A question has burned ever since the allegations poured forth that Putin’s pressure on Trump is a video of Donald Trump watching Russian prostitutes urinate on a bed that Barack and Michelle Obama slept in. That question is, “How is the star of USA’s Shameless, non-stop ratings-machine Donald J. Trump, cowed by a video of two women urinating on a bed?”
How could a man who survived saying, “Do anything. Grab them by the pussy, and they let you get away with it” be controlled by the prospect of a video or film featuring two women demeaning themselves? Well, we’re left to imagine, right?
First, some writers have pointed out that Donald Trump has a long history of being publicly revolted by women’s urination. It seems to be a taboo/fetish object for him. He is particularly, from his casual comments, viscerally concerned about pudenda, attracted to mammaries, but he goes absolutely nuts when it comes to female micturation. His famous Freudian slip over menstruation aside, Trump is consistent about urine. Ok, so that’s a theory, but it seems weak.
Second, we presume that the video shows Donald J. Trump himself. Trump’s obsession over the normality of his hands was always the thinnest of veils for an obsession for phallic compensation. At 6’1” (he claims to be taller, but all photos of him next to men of his reported height show him, like Trump Tower, having fewer floors than the label promises (Trump Tower is 10 storeys shorter than Donald claims)), his genital development should be fine. Barring some abnormality, there really should be “no problem” there, but problems in phallic compensation are as unrelated to the body size as anorexia is.
That Donald J. Trump suffers from some phallic compensation should be obvious. To paraphrase Christopher Wren’s plaque, “If you seek a monument to my phallic compensation, look around you.” However, the anxiety broke cover altogether and spoke its name aloud during the Republican primaries, when Marco Rubio took a playground shot. “You know what they say about men with small hands,” Rubio said, “You can’t trust them!” Trump filled in the blank and hysterically provided the insult Rubio had only implied: He said that Rubio had said that he had small genitalia, but, “I guarantee you. There’s no problem.”
So, does the film/video, if it exists, show an unflattering truth about POTUS’s most sensitive subject? Perhaps. One doubts that even this, sans elaborate commentary from Trump on the soundtrack that is particularly horrific about himself, would be sufficient to control him. This is a man who ignores being found guilty of discrimination, who doesn’t pay bills, who denies the evidence of his senses to declare 250,000 “a million and a half.” This is a man who shrugs off being in a Playboy After Dark video. He’s a man who puts his ignorance of history on display.
He’s also, and I use the word carefully, phallocentric.
We know something today about Trump that we didn’t know before. We know some of the medications he takes. In particular, we know that he takes Propecia. In the Washington Post today, Daniel Marchalik, an urologist wrote an article trying to alert the public about some of the side effects of this highly profitable drug, “Potential Side Effects of the Drug Trump Reportedly Takes for Hair Loss.” Donald J. Trump, non-stop ratings machine, is seventy years old. Even at fifty or sixty, he might expect impotence, but being seventy and taking Propecia, he has more than a doubled chance of it. He also has an increased chance of anorgasmia, lowered libido, and depression.
I really don’t care about a septuagenarian’s sexual activity. The Bible promises us three score and ten. Past that, and we’re in the bonus rounds, and Donald has already replaced himself and one two of his wives in the population.
What does worry me is the combination of a loss of sexual potency and a man whose life and self-image are defined by an hysterical fear of inadequacy, where adequacy and superiority can be measured by achieving women. For a man who sees accomplishment as a series of conquests and acquisitions, whereby things are taken and owned as a race against an imaginary Colonel Bogey, and those things are money, property, and women, the loss of sexual potency can have drastic, dramatic damage. If that tape, supposing it exists, shows an inadequate or non-performing male, it would be a psychic blow too great to bear.
Of course, in a sense, none of this matters. Donald J. Trump is not qualified to be president. He is not loyal to the Constitution of the United States, nor to the people of the United States. The fact that he is under the heel of a foreign head of state is increasingly clear, and the exact reason for this cowardliness and faithlessness is irrelevant.
When Trump called Putin, some say that White House digital recording and transcript services were turned off (and others say, “Left wingers say the TAPE RECORDERS were turned off! This is FAKE NEWS!!!!”), but no matter: American citizens have to trust the Kremlin for a summary of the call, because the White House provided only a paragraph summary, but the Russians kept their recording devices going and gave a long summary. Trump is going to call the president of Ukraine soon. Whether the White House “forgets” to provide a transcript or full summary again or not, we can at least count on Ukraine to provide one — especially if Trump begins announcing that eastern Ukraine is ethnically Russian.
I don’t care why Trump is a toady. If he’s in debt, then have Congress increase taxes to buy him out. If he’s embarrassed, then let’s start a petition assuring him that we simply can’t think less of him, no matter what the tapes show. In fact, let’s offer to buy him out, if only he’ll go away and get back to “The Celebrity Apprentice”: I hear it really, really needs him.