Has Trump Finally Hit a Homer?
I have a thought I’d like to share with you. Before I do, it’s only fair to warn you: This will make no sense unless you believe, as I do, that Donald Trump is fundamentally a simpleton. If you don’t, you should skip this column altogether. Without its central premise, the center will not hold.
Okay. The last few months should have been a bloodbath for Trump’s ego and personal sense of comfort. The Iran war has exposed him to the world as a blustering, castrated bully. Polls have nosedived. Spines have stiffened. The House of Representatives has at long last bitten him back. Judges have begun tossing away his policies and programs like beanbags into a cornhole, most recently with a devastating rebuke of his criminality and arrogance. He appears about to lose at least two biggies before the Supreme Court, cases central to his thirst for power and his campaign against immigrants and the disenfranchised.
But this is a man with a heroic capacity for denial and self-delusion. He persuades himself that what he wants to be true is true, and then declares it so, et voilà! In his mind, any criticism of him, however warranted, can be deflected through vitriol and abuse. Critics are traitors. Judges are cowards. Lawmakers are idiots. His lies have continued. His braggadocio remains intact.
But I think two things have just happened that even Trump cannot ignore or rationalize in his own mind, whatever he might say in public. Logically, realistically, they are mere bagatelles, things of no lasting consequence: The forced removal of his name from The Kennedy Center, and the laughable ongoing saga of his new Reflecting Pool.
Think of it this way: Trump is a builder. It is the only thing he truly, viscerally understands, and knows he understands: construction and demolition. It is the template of his life. He is a kid with a 1950s Erector Set.
Build it up, knock it down, start again. No permits necessary.
It’s the simple world that Trump never really had as a kid, but always craved, and then pursued in real life.
And now look what’s happening to that world. I think Trump may have finally hit his Homer Simpson slap-to-the-forehead “D’oh” moment.
After his name was forced off the JFK center, after authorities beyond his control shamed him for his megalomaniacal gall — bystanders stood and applauded — he made sure the deed was done in darkness, behind a tarp, and then petulantly ordered the visual shield to remain for days, so humiliated was he in what might even pass for some simulacrum of shame.
But today, there it is. Exposed to the world. He must look at it now, because you can, too.
He gets that. Even he, the simpleton, has to get that.
And the Reflecting Pool. Consider that.
This was, literally, his construction job. Begun at his whim, under his instructions, by his design, bolstered by his assurances, emboldened by his ego, enabled by his criticism of his predecessors, wrought by his will alone, delegated to an incompetent crony he chose without competitive bidding — the whole project is now an international laughingstock.
Trump flew over the green mess in his Marine One helicopter yesterday. His nose was being rubbed in it. BAD boy.
It’s so tangible. You can SEE the green. You can FEEL and HOLD IN YOUR HANDS the peeling paint and thick, waterproofing sealant. It is killing baby ducks!
Trump is going to have to empty the thing and start again, at preposterous cost. Of course he is publicly blaming liberal vandals, but is there anyone in the United States who actually believes this, now?
The ridicule has been devastating:
It has been snarkily pointed out that now, for the first time, Trump is going to have to actually do something he promised: Drain the Swamp.
Someone posted this on social media:
Trump has to get this, and hate this, and feel it. It’s not some diplomatic dithering and blathering about a global issue he doesn’t really comprehend. It’s not about someone issuing some damned opinion he can pretend to refute through illogic, character assassination and lies. It’s not something that he can make a hairpin turn on — it’s now fine if Iran has ICBMs! Inflation is swell! Etc. It’s about building and tearing down stuff. It’s about making things go up, and then making them go boom and then clapping for himself, a very big boy indeed!
There’s no clapping now, I suspect, other than that of a palm to the forehead.
Will this change Trump in any way? Nah.
But I do think something has changed that Trump will recognize, and I hope it bedevils him. I think he will realize, finally, that he’s lost a hunk of his base. Because if he finally knows what this means —- maybe he knows that they, do, too.
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From the Mailbag:
Q: I've been looking for excuses why the blue tarp remained up so long at The Kennedy Center. Here is what seems to be the Official Excuse:
I propose that all broadcast and streaming media take the blue tarp as their model in all future videos and still pictures of Trump. Whenever The Orange Blob is conscious and speaking, there should be a virtual blue tarp blocking his image. The blue tarp should be dropped whenever The Orange Blob loses consciousness while on camera. — John Kupiec
A: It’s not actually “Official.” The site is a bogus one, apparently some content farm. But the explanation — clearly written by AI — is magnificent and insipid, and seems deeply, deliberately obfuscatory. It seems to be around 40,000 words long.
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Q: Do you consider recently deceased Fellow New Yorker Gene Shalit to be a 60% doppelgänger of you? — Stephen Dudzik
A: This is him in his 50s and in his 90s. I was constantly asked in the street if I was Gene Shalit, and I always answered, “Well people do call me Gene,” and they thought they got their answer and were quite pleased. When older, he never graduated to my homeless-man’s beard, so the comparisons stopped.
Q: John Deering's latest editorial cartoon makes me think that he might have read your "Stupidest Column" about Ozymandias ... but then again, it might have been serendipitous.
A: It was serendipitous, but it is really elegant and simple. Trump would not even begin to understand it.
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Q: I was so surprised to see my question about the Vietnam draft published. Thank you for your answer, and thanks to the commenter who gently corrected me that the war was not "young" in 1969. I suppose on some level I knew that. Are you of the opinion that anyone who didn't enlist, or didn't abide by their draft call-up, was by definition a dodger?
A: Not in the least. It was an illegitimate, racist war. Dodging was defensible, and, in some cases, noble. But I honor the men who served. They were not ideologues for a bad cause. The were victims of a very bad public policy.
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And finally:
I was among the 15% who think "a lot" of people believe that either the green pool is a beautiful blue or that it turned green only because of Antifa saboteurs. I understand why these people might have rolled the dice on Trump in 2016. After a four-year opportunity to see what he was really like, they voted for him again in 2020. After he tried to overturn an election with a violent mob and hang his own vice-president, they voted for him again in 2024. There is no way I will ever trust in the basic intelligence of these people--especially while Fox News is still out there filling their empty heads with propaganda that they believe, not because it's supported by evidence, of even plausible, but because it's what they want to believe. In my book, these people are idiots until they prove themselves to be otherwise, and even if that somehow happens, I will never, ever trust them again.
Let's be clear, Demento was a "developer," never a builder in any sense of the word as used by normal people. His "skills," such as they were, lay in financial engineering (shift risk onto others and extract as much cash as possible early), political and media manipulation, branding and making high-risk deals which ultimately failed financially, but succeeded in the short term at generating cash, publicity, or leverage. He has a "predator’s eye" for flaws in others --- insecurity, weakness, deference and social vulnerability --- because he has them himself in spades. So, this business about him being a hands‑on master builder, self‑made, a consistently successful operator and being the architect of a global real‑estate empire is all myth that he spent most of his waking hours cultivating --- and still attempts to do.