Trump is not an Asshole. He’s Much Worse.

 

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