The
Slow-Motion Humiliation of an Empty Demagogue
The president’s sadism
ends in his own agony.
NOV 06, 20208:58 PM
Donald Trump is a sadist. In 2016, after winning his party’s
presidential nomination, he bragged for months about all the Republican
candidates he had beaten. As president-elect, he toured the country, boasting
about the emotional pain he had inflicted on Democrats and others who had stood
in his way. Throughout his presidency, he gloated that just by occupying the
White House, he was infuriating his critics. And this year on the campaign
trail, he reveled in recounting the anguish of his opponents on election night
2016.
Now Trump’s reign of cruelty is ending where it began: in
defeat, disbelief, and agony. But this time, the agony is his.
Every president-elect before Trump made at least a token
effort to unite the country. The victor would reach out to heal the wounds of
those who had lost. But Trump never tried. In December 2016, he went on a bizarre victory tour, staging rallies to celebrate his defeat of the 54 percent
of Americans who had voted against him. He savaged Hillary Clinton and her
supporters, calling the election a “slaughter.”
He recalled every detail of election night, especially the TV reporters who, in
Trump’s retelling, were “devastated” and “throwing up.”
As president, Trump constantly pitted red America against
blue America. He scorned “Democrat-run” cities and states, targeting them for tax increases as he cut taxes for his wealthy supporters. He treated
his impeachment not as a rebuke but as a triumph over his enemies. He tried to
expunge, out of pure spite, every program and policy enacted by President
Barack Obama. As COVID-19 killed tens of thousands of Americans, Trump blamed Democratic governors and threatened to withhold aid from
them. He gloated that he was sitting in the White House, and his enemies
weren’t.
In this year’s campaign, Trump tried to humiliate his
opponents once more. He called former Vice President Joe Biden a “dummy”
and a “corpse.”
In front of white crowds, he mocked Obama’s
middle name (“Hussein”)
and the first name of Sen. Kamala Harris “If you don’t pronounce her name exactly right,
she gets very angry”). He told audiences how much he
enjoyed watching the National Guard invade cities after George Floyd’s death
(“That was a beautiful sight … They walked down that street with pepper spray
and tear gas, and it was pow, pow”) and how disappointed he was when these invasions were averted. He threatened
to punish states whose
governors displeased him. He demanded that the Department of Justice prosecute his
political enemies. He said Clinton, Biden, and other Democrats should be “locked up.”
But Trump’s favorite riff was reliving the night of the 2016
election. It was “the greatest night in the history of television,” he told a
crowd in Wisconsin three weeks ago. “We had so much fun, the tears that were flowing …
Remember the tears?” On Oct. 25, at a rally in New
Hampshire, he claimed that as one state after another fell into his column that
night—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania—TV reporters had wept on air. “They’re crying, they crying,” he exulted, recalling the scene. “It was beautiful … You
saw these very unbiased anchors with the tears coming down.” In every
retelling, Trump boasted that his tally that night, 306 electoral votes, had traumatized the opposition. “We’re going to have an even more amazing evening” on Nov.
3, he promised.
For a few hours on Tuesday night, it looked that way. Then
states began to count the millions of ballots mailed in by people who’d had
enough of Trump. By Wednesday morning, he was in shock. “They are finding Biden votes all over the place,” he protested. First he issued a preposterous monarchic
decree that “we have claimed”
Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Then he demanded that election workers “STOP THE COUNT!”
On Thursday, he went to the White House podium and ranted,
“I won Pennsylvania by a lot … In Georgia, I won by a lot … We were way up in
Michigan, won the state.” By Friday, he was pleading,
“I had such a big lead in all of these states late into election night, only to
see the leads miraculously disappear … Perhaps these leads will return as our
legal proceedings move forward!”
What we’re watching now, as the ballots pile up against Trump, and as he vows to fight on in the courts, is the slow-motion humiliation of an empty demagogue. The man who mocked Sen. John McCain’s heroism and called former Sen. Jeff Flake “stupid” is trailing in their state, Arizona, thanks to 100,000 Republicans who, at the urging of Flake and of McCain’s widow, voted for Biden. And the rebuke is personal: Republicans held the Senate and won lots of races down the ballot, often beating the president’s margins.
Now, as his party slinks away from him, Trump faces the prospect of surrendering the White House to the man he belittled, in every speech, as “the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics.” It’s such a shame.