Trump served us a batty stew of obsessive complaints … about the time he was president
Idea
Normally I like obsession stories: Wuthering Heights, The Story of Adèle H., Remembrance of Things Past, Caine’s Rebellion, Fatal Attraction, Good Wife, Moby-Dick and the new Generation Z horror movie Obsession.
My Netflix algorithm is trained to compulsively hunt for compelling stories.
But US President Donald Trump has reduced the magnitude of the obsession to something pathetic. When you take over primetime or try to do so, you better have something important to say. Trump did not do this. His speech on Thursday (US time) was a complete fiasco; a hodgepodge of whiny complaints stemming from an election he claimed was stolen while he was running the country, but wasn’t. If there’s a problem, man, why didn’t you fix it? He still has no evidence and has muddied matters by releasing documents containing already known information and warning of “weaknesses” that his administration has made worse.
And if the president believes what he says about China posing a grave danger to our elections, why hasn’t he retaliated against President Xi Jinping, whom he warmly calls a “friend” and “great leader?”
Trump looked very low-T in his speech in the East Room. I’m surprised that Pete Hegseth, who said the “High-T War Department” would begin screening testosterone levels in “war warriors” aged 30 and up, wasn’t in a rush to hit the laid-back 80-year-old commander in chief with the virility potion needed to provide America with, in his words, “the vanguard of lethality.”
There has been almost no noise from Republicans on Capitol Hill about the speech. There is no organized effort to polish his tirade. You could almost hear the fervent wishes of Republican politicians watching the president: Please Donald, go ahead!
But he can’t. His father’s advice that there are only “killers” and “losers” goes on a loop in his head, turning him to jelly.
He is ready to undermine and destroy with his own fire of vanity any institution, law, norm or ideal held dear by Americans. He claims to be a Christian, but mocks the sanctity of human life with his cavalier stance on Immigration and Customs Enforcement murders. He puts his own ego above everything else, even democracy.
Like New York TimesPeter Baker wrote that the deeply unpopular Trump “seemed intent on putting forward a hypothetical that could at least explain a defeat and, at most, justify direct intervention aimed at potentially changing the outcomes of future elections, as his critics fear.” Trump’s new homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, picked up where the president left off on Friday, threatening jail time for local election officials who dare disobey the administration’s orders.
Trump’s Ahab-like obsession with the election he lost has continued for six years. As Maggie Haberman reported five years ago, Trump said after he lost that he expected to be reinstated as president by August 2021.
Often the president can whip up some Poseidon-level conspiracy winds to lead his critics astray. But on Thursday night he appeared impotent, boasting nonsense and threatening to punish ABC and NBC for not airing his outlandish remarks live. He struggled to use his superpower: creating a fake alternate universe for his supporters. Does anyone believe Trump’s fake game that “there is no third world country where elections are held like ours”?
(Trump also failed to convince people that it wasn’t that his pro-government contractor misapplied the liner, but that vandals had cut a gash nearly three football fields long in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with a cutter.)
Even Fox News has been more timid than sycophantic about a change, unwilling to relive the US$787.5 million ($1.17 billion) debacle as part of its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after it claimed its machines switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
Fox’s White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie warned: Hannity Echoing almost verbatim what Bret Baier had previously said, the network was “not in a position to evaluate the veracity of the president’s statements and allegations at this time.”
The next morning Mediaite reported: Fox and Friends He didn’t mention the address even once in his three-hour show.
Trump’s profiteering in office appears to be intimidating to Americans worried about their own dire finances.
Trump and his family, who made $2.2 billion in his first year back in office, are jumping into corrupt ways to make money. The media company plans to provide faster access to its posts that have shaken the stock market in the past.
The smell of bribery is so strong in the White House that even junior players want to join the game. A teleprompter operator for Trump won nearly $100,000 betting on the prediction market Kalshi, foreshadowing something he already knew: what Trump would say in his speeches.
King Midas eventually convinced Scott Bessent to put the boastful president’s face on our currency (a $1 gold coin).
If Trump wants to continue being “the world’s most famous loser,” as Democratic senator Jon Ossoff put it, he’ll need a higher T. So can this hormone be prescribed to babies?
This article was first published on: New York Times.
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