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By Donald J. Trump
Trump himself would seem to agree. At one point, he murmured he was having a good time.
This utterance came when he was bemoaning the treatment he was getting by the evil media. He professed to be amazed by the “tone” of his treatment. “Such hatred,” was how he typified it.
“I’m not really a bad person, by the way,” he added in self-righteous self-defense.
His follow-up tweet to the presser took his vilification of the media one giant step further than he had gone with the usual “fake news” pronouncements. The media, according to the President of the United States of America, is “the enemy of the American people.”
Then what does that make Russia and ISIS?
If Trump is having a good time so far in his house of cards presidency, complete with borderline treason on the part of a man who was supposed to be protecting us, then Benedict Arnold must have had a really great time selling out his country.
Have you noticed how Trump repeats himself like some backwoods stump preacher and then tags on a single word like “sad” or “sick” to reinforce his dizzy slanders? Have you also noticed that his working vocabulary is maybe 200 words?
You have to pay attention, too, to his throwaway lines. At the press conference, at one point he told a journo, “I’d be a pretty good reporter,” then added sarcastically, “not as good as you.”
It would make perfect, cockeyed sense for Trump to be a reporter. That would make him part of the media he’s obsessed with crucifying as “scum” and “fake” and an “enemy.”
The fit is perfect.
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A Classless Act
What do FDR, JFK, and Barrack Obama have in common besides being presidents? In our American showbiz vernacular, they were all “class acts.”
Roosevelt was from true patrician lineage, Kennedy from a clan of Boston Irish social climbers whose way was greased with both legit and ill-gotten gains, and Obama from a mixed, short-lived marriage. No matter, really, their heritage because all three demonstrated an inborn natural grace and empathy that cut across whatever social or personal barriers they faced and made them seem truly accessible to the citizenry they represented. They were each in their way capable of being looked up to, of being heroes.
Yet they were all politicians to a fare-thee-well, playing the game with the vigor and ruthlessness that it requires. They could be hard men when the situation demanded. Yet they exuded a humanity that was readily identifiable and truly appreciated.
Franklin Roosevelt was known by his laugh, and Kennedy and Obama enjoyed a good laugh, too – even at themselves. Who has ever seen Donald Trump really laugh? As my pal Clark Deleon, the celebrated Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and “Travels With Trump” contributor puts it, “I can’t summon a mental image of Trump enjoying a genuine good laugh without a bottom line motive involved. Think of Obama. Instantly you can see him laughing. He’s got that same joyful, gentle, and dignified Mandela laugh. And Michelle can light up a room with that honest toothy guffaw of hers. You can imagine having a good time over dinner with that First Couple. Dining with the Trumps would be excruciating and tedious. Donald would have to explain the humor in your jokes to Melania, and you’d have to explain your punchlines to Donald.”
This guy we have in the White House now is a mutt from Queens who was born on third base and has gone through life thinking he hit a triple. His father was a shyster slumlord who inculcated his son with the ethics and beliefs of a cheap grifter. It’s all about the Benjamins, son. You can buy your way into anything because in America everything is for sale -- except class, which this guy seems to equate with gold doorknobs and graceless architecture.
Trump Towers is a monument to bad taste and the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City was a wasteland of useless halls and corridors, leading only to the casino floor, that clanging, blinking promissory of the American dream, always just out of reach for everyone but the House. That grotesque sucker trap had as little to do with the timeless beauty and elegance of its namesake as its owner does to the proud tradition of the American presidency.
The Trump Taj Mahal would barely have made a neighborhood casino in Las Vegas, and when Steve Wynn, the closest among casino owners to a class act, saw that in the bombed out shell that is Atlantic City Donald Trump could be the main man, he took the next thing smoking back to Vegas.
Putting your name on everything you come in contact with – a Trump trademark -- is not class -- it is unbridled ego and rampant narcissism. In fact, some of the tenants in this guy’s apartments have petitioned to have his name taken off the buildings.
Yet to the consumer generations weaned on the dark magic of television and now of all things digital where history is a nuisance and ethics some Sanskrit jumble, “class acts” are whoever has the most toys. Or to the pre-TV/digital surviving citizens, many of whose fallback is cheap religion and fear, a class act is whoever will keep all the boogeymen away.
But what goes around, etc. and Donald Trump is currently enjoying the lowest ratings of any president in history and is becoming daily more overmatched with the hard work of being president, yet alone showing any vestiges of being a class act.
The true class acts in American life do not belittle, do not bully, do not intimidate, do not exclude, do not threaten, do not insult, do not preen and strut like tinpot dictators. This guy does.
That makes him a classless schmuck and a truly classless act.
And he’s all ours, folks. At least for one term, if he can stagger through that.
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Kellyanne's Loyalty Oath
I have a friend who says he likes Kellyanne Conway, the Trump administration’s Secretary of Spin, because she is feisty and spunky.
Maybe, but what she looked like on what her boss calls “the shows” Tuesday morning was punch-drunk. She was bobbing and weaving for all she was worth, but every time she looked up there was a left jab coming at her in the wake of the Mike “Out Like” Flynn debacle.
Even during the comparatively quiet times, trying to keep up with and explain the stream of “alternative facts” coming out the West Wing must be like trying to herd cats. Kellyanne seemed to be running out of spin yesterday, falling back time and again on the line that “The president is a very loyal person.”
Really? I wonder what ol’ Chris Chistie, whose popularity in New Jersey is right down at the rock bottom with Trump’s national ratings, would say to that, after Trump dropped him like a deflated blimp after the whole Bridgegate thing looked like it was going to blow up in everybody’s face?
Or Rudy Giuliani, who seems to have become permanently lost in the White House shuffle even after his endless series of foaming madman speeches for Trump?
Or Newt Gingrich, who had high hopes, but was still slick enough to see where all this was going, and silently back far, far away? He knew Trump is as loyal as a rattlesnake.
How about the discarded wives? Trump’s loyalty to them consisted of teeing up the next Mrs. T even while sharing the already creaky marriage bed.
And then there are the legion of stiffed contractors and small businessmen who Trump had no problem in burning to the ground despite his whiny workingman’s friend riff.
And yet there was Ms. Kellyanne, declaring the prez’s loyalty to a dude who had lied to everybody in sight despite the fact that Trump knew about it weeks ago. How lame. Pitiful, really.
Kellyanne Conway is a living example of the woman who rides the tiger. What happens when she gets off? No matter what happens with Trump – and there’s a lot of money saying he won’t last the first term – what happens to Kellyanne in the aftermath?
She’ll be seen as damaged goods by some potential clients, but then again there will be others lining up to hire a woman who was able to magically make a sow’s ear into the President.
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For Whom The Polls Toll
An Emerson College poll among American voters on February 5-6 showed that 49% consider the Trump administration “truthful” while 39% feel that way about the news media.
How the hell do you deal with that, unbelievable as it sounds, given the evidence of the Trump administration’s lack of “truthiness,” to use Stephen Colbert’s coinage?
First, Trump’s “victory” showed the utter unreliability of polls. The wrong polls was something he crowed about like a ruptured rooster. Then there is Kellyanne Conway, lying every day like a cheap rug – see her now-famous “alternative facts” quote – and Trump himself’s delusional crime and immigration statistics. And it never ends, this total disregard of reality from the White House.
Emerson sounds like an okay school up there in Boston, but nowhere could I find the sample size of their poll and where and whom they polled. Just the fact that it is a poll raises some doubts given the track record of pre-election polls.
The validity of polls aside, I think the “fact” that more voters trust Trump than the media says something about his version of Goebbel’s famous Big Lie – you know, tell people something long enough and loud enough and they believe it.
Trump and his gang have been relentless in their attacks on the media, from labeling CNN as “fake news” and the media in general as “the opposition party,” to simply calling the media “scum.” Again and again. Over and over. Dang, momma, it must be true, pass the Kool-Aid.
The media itself are not without blame for their poor showing. They gave Trump a free ride for most of his bizarre and filthy campaign, at first treating him as a harmless anomaly – comic relief – until he pulled off the nomination and then giving him so many passes it looked like Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. Then he was elected and the media locked the barn after that horse was out and gone, baby, gone. Jeez, how did we miss it – quick, let’s play catch-up was the almost universal media reaction to their totally blowing it.
So there is some reason to mistrust the media. Not that they are dishonest, but that they can be terribly wrong-headed and elitist (like many of us).
But to trust Trump more? Worrisone at best, terrifying overall.
So don’t ask for whom the polls toll – they toll for thee, America.
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The Emperor of Dystopia
He stands alone, rain-spattered, in the lee of
the great dome, and calls out to his subjects,
telling them of the carnage of the kingdom
and their lives, grim and dark as the day.
And how he will lift them and balm their
sad and defeated souls, offering the
hope and sustenance that he alone can
provide, he above all the failed prophets.
He offers the shining beacons of industry and
secure hearths, of wealth and prosperity, and
even the fabulous reward of shared greatness
if they will follow his path, his single vision.
He has called on his moneyed minions,
his ready scions, lo his regal daughter
and her prince, on ready warriors and
men of medicine to vault the gloom.
The emperor stirs and commands now:
Go here and there – no, go there and here –
go this way – no, go that way – now go back –
no, forward – go up – no, go down.
And the time passes and the carnage remains
and grows tangled and knotted and the minions
and scions and warriors and men of medicine
despair and the subjects waver and wonder.
And so finally they come in the night,
not with pikes and brandished torches
but with slim folded papers and the somber
slanted faces of judgment and wrath.
And the Emperor of Dystopia is hung
by his paper heels in the lee of the noble
dome and the people are again great.
dome and the people are again great.
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Give 'Em Hell Donny
After high end retailer Nordstrom discontinued the Ivanka Trump line because of poor sales, our so-called President took to the tweetways with the following: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom. She is a great person – always pushing me to do the right thing. Terrible!”
As far as the right thing: Ivanka obviously hasn’t pushed hard enough, judging by daddy’s performance to date.
After his crybaby tweet, Trump sent out his dough-faced so-called press secretary, Sean Spicer (who’s already on thin ice) to typify Nordstrom’s move as “a direct attack on his policies and her name.” Sure. Nordstrom is probably a terrorist front masquerading as a retailer, too, Sean. Maybe they should be barred from America.
Trump’s tweet was nothing compared to Harry Truman’s blast at Washington Post music critic Paul Hume for criticizing his daughter Margaret’s singing. Dig it: “Someday I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beef steak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”
Notice that HST wasn’t whining, like Trump. That wasn’t his style. Trump’s style is whiny and semi-literate. Wonder what all those heads of state are thinking while they listen to him try to talk over the phone with his foot firmly in his mouth? I guess insults are the new diplomatic language.
Back to Harry Truman. Sticking up for their kids is about the only thing he and Trump have in common. Truman made some big, important decisions: dropping the atom bombs and firing MacArthur, among them. He had a sign on his desk that said, ”The buck stops here” and he lived by that sign.
Trump seems to live by minute-to-minute whims, with his co-president, Dr. Dark, Steve Bannon, whispering in his ear while Trump signs crazy executive orders that he may or may not have read, holding them up for the camera like a proud kindergarten student with a coloring book.
God help us if he ever has to make any of the calls that Harry Truman made. Truman had inherited an able, patriotic cabinet from Franklin Roosevelt, and listened to them before acting. Trump has assembled a bunch of know-nothing billionaire campaign contributors and re-tread generals who will go along with whatever he and Bannon come up with. They are window-dressing, pure and simple, but unfortunately they also have great influence in the spheres Trump has placed them. God help us squared.
The way Trump and Bannon are steering the already-leaky ship of state, they are iceberg-bound. Crises are inevitable. Hopefully, they will handle them with at least a fraction of the frisson of Harry Truman (even though his atom bomb calls have been questioned by revisionists).
During the 1948 Presidential campaign, Truman was making a fiery stump speech when a voice called out, “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” It became his mantra.
Trump’s mantra seems to be “Me first forever!” Let’s just hope he doesn’t lead us to hell.
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My Path to Perdition
That craggy-faced master of the art, Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill Jr., famously pointed out that all politics are local.
I’m here to tell you about that.
It began for me in mid-summer last year when I was taking my usual morning walk on the Boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ, and a bunch of young teenage punks on bikes came busting by, and the nearest one yelled at me, “Hey, buddy — vote for Trump!”
“Kiss my fucking ass!” I yelled back and that delighted the whole pack of them.
Think of it: this was before Trump was even nominated, and here were these kids – too young to even vote – out stumping for him in their crude punk way. What was up? What had infected these kids who would ordinarily care as much about electoral politics as they would about Federal Reserve interest rates? Did they sense in Trump a validation of the chaos that was increasingly becoming the weather of their stunted lives? There was a whisper there of what was to come, but I turned a willfully deaf ear.
After all, when Trump had thrown his “Make America Great Again” baseball hat into the ragged presidential ring, already bulging with experienced professional politicians, I had offered a thousand-dollar bet to my Trumpaholic friends that he would never get the nomination. Luckily, there were no takers.
These Trumpsters I know are stone television addicts to a person, giant flat screens dominating every second of their waking indoor lives. I began to see a correlation between time spent in the hypnotic craw of television and a distinct propensity for all things Trump. They would rather be entertained than governed, and that was fine by Trump. They spoke each other’s language: the bruised syntax of reality TV and the relaxed dialog of their “shows,” not the scolding schoolteacher patter, rote and ready, that flowed endlessly from the mouths of the empty suits flanking Donald J. Trump on the debate stages. He was eminently understandable, and if his messages were creepy and wayward upon any kind of reflection, my boys left that reflection to the liberal pundits they already despised. Trump was putting these asshole debate opponents in their places – so cool!
The fact that there was a nigger in the White House was still up their asses, too – and now a woman? No fucking way, Jim! Trump uber alles!
And the over-televised coverage of the Trump rallies appealed to the memories of the rock concerts of their heydays. All these people going nuts while Trump stirred them up like “Stairway to Heaven” and then leaned back, chin thrust out like Mussolini, was right up their (blind) alleys.
Also this summer, when I rode my bike to the quiet bayside pagoda in Cape May Court House, I passed a golf course, and as the summer went on, Trump signs began to appear on the lawns of the homes bordering the country club like poisonous red, white, and blue mushrooms. These were the homes of solid white upper middle class citizens, not yapping punks on bikes. I chalked it up to the fact that Cape May County here in New Jersey was historically solid Republican, due in great part to the large number of retirees here. The rest of the country couldn’t be so short-sighted, I rationalized, but the seeds of worry and doubt were beginning to slowly, inexorably grow.
Then he was nominated. Down the way, the quiet woman with the two little semi-dogs hoisted a giant Trump flag on her pole along with the stars and stripes already there and a Trump signed appeared on the lawn across the way. More and more Trump signs appeared as the nomination validated people out of their political closets. The only Clinton sign I ever saw was on a lawn in St. Paul, Minnesota, during a trip to visit an ex-wife in Minneapolis. It was as if the Clinton people were so smug in their certainty of Hillary’s victory that they didn’t need any plebian lawn signs. Hell, on election day the Clinton people were already popping champagne on the plane. Shame-shame-shame.
And the whispers of disaster in my sphere were growing louder. On Facebook, my friend the writer Lewis Beale chided time and again that it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. He obviously saw something. I took it reluctantly with increasingly large grains of salt. The romantic in me doggedly clung to my belief in the wisdom of the populace. Silly me.
And then Michael Moore came out with “Five Reasons Trump Will Win” and send a giant “Fuck You!” to the political establishment and I cursed him as a fat traitor (while reluctantly considering his rationale).
In Thomas Merton’s last journal he pointed out the religious aspects of American football. So true. In the movie. Concussion,the point is made that the NFL owns a day of the week – Sunday, formerly a day of traditional religious worship.
Trump tapped into this football fanaticism bigtime. Time and again you see NFL – and NBA – players point out that they’re entertainers as well as athletes. Ironically, the majority are African-American, but Trump capitalized on this propensity for the American public to go all-in for anything that entertains them. Trump rallies were like rock concerts, sure, but they were also like the deafening Twelfth Man Seahawk fans in Seattle.
Then there were the hats. Until recently, I thought that Trump’s constant appearance in his trademark “Make America Great Again” baseball cap was really cornball. But now I see the marketing wisdom there. His so-called “base” wear baseball caps like their grandfathers wore fedoras; even in his standard blue suit and red tie, that cap made him one of them by some dark sympathetic magic. Hardly anyone at a Trump rally wasn’t rocking a Trump hat. They were portable Trump signs and I’m sure he raked in a lot of money selling both hats and signs.
While Hillary rocked lame-ass pantsuits. Who can identify with that? White women obviously didn’t.
As election day neared, dark clouds moved in from the edges of my psyche, polls be damned. On election day, I ran into Tina, who had been a waitress at a local diner, who told me she was living 90 miles away now, but had driven down to vote for Trump. Whoa. Omens.
That night, I mostly read a thriller, checking CNN from time to time. Then I put the book aside and just watched as the results inexorably piled up and the handwriting on the outhouse wall became indelible. By the time I dragged myself to bed, we had reached perdition.
(double click cartoon for full size)
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