if the going gets too tough on his ego. Seriously. He would just say "enough of this crap" and walk away and go have his own radio show where he can maintain self-delusion about being one of the greatest, most popular persons to ever walk the earth and criticize successors.