Whispers in Helskinki, 2017
America has had itself a few rotten presidents over the centuries. Including some who should have gone to prison. But never before have we had a pitifully ignorant wannabe mobster with a grifter’s morals and a scoundrel’s heart behaving so hideously in plain site. And flaunting it. The John Gotti of presidents.
This is not to say that Trump’s appalling performances in the new White House episodes of The Apprentice are the worst of what he’s been doing. Many of these are, of course, just part of the distraction from the damage being exacted by Project 2025 and the amateur incompetents with their own wild-ass agendas that Trump has appointed to high places based on the views of their podcasts. Cause a stir. If there’s bad response, write it up on Truth Social and cause another stir. All to keep Trump in the media eye. These distractions divert reporters to deal with the latest gawdawful thing he or one of his minions has spouted somewhere. Meanwhile, the quieter appointees, like Russ Vought, continue their gawdawful dismantling of 16 decades of progressive gains.
But it’s easy to ignore most of Trump’s acting out whether it’s ceremoniously adding his Sharpie signature to another unconstitutional executive order or ripping a reporter who asks a taboo question. Taboo being determined by the man’s fickle moods. I shrug. I roll an eye. I move on. No need to dwell on Trumparrhea when Medicaid, Medicare, the EPA, diversity, and birthright citizenship are under siege.
However, his televised scolding in the Oval Office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Feb. 28 and of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday fried my ass.
These two nasty ambushes were sprung in the now-gaudy Oval Office to the obvious delight of the manosphere. Oooooh. Look how tough he is. Telling those foreigners off! Especially that Black guy. Amazing that this Outlaw Prez who has proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza tried to school Ramaphosa with outright disinformation on “white genocide” in South Africa.
Oliver Willis has debunked Trump’s lies on that subject twice, noting Trump’s racist remarks. Most telling of all was that despite the fakery involved in Trump’s taking Ramaphosa to the proverbial woodshed, Willis noted that two separate White House YouTube videos have been made featuring the sickeningly disrespectful behavior. The message: Trump meant every word of it.
As hundreds of millions of people around the planet saw, Trump was also aggressively disdainful in his scolding of President Zelenskyy. As he had done repeatedly before, he practically accused the Ukrainian leader of starting the Russian war on his country, of being ungrateful for U.S. aid, and “gambling on World War III.”
A good friend of mine now says that the instant she hears Trump’s voice, she gets nauseated. Not metaphorically, she affirms. It’s visceral. The scoldings gave me a twinge of that. The tone of you little people and your third-rate shit-hole countries should behave like I tell you brought shame on the U.S no matter what the so-called manly men in America might think.
But it’s not just the crude rudeness, the anti-diplomatic language, and the imperial haughtiness that is truly provoking. It’s the chicken-shittiness.
During his campaign last year, Trump repeatedly vowed that he understood Russian President Vladimir Putin and would end the war in Ukraine on Day 1 of his second term in the presidency. That, of course, didn’t happen. No serious person expected it to. Trump even had to lie and say he had been joking when he made that promise. And ever since the phone call between him and Putin, Trump indicates that Putin has no interest in ending the war and Trump himself seems to have lost interest in trying to broker peace.
What happened to Trump’s supposed deal-making acumen? What happened to doing some finger-wagging like so casually given Zelenskyy? Or some schooling about human rights like he gave Ramaphosa? Why, for crap sake, hasn’t Trump invited Putin to come visit for an Oval Office berating? After all, Zelenskyy and Ramaphosa did nothing to Trump before their spanking. Vlad Vladimirovich, on the other hand, has repeatedly humiliated him. And you would think, given Trump’s sensitivity to being considered weak and a loser, he would have a bunch of loud, rough stuff to say to the Kremlin boss. Maybe a threat or two since he seems to enjoy doing that to people he considers beneath him.
But no. Trump’s not playing the tough guy as he did with Zelenskyy and Ramaphosa. Putin has made clear Trump’s not going to end the war. So Trump is running away. The going gets a little tough, and he gets going … out the door. In addition to all else, this bully, like so many bullies, is a coward. Unfit for office in a thousand ways. A disaster and fountain of chagrin at home and abroad.
