A few years ago, I explained in a video why I thought Trump was an asshole. Apart from any political issues, his treatment of other people exactly fitted the definition of asshole that our society developed as I grew up. I was hardly original: Trump has been called an asshole in the finest publications.
But I take it back.
The media deliberately
portray assholes, fictional and real, because we apparently like to watch
asshole behavior. Mostly they are harmless: annoying, disruptive, repulsive,
and eventually sad creatures. But someone who steals your money, grabs your
body, wants to put you in jail, and insults your religion or heritage, has gone
beyond being an asshole.
Donald Trump is the most
disgusting person in American public life. This has nothing to do with politics
or policies. Nothing here is news. Individual elements are damning – the sum is
a fatally flawed human being.
A central part of Trump’s
business model is cheating people. He cheated workers across the country, hundreds of them, who had to sue him to get their
pay. He cheated people who signed up for “Trump University”, and had to repay $25 million to former
students.
Trump’s charity was a fake, a charity for him. He cheated poor children, Black college students, and many other needy people, including veterans trying to reenter civilian life through the Army Emergency Relief.
He used donors’ money to pay
his debts, fund his campaign for President, and to buy a $10,000 painting of
himself to display in one of his hotels. Another drop out of Trump’s bucket: he
had to pay $2 million to the eight charities he cheated.
At a time when “thank you for
your service” has become a nearly universal way of extending respect to past
and present members of the armed forces, Trump repeatedly says, “I disdain your
service.” His political disagreement in 2015 with John McCain led him to
disparage the service of all men who had been captured, imprisoned, and
sometimes tortured. “He’s not a war hero. I like people who weren’t
captured.”
Even less worthy of respect in Trump’s eyes are those who didn’t survive. Trump accompanied his chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2017 to visit the grave of Kelly’s son Robert, killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. Trump said to Kelly, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?" Refusing to visit an American cemetery near Paris in 2018 in the rain, he expressed contempt for all dead soldiers: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Trump called the 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood “suckers”.
Trump is better than a
veteran. He said that marching around at the New York Military Academy gave him
“more training militarily than a lot of the guys that
go into the military.” He called the
real military leaders in his administration “a bunch of dopes and babies” and “pussies”.
Who makes fun of someone who is disabled? Trump.
Who makes public fun of
everyone he doesn’t like? Trump.
E. Jean Carroll is the first
of a dozen women
who have accused Trump of sexual assault to win a judgment against him: out goes another $83.3 million. “Grab
them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
How about his own daughter?
His aides said Trump “regularly made lewd comments about his daughter Ivanka and fantasized about what it would be like to have
sex with her.” Long before he ran for President, Trump said the same things to
radio host Howard Stern. He told Stern that it was perfectly fine to refer to
Ivanka as “a piece of ass” in 2004, chatted with Stern about about the size of
her breasts in 2006.
Many people have performed
the public service of collecting and numbering Trump’s lies. He has never
stopped duping his supporters. In his New Hampshire victory speech, Trump said he’d won the state in 2016 and 2020, but
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both beat him there. Constant lying is a sin of
small-mindedness, a personal reveal rather than a public danger, demonstrated
by the unique George Santos.
A President’s lies could be
dangerous, but Trump is far worse than a liar. His soul is unique in American
public life. None of the radical right-wing Freedom Caucus, not even Marjorie Green,
is close to as repellent a human as Trump.
A central American question
disturbs and confuses me: why do so many American adults praise, support,
donate to, and even worship such a worthless man?
Here is a possible answer.
His supporters know Trump is awful. They can yell “fake news” all they want,
but the truth about Trump stares everyone in the face. So they concoct stories
about how liberals are even more horrible. How else to explain the ridiculous
popularity in the MAGA world of the Pizzagate claim
that the Clintons were running a pedophile ring in Washington, DC? Even more
popular is its crazier spawn, QAnon: “the government, media, and financial
worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan worshiping pedophiles who
run a global child sex trafficking operation”. A majority of Republicans believed this about their country and the rest of us
in 2020. In late 2023, another survey showed that 29% of Republicans are now QAnon believers. When Trump describes politicians and people who
oppose him as “vermin”, he offers supporters a lifeline: you know how awful I
am, but our enemies (meaning most Americans) are much worse.
QAnon is especially believed
by less educated Republicans. What about the most politically educated, the
leadership of the Republican Party? Republican office holders across the
country are making the same deal: we’ll be silent about Trump’s obvious
unfitness, if we can keep our jobs.
Imagine at the first
Republican presidential debate this past August that seven of the candidates on
stage, leaving out, say, Vivek Ramaswamy, each declared Donald Trump personally
unfit to serve, and said that they rejected his serial adultery, business
cheating, constant lying, and sexual assaults. Imagine that seven said that
Trump’s illegal attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election was
sufficient alone to disqualify him as a candidate and as a Republican.
None of them had to disagree
with any of Trump’s policies. They only had to talk about his personal human
failures. It may have taken a while for the MAGA adherents to recognize the
depth of their delusions. Some Republican leaders who declared Trump a national
danger might suffer politically. But what a public service to America and
Americans.
If Trump is guilty above all
of always putting himself in front of country, what about the leading
Republicans who are racing to fall in line? Aren’t they guilty of the same
moral flaw?
Steve Hochstadt
