The Amazing Adventures of T-Rump

At his trial. By Getty Images.

Hello. The other day, as Donald Trump’s hush-money-bribing, election-tampering, money-laundering, and general scumbaggery trial was about to begin, Tom the Butcher asked me a question that initially sounded stupid and naive. He asked if anyone had so far written a definitive story about how bizarre it is that half the country is planning to vote for one of the biggest assholes who ever strode the Earth.

I checked as best I could. No one has, as far as I can tell. Scads of people have written about how malicious and vulgar and dishonest Trump is, but seldom or never in the context of wondering how anyone sane or decent or intelligent can vote for him. It does seem like a rude and hostile question, a deeply judgmental question — even an un-American question, since everyone has the Constitutional right to vote for whomever they damn please — but I think it’s a good question, under the sleazeball circumstances, which is why I polled people about Trump’s popularity on the weekend, and 80 percent of the readers say they know people who will vote for Trump. And you are a very liberal crowd. His support is massive. Despite, you know, the asshole thing.

Now, let’s put this in some perspective. Four years ago, in a Post magazine story about the then-upcoming election, I summarized how malign I feel Trump is. Here is an extended excerpt:

I am not pretending to be an honest broker here, the classic middleman role that good journalists try to adopt. I believe we are suffering through the worst presidency in American history. I believe Donald Trump is a dark malevolence, a puffed-up, jut-jawed Mussolini, a man who has no respect for — worse, no fundamental understanding of — what this grand experiment, the dream of the Founding Fathers, the deathbed legacy of Abraham Lincoln, has been all about.

I think Trump is amoral. I think he is a sociopath. I think he is a boor and a vulgarian. I think he is comically thin-skinned and vindictive. I think he is adolescently petty. Because I usually write humor columns, which confer a license to exaggerate, I have called him “America’s Chief Petty Officer.” I have noted that his supporters often argue that “Hey, at least he is not a politician,” which, I wrote, is like “putting your money on a chicken in the Kentucky Derby because at least he’s not a horse.”

I think he has no empathy for anyone’s suffering, something proven time and again: For example, he said that he didn’t worry about catching the coronavirus at a mass indoor rally because he was safely physically removed from the masses of his fans sitting out there, cheek by jowl, in chairs placed side by side, as his campaign staff had placed them, for great visuals. Then, of course, he caught the virus and imperiled others by not revealing his exposure, even telling the country, with its more than 212,000 dead, that the virus was nothing to fear.

I think he is a reflexive, congenital liar. I think his recent attempts at so-called populism — suggesting, for example, that we teach “pro-American” history — are a prehensile tactic, grabbing for a toehold from a shrinking and increasingly insipid political base.

I think he is emotionally wounded, a man pathetically in need not just of validation but sycophantic adoration. I think he tries to hide who he is, literally, under a preposterous comb-over and a grotesque spray-painted Kabuki tan — two absurd vanities that God exposes with the occasional gusts of wind, as though He is urging us, imploring us, to look at front and side mug shots. I think he is a tax chiseler. I find it galling that the man cannot spell or put together a coherent sentence and ebulliently flaunts that disability, as though it were some idiot sign of authenticity. I feel he is reprehensibly ignorant of the basic facts a president should have. He is so unapologetically and patently racist that some news organizations have come to simply state this as fact, unintentionally numbing the dreadful truth of it, so it comes off as one more unremarkable biographical detail, as though they were noting that he was born in 1946. I feel he embarrassed the nation by publicly mourning the death of Herman Cain, the hard-right buffoonish pizza magnate ... but not the great John Lewis.

Mostly, I cannot forgive him for what he has taken from me, personally. It’s not money — with his mismanagement of the virus, eliminating my travel and restaurants, and with his tax policies that favor the economically comfortable at the expense of the poor, he probably has actually made me money. What he has taken from me are two things: First, my genuine lifelong feeling that the United States, for all its weaknesses and failures, deserves, and has always deserved, the benefit of the doubt. Second: I find myself profoundly disliking and disrespecting almost half of my countrymen and women — that is, the group of Americans that support Trump. I have never felt such antipathy before, even in other sharply polarizing times, and it feels absolutely terrible.

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So. Since I wrote that, Trump has been charged with 88 counts of criminal activity, fomented a treasonous insurrection, publicly sleazed and slimed judges and prosecutors and potential witnesses against him, and generally continued to behave like a mewling infant. This leads to today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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Many pundits are looking at Trump’s current circumstances — his finances appear to be taking a beating, he’s about to be spanked and embarrassed in a court of law for tawdry sexual behavior among other things, he is looking wan and drawn and yesterday literally nodded off in court, making his disparagement of President Biden as “Sleepy Joe” seem pathetic — Biden was busy meeting with foreign dignitaries at the time — and the pundits think he might be going into a nosedive. He is being ridiculed on the Web, called “Don Snoreleone.” He’s actually hawking bibles in his spare time, like that grifter from “Paper Moon.”

But I dunno. His aptly named “base” seems forever undeterred. He might keep their support if he winds up living in a refrigerator carton on the streets, pooping into a bucket.

I’d like to talk about this today. Please send your questions and observations here.

Aaand, here comes the real-time segment of The Gene Pool. If you are reading this in real time, please remember to keep refreshing your screen, which will give you new stuff through the chat. Today’s Q and Os will be on a huge hodgepodge, including office hijinks, googlenopes, and my most recent challenge to inform us about someone you thought you knew, but didn’t.

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Q: Gene, In this age of political slogans and terms such as "deplorables" and "Let's go Brandon", do you think there would be any objections to refer to Trump's devoted ultra-Maga members as "registurd" Republicans?  – Howard Walderman

A: Okay, Howard, this made me laugh out loud.

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Q: Question for you, since you are an expert at humor and have written about its appropriate uses. The University of Illinois has a basketball player named Terrence Shannon, Jr. In addition to being their best player, Shannon is an accused rapist, having been charged with the crime over an incident in Kansas. He was suspended from the team for several games but later reinstated pursuant to a court order and given a standing ovation upon his return like some sort of returning hero. UConn fans, judging by our Twitter hangouts, thought this was horrible and Shannon never should have been allowed to play, yet alone given a hero's  welcome by his fans.

Fast forward a couple months and UConn is playing Illinois in the NCAA Tournament. Terrence Shannon proves to be no match for UConn's defense, and UConn Twitter is awash with jokes. The defender who was guarding him most of the game managed to "lock him up" and the one who made a huge block on one of his shots "taught him the meaning of 'no means no'." But then there was some concern postgame that making jokes about rape may have been inappropriate, based on a general principle against rape jokes. On the other hand, people argued they were acceptable because clearly they were not condoning what Shannon did - in fact, they were doing the exact opposite. 

As the world's foremost expert in humor and its uses, what do you think? Was this an acceptable use of humor? 

A: It’s a close “call,” as it were.   But I think it is not making light of rape… and it’s at his expense, obviously, so IMO it’s okay. 

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Go back to the top of this post and click on “View in browser” to see the full column live and online, and to read and make comments.  NOTE: Some readers' are no longer seeing the "view in browser" link; if it’s not there, you can use the Substack app or simply go to geneweingarten.substack.com and click on today's post. If you are reading the Gene Pool in real time, keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as Gene regularly updates the post.

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And lastly, Trump really doesn’t want you to upgrade your subscription to The Gene Pool, so you probably shouldn’t.

Q: Office Hijinks...Upon a leaving a job I once put a stapler in the refrigerator with a Post-it Note that said "Do Not Remove". I heard later that it took about six weeks before someone asked why there was stapler in the refrigerator.  — Tom Logan - Sterling, Va

A: Simple, but fabulous.  

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Q:  Never have I ever eaten a scallop. I want to. They look delicious. However, I have a deathly serious shellfish allergy and sometimes people with shellfish allergies are allergic to scallops... and sometimes not. I often joke that I will get scallops and go eat them in the parking lot of the emergency room in order to find out if I am allergic to them but the truth is that it isn't worth the potentially fatal consequences. However, they sure do look good. 

A:  One of the best meals I ever had was at the Digby scallop festival in Digby, Nova Scotia.  They were so fresh they were served practically raw.   For some reason they pronounce it “Skolp”.  

Dave Barry is so revolted by scallops that he once was on a boat with a private chef who served everyone scallops, and he secretly pitched them over the side.  He was freaked out because scallops have eyes.  He also won’t eat olives because they look like eyes.   Dave is not the most adventurous eater.

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Q: Technically this wasn't office hijinks, nor was it original, but it did involve 65 MBAs and a Googlenope, so I feel compelled to share.

In 1986, I was in a Northwestern University MBA Management Strategy class with a classic "Paper Chase" vibe. Each of us was expected to read a case study before each class and arrive prepared to discuss it with a professor who could call on anybody at any time, and who encouraged lively back-and-forth.

Early one morning before anybody else arrived, I slipped something into the mailboxes of every student in the class. Titled "Kiss Ass BINGO," the form included a grid and instructions to fill the squares with names of the biggest kiss-asses in the class. To earn a square, your chosen kiss-ass had to raise a hand and be recognized by the professor. The challenge was to not only complete a sequence on your grid, but to declare BINGO to the rest of the class by raising your own hand, getting recognized by the professor, and asking a question using that day's secret word, all before the class's two hours was up. 

It was a huge hit. When the biggest and most obvious kiss-asses spoke in the early minutes of class, dozens of pencils were lifted simultaneously and the room buzzed. The professor openly wondered what was in the water that day. At around the 90 minute mark, after our attention had turned away from the prank and toward the discussion itself, a student started into a rambling and convoluted point that had everybody scratching their heads, until the student worked in a mention of umbrellas, which was that day's secret word. The class burst into applause. 

The following week, I ran it again (the word was "Santa Claus"), and there was much buzz outside the classroom about who was behind it. When I stuffed the mailboxes a third time, somebody told the professor, and that was the end of Kiss-Ass BINGO. I never revealed myself.

I don't pretend to have invented this game. I based it (with some tweaks) on something similar that a friend had experienced at UCLA Law School. So I wasn't going to share it here because I didn't think it was unique; but the call for hijinks brought back this memory, and I was stunned when an online search revealed "Kiss-Ass BINGO" to be a Googlenope. 

— Scott Ableman

A: I never heard of it, and I am the world’s foremost curator of Googlenopes.

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Q: The oldest object in my house is a baseball, signed in 1926 by Babe Ruth and his teammate, Urban Shocker (you gotta love that name!) who was one of the last legal spitball pitchers in MLB.

It was a gift from my grandfather who played semi pro baseball in Canada. His team somehow got to play exhibition games against the Yankees.

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A:  Urban Shocker is one of the great baseball names, second only to   Johnny Dickshot, who played outfield for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1930s.   Also, there was Orval Overall, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs around the turn of the century.   

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Q: A quote in today's paper raises the question, what should the punishment be for sportswriters who state that this or that team "controls their destiny"

A: I am glad you didn’t say “begs the question.”   And yes, I have written in the past about a team “controlling its destiny.”  If it’s your destiny, you can’t control it. 

Q: Googlenope: A polka-dot clad polka band.  

A: Nice.  

Q: Googlenope: Frierich Engels was a Marxist tool.  

A: Thank you.

Q: Has it ever occurred to you that by encouraging people to try for googlenopes, you are helping to accelerate the rapidity with which the species Googlenopeus Cantfindit goes extinct? Don

A: Yes, it is the sad underlying fact about curating googlenopes.  It is like what happened to the passenger pigeon or Steller’s Sea Cow or the dodo, all of which were eaten to extinction.

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Q: Back when smoking was _still_ allowed in offices, someone, **not I**, slipped a cigarette load into a cigaret. Press it way down so it goes off on 2nd puff.   hijinks ensued–

A: Cigarette load!  Haven’t heard of that in years.   I wonder how many people today even know what it is.   Speaking of which, whatever happened to the “hotfoot?”

Q: The search and replace function is a good one for hijinks.  Select find and replace all in an outgoing email:replace the word "I" with the phrase "I, the great one" and replace the word "you" with "you, you idiot."  Can be done quickly when a colleague has stepped away from his/her cubicle.  – Polly Lyman

Q: In my first real job, just out of school, I worked for a publisher and was the editor of a combo product: partly news stories and partly full text of massive IRS regulations. Formatting the IRS regs could take days, so in order to mark his place in the extensive text of the regs my co-worker (and soon partner in crime) would often insert into the text a phrase that he knew would not otherwise appear there. That way, he could start the next day with a keyword search for the unique phrase, delete the phrase, and proceed with his formatting. The process worked flawlessly until…one day he forgot to delete (and I neglected to catch) the unique phrase that he’d inserted the day before. And that’s how law offices all around Washington, New York, LA, and beyond received an IRS regulation containing the confusing provision, “I got yer bone right here.”

- Mike Moriarty

A: Very nice.

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Q:  The first car I remember was Pop's: A 1934 Dodge with running boards. It was boxy and squared off and smelled of gasoline and old leather. We might still have had it today if it hadn’t been taken out of existence by a garbage truck. Stick shift, of course.  Four on the floor, as they used to call it.  Rachel's grandma's car is virtually new.  – Don

A: This is my brother, who is six years older than I am.  I don’t remember this car.   Afterwards our father got a ‘57 Chevy, one of the hottest cars ever made, driven by one of the greatest, fuddiest guys in the world. Uncool.  He drove this car wearing a hat.  A fedora. 

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Q: People I thought I knew but didn’t:  

Back in the Reagan days, I plied the actuarial trades in Philly for a regional firm, Paul A. Tanker & Associates. Our target market were local firms and respected advisors with Jewish decision makers. The Savitz Company were our principal competitors for this market niche.

Sam Savitz was the big dog at The Savitz Company. He was a cultured, philanthropically generous gentleman, gracious and well-respected for his business acumen. A formidable competitor.

The chief actuary at the The Savitz Company was Sam’s brother, Edward. Ed Savitz was a UPenn educated actuary who was, by most accounts, brilliant in the arcane mysteries of actuarial mumbo-jumbo and the Federal regulatory overreach regarding private retirement programs.

I met Ed Savitz several times through local actuarial societies and get-togethers and through the normal professional curtesies associated with competing for and trading client relationships. He was reserved, politely unhumorous and quietly patronizing. He was eight or ten years older than I was. Ed was fortunate that his brother Sam was the firm’s driving rainmaker. 

I left Philly in 1990. Also in 1990, Ed Savitz was found not guilty on charges related to the purchase of a minor’s soiled underwear. Those two events were coincidental.

In 1992, “FAST” Eddie Savitz was arrested again for multiple sex-related crimes, primarily involving minor boys. Police found 5,000 photos of boys and 312 bags of soiled boys’ underwear. Bail was set at $3 million.

He was arrested again the next day after complaints involving more boys were verified. Bail was raised to $20 million. He died in prison of complications from AIDS before he was to face trial. He is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of South Philly boys. Every kid in South Philly knew about Uncle Eddy for decades…not so the law enforcement and health agencies supposedly there to protect them.

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A: Wow.   I doubted this story, but looked it up.  Right you are. 

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Q: I asked ChatGPT to write some insulting tweets about you in the style of Donald Trump. Here's what it came up with.

"Gene 'Wee Willie' Weingarten, what a PATHETIC excuse for a journalist! Completely INEPT and an absolute EMBARRASSMENT to the profession. His writing? More like rambling GIBBERISH only a FOOL would believe! TOTAL LOSER who can't get a single fact right. SHAMEFUL! #Disaster #WorstJournalistEver" "Gene 'Wee Willie' Weingarten is the WORST journalist on the planet! His so-called 'articles' are a MIXTURE OF LIES and utter STUPIDITY. Couldn’t report the weather correctly if his life DEPENDED ON IT! Who let this CLOWN near a keyboard? #TotalDisgrace #FakeNewsFactory" "Gene 'Wee Willie' Weingarten is a joke! This guy’s ‘writing’ is the laughing stock of journalism, nothing but TRASH! He’s a HACK with no clue, stumbling around facts like a clown in the dark. How is this BUFFOON still employed? Absolutely DISGRACEFUL! #EpicFail #FakeNewsKing"

A: The most realistic thing here is that Trump is famous for accusing his detractors of his own insufficiencies, in this case “Wee Willie.”

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Q: Regarding the Fritz Peterson family swap, that you wrote about, and whether anyone ever tried to make a movie: 

From the NY Post:

There was a moment a few years ago when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon made a serious run at getting a movie made about the Peterson-Kekich swap, but they grew out of the roles before anything developed. That would’ve been something, a couple of notable Red Sox fans exploring that particularly sordid moment in Yankees history.

A: I’d argue that “sordid” was too judgmental.   People divorce.   And Peterson and Mrs. Kekich lived together for the next 50 years.

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Q: Never AGAIN will I eat duck feet at dim sum. They look and taste, with the orange skin and bones, exactly like duck feet.

A: I love them.  Also pig ears.  

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Q: People I thought I knew but didn’t:  30 or so years ago, someone who was an employee of one of my clients, with whom I worked directly and seemed like a nice guy, ended up in prison after he was convicted of murdering his mother. 

A: Whoa.

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Q: I would eat raw seafood at places OTHER than a good sushi restaurant! Slurping raw clams and oysters can be done almost anywhere!

Side question: is there anything on this planet better than raw oysters and good beer? 

A: No, there is not.   Though raw squid (ika) comes close.   

Also, my question involved raw shrimp, which is served as “sweet shrimp” in sushi places, and I think nowhere else.    It has to be incredibly fresh.  I have never seen it on another ethnic menu.  Has anyone else? 

Q:  Any comments about this different (that is to say wrong) version of Scrabble?

A: It is pure crap and deeply patronizing to Gen-Z.   They are not idiot feebs, they are young people.  

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Q: This is a random question that I feel like only you are qualified to answer (or find out the answer). My son is 4 and has been potty trained for a year and I've noticed he already has the habit of bringing a book with him to poop. Admittedly both my husband I also read on the toilet and I have long assumed most other people do too. When do you think people realized they could do this and how quickly was it adopted as soon as the technology (small, light books or newspapers or whatever) allowed for it? Do you think the first paper leaflets of news were carried into latrines to pass the time? Was an iPhone already in a restroom on January 9, 2007, the first day they were available?

A: I shall research this with experts over long, sumptuous dinners at expensive restaurants, and get back to you.

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Q: Best description of Trump ever written - nailed it! As for his continued popularity there is no explanation, none.

A: Thank you. There has to be an explanation. Historians will figure it out.

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Q: The "stupid people" choice actually is a version of All of the Above.

A: A fair point.

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Q: A person can be anti-establishment without being pro-tRump. A person can be angry without being pro-tRump. A person can be conservative without being pro-tRump. But a person can't be pro-tRump without being stupid. Moreover, it takes a special kind of stupidity to be pro-tRump. The primary characteristic of tRump supporters is that they are so totally fucking stupid that they don't realize that in voting for him, they are voting for someone who not only doesn't care about them, but also wouldn't hesitate to do something that would harm them if doing so could benefit him.

A: Also a good point.

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This is Gene. I am calling us down. We meet again on Thursday, with the Invitational and the debut of the new horse name contest.

Please keep sending in questions and observations. They were great today.

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