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Trump Remains an Embarrassment
On the drive north to the summer
Sanity Shack, I listened to the Trump press conference today. Sanity Goddess
had to suffer it, and only asked me to turn back to music twice, though her
eardrums were decaying into mush, her prodigious IQ diminished by the
blather. But it was worth the listen for me. In part because SG was so right
when she said, “He’s such a baby.” Tru dat. But, to my surprise, Trump
came up with an actual literary device in the course of his coarse
performance—an analogy. He said that Ukraine and Russia were like two kids in
the playground who just had to fight each other—and that, as in hockey, the
referee—one would hope that the referee is us, but it isn’t—will let them
fight for a bit, for the bloodlust of the fans, before stepping in to break
them up. Now, there are so many things
wrong—and brutally false—about this analogy that I could have ground my teeth
to sawdust, listening as the United States was dragged down by its playground
president to such an elementary (school) level of discourse. But there should
be no surprise: this is where Trump lives. Life is his jungle gym; the world
is his playground. And to make it worse, much worse: the analogy is baloney.
It presumes equal fault; it doesn’t distinguish between the two combatants.
That is an obscenity. Russia invaded Ukraine. It continues to pummel Ukraine,
even as Zelensky and his armies punch valiantly above their weight. There is
no moral equivalence here, even if aggression will have to be rewarded to
some sad extent if an agreement comes. It is a war that can be ended—Ukraine
will have to swallow the loss of some Russian-speaking provinces. But there
is only one way to make that happen at this point: We—Senor Taco—must make it
clear to Putin that we will back Ukraine to the hilt, with military equipment,
and that we will speed Ukraine’s admission into NATO unless Putin stops all
offensive operations now. I mean right now. For reasons unknown—for the
moment—Trump will not go there. I live in hope we will someday find out why
he is giving Putin, a tinpot hanging on for dear life, so much rope. I mean,
how much money did the Russians sink into Trump’s empty buildings back in the
1990s? Or was it something else? Whatever. It is beyond embarrassing to see
an American president treat a second-rate Russian demagogue, shriveling an
already collapsed economy, with so much respect. But, oh, I guess something else
happened at the press conference. Right: Elon Musk. Trump said, “Elon and I had a great
relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore.” He said some other stuff, and
my former colleagues in the media—especially the nimrods assessing the
situation on CNN—insisted on melodrama: A dramatic break! An historic break,
unprecedented in the history, the history…of blah blah blah. Actually, listening to Trump, I was
struck by how restrained he was. He is a horrific, unbridled potty-mouth who
has trashed the norms of public discourse—listen to what he says about Biden,
about Kamala, about Hillary, about Obama. His most poisoned arrow directed at
Musk was to note that Elon had a black eye and refused makeup at their
parting press conference. Wow! Dana Bash actually said, thinking this was
really significant. It wasn’t. It was nothing compared to what Trump did to
Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz, or Nikki Haley, or his Vice President whom he was—apparently—willing
to have strung up on January 6 at the Capitol. The restraint was the
important part, especially compared to Elon, who spent the day emptying all
barrels on X, even bringing up Trump’s relationship with sextrepreneur
Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s restraint means something.
Musk has money; money is useful. Elon’s effusions mean nothing—all you have
to do is read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, and you should, to see
that the man has the long-term memory of an amoeba. He fires people, insults
them, then rehires them the next week. We break up, we make up…as the old
song goes. So this is significant: Trump,
almost always instantly riled, is restrained. Musk is not. I’d be looking at
the former, not the latter. One other note: Trump was entirely
unbridled—and, as usual, entirely untruthful—throughout the rest of the press
conference. The folks at CNN didn’t even mention that contra Trump, he
did lose the 2020 election. There is a journalistic
responsibility to mention that every time he says he didn’t lose, as he did
twice on Thursday, he is telling a lie that, according to multiple accounts,
he has acknowledged in private. He knows he lost. Every time he denies that publicly
he is treating the American public as a chump. Every time CNN lets him get
away with that, it is displaying the spine of Jeff Bezos and the Paul, Weiss
law firm. Then, interminably, there was his usual P.T. Barnum review of the
“greatest,” the “most important,” the “most beautiful” things he has
accomplished. And the millions—millions!—of rapists Biden was allowing across
the border. This is mental illness, folks. That so many of our fellow
citizens have fallen for this crap is astonishing—until you consider
alternative: the Democratic Party. They gave him the presidency twice. Remarkable. Pathetic beyond
imagining. And finally, I should mention—I
suspect few others will—that all this happened at a joint press conference with
the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was dignified wallpaper through
much of it. Trump did make a few awkward jokes about German militarism, about
Nazis. If you can believe it. An acceptable version of Trump, if such a thing
could exist, might have congratulated them for agreeing to spend more on
defense (without acknowledging that he bulled them into it). This—the
appearance of grace—is beyond Donald Trump’s capabilities. He is a fatally damaged human being.
We will be paying the price for his sociopathy for decades, perhaps forever.
And so I listen to his pathetic playground effusions, to the dismay of Sanity
Goddess, just to monitor whether it’s getting better or worse. It’s not. It’s
still the same old horrific same old… |
