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Deciphering Donald Trump

Published on 49 Comments on Deciphering Donald Trump

Sometimes it feels like you need a PhD in Trumpology to figure out what the guy is blathering on about. But it's not so hard! Let's go through a few examples. First up is this:

This is Trump in his standard amoral asshole mode. As everyone knows, Michael Haley is an Army major who's currently deployed overseas in Djibouti. Trump also knows this but doesn't care.

Next up is this:

Surprise! This is not Trump in forgetful mode. It's Trump in revenge mode. He gets confused about who's president all the time because he doesn't really have anything against Joe Biden. But Barack Obama made fun of him once and Trump has been furious about that ever since. He is obsessed with Obama, which is why he thinks Obama is now and forever president.

Then this:

This is Trump in woke warrior mode. He's reacting to press reports from a few weeks back that the Park Service planned to remove a statue of William Penn in Philadelphia. This decision was reversed within a couple of days, but it's still stuck in Trump's craw. He is implying here that if Biden wins the election, the woke mob will insist on changing the name of Pennsylvania.

And of course this instant classic from last month:

This is Trump in plain old doddering mode. Nikki Haley has offended him by not dropping out of the primary, so everything bad is somehow her fault. Plus Nikki and Nancy both start with N, so they're easy to confuse.

And this:

This is Trump in lying braggart mode. He's inventing a conversation that obviously never happened to make the point that he's a tough guy who told Europe that America is the boss.

So that's that. We have several modes of Trump:

  • Asshole
  • Revenge
  • Anti-woke
  • Forgetful
  • Liar

When you're not sure what the hell he's talking about, just go through this list and eventually it will become clear. You're welcome.

49 thoughts on “Deciphering Donald Trump”

  1. jte21

    Remind me again why every single person who has ever served, or is serving, in the American armed forces doesn't hate that malevolent scumbag with the heat of a thousand burning suns? I see these big, jacked up pickups driving around with some veteran or Semper Fi sticker on them or whatever right next to a "Fuck Biden" sticker and think "How the hell do you even put your pants on the right way in the morning?" I just can't wrap my head around that level of idiocy.

    1. Jim Carey

      Picture this:

      Everyone's attention in a busy grocery store is on a 5-year-old lying on the ground in the main isle, yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs, arms a legs flailing in the air, because he asked for a chocolate bar and his mom said no.

      Now imagine a guy wearing orange makeup and an expensive suit tossing a chocolate at the kid while saying, "Whatever you do kid, don't let anyone tell you you're wrong. About anything. Ever."

      Now imagine the kid 40 years later driving a pickup truck with an F-Biden sticker.

      Does that help?

      1. jte21

        Sure I get the MAGAts as spoiled toddlers thing, but then I guess I'd have to assume that despite his supposed "pride" in serving (see Semper Fi bumper stickers), he actually doesn't give a shit about that, thinks his time in the military was a colossal waste of time, and appreciates that Trump has the brass pair to tell him the truth: "I am a loser" and that getting showered with bigot/asshole candy from his orange god is way more important than any of that.

        Maybe you're right. But wow. Just....wow.

    2. RadioTemotu

      Well in the case of my in-laws it’s pretty simple: they think Trump and his party will give vets more money and benefits. Honor doesn’t matter half as much as greed

  2. bbleh

    Well, he's an assholic, revenge-obsessed, bigoted, forgetful liar, but he says what he means, and I admire that in my fellow assholic, revenge-obsessed, bigoted, forgetful liars!

  3. Jim Carey

    We have one mode of former President Donald:

    Image a universe in which the only interest that matters is you, and everything else is either serving that interest right now, or is an imminent threat to that interest (perceived or otherwise), or is absolutely irrelevant.

    When you're not sure what the hell he's talking about, just imagine yourself in that universe and eventually it will become clear. You're welcome.

    2. Yehouda

      That misses the motivation.

      If he just wanted to live in comfort and surrounded by people that tell him how wonderful he is, he could have just gone home in the end of his term. That obviously wasn't enough, he wants more.

      What he wants is to suppress poulations like Putin, Xi and Kim do. We know that based on his decades of complimenting dictators for "being strong", i.e. suppressing their own people (that started long before Putin appeared on the scene). He also shows a lot of eeagerness to send the army to control cities and states that do not obey him.

          1. aldoushickman

            yeah, but then he'd be known as a loser. In the same single-termer camp as Jimmy Carter and Poppy Bush. He can't countenance people thinking he's a loser, so he had to maintain that he actually won.

  4. lower-case

    so we get daily articles that biden is old and forgetful but not one headline saying that trump is and has always been an asshole

    1. bbleh

      Yabbut everyone knows Trump is an asshole, so that's not news. Biden being old, on the other hand, well now that's something worth reporting in depth!

      They want a horse-race, because a horse-race gets clicks and sells papers, both of which sell advertising and help "journalists" develop their careers and "brands." They're selling entertainment, not providing information.

  5. DFPaul

    He tried for elite approval early in his presidency by appointing Romney Republican figures like Reince Priebus and Nikki Haley to big jobs, but the Mueller investigation plus James Comey convinced him he had to go full Breitbart to save himself. I think you still see that (the latter tendency, that is) in his obvious misogyny now. His first attack instinct regarding any woman is to claim she’s a hectoring feminist, thus the attack on Haley’s husband for being missing, plus attacking Haley re Jan. 6 (because women are always incompetent liars, matters not if it was actually their job or not).

    He’s not really running for president or he wouldn’t be trying so hard to insult 50% of the country. He’s running to whip up a mob to break him out, or better yet keep him out, of prison.

    That’s how I read it anyway.

    That the Republican Party is going along with this shows you how high on their own supply they are.

    1. bbleh

      Concur, but let's not forget the ones who sympathize only sorta or really not at all but who support him out of sheer calculation that they're more likely to profit, and sufficiently unlikely to be the victims of whatever pogroms the yahoos start, than if a sane small-d democratic order prevails.

      Put bluntly, there's a substantial fraction of Republican supporters who are just greedy sociopaths and don't get high on MAGA.

    1. bbleh

      Only Losers explain. Alpha Winners like Trump and me just do what we want.

      Also, that what he says makes Libtards upset is what makes it so good! What's to explain?

      And more seriously, they don't explain, and see no need to explain, and indeed don't really see anything that needs explaining, because it's all about belonging. My tribe cheers, other tribe mad, we win! The content, the substance, the rationality, the conformance to facts, the truth, the legality -- these are mostly irrelevant. It's emotion and identity and division into Us and Them that's important.

      1. DFPaul

        Yes I agree there's a large number of wealthy Republicans (some of them are my neighbors, so I can say this with certainty!) who temperamentally prefer a Mitt Romney but who really just want whoever can deliver upper bracket tax cuts and get rid of the EPA. And Trump seems like he might be just the guy!

        But the record so far -- by which I mean, 2018 elections, 2000 elections, 2022 elections (that's a lot of elections!) -- suggests Trump basically delivers losses. Yet they stand by him. That's what I mean by smoking their own supply. They can't see past owning the libs.

        On the other side of the argument from me, of course, is Trump's strength in the polls. If my theory is correct that he's titrating his support down to the most concentrated supporters, then his poll numbers should be something like 30%. But he's much higher than that. So maybe I'm totally wrong. For the moment, my excuse is that it's still early.

        1. bbleh

          Sigh, yeah, the conclusion unfortunately is that there IS something other than greed at work, even if greed is the major driver. And that something, I'd say pretty confidently, is that at some level they too are authoritarians with bigoted tendencies -- misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic -- some but not all of which are due to status anxiety, and they want a Strong Man who will Enforce the Rules, which include not only tax cuts and regulatory reductions but also Keeping Those People In Their Place.

          Personally, I find the Good Germans even more reprehensible than the Brownshirts. The Brownshirts have the excuse of being dumb and fairly simple; the Good Germans are duplicitous and intentionally evil.

        2. KenSchulz

          It’s still early, and response rates to polls are well down in single digits. Who’s taking those calls from unknown numbers? I’m skeptical that the polling organizations can adequately correct for the non-randomness in their samples.

  7. Dana Decker

    "I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want" includes war crimes.

    It was the worst I've ever seen Trump and I think it's partly because he thinks he's got the election sewn up in light of the Hur report on Biden. There was immense swagger.

  11. tinbox

    Yeah, but you look kind of dumb when you actually believe that a Biden-Harris HQ tweet is an honest summary of what Trump said. Maybe you think Europeans are so morally superior that they need not pay for their own defense, but most voters disagree.

    1. KenSchulz

      There is no possible context that can make that excerpt any less crazy. We don’t commit to the defense of Europe because they pay us, nor do we do so because we are suckers. We do it because a stable, peaceful, democratic Western and Central Europe serves vital interests of the United States. Secondly, the defense budget of the United States is set by acts of Congress, the elected representatives of the American people, not by Europeans. NATO is not a dues-collecting organization, as TFG seems to think.

      1. aldoushickman

        This. Where is the argument that we could/would decrease our defense spending if only Germany or Spain or Belgium would build more tanks and fighter jets.

        Also: I don't want a goddamned armed-to-the-teeth Europe. Without godwinning my response, part of the reason Europe is so peaceful and friendly with the U.S. today as opposed to in the 1940s is that military conflict is 100% completely off the table and unthinkable. I don't want France or Italy to have a fleet of aircraft carriers and strike drones because then they would have the internal political and economic constituency to use them.

  12. iamr4man

    Regarding Trump’s NATO speech, I think country’s that rely on their alliance with the US for nuclear protection are insane if they aren’t currently in the process of building their own nuclear arsenals. Countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan certinally have the technology to do this.
    I recognize that it is in the best interests of the world to avoid such proliferation but if Trump wins there will be no protection from nuclear blackmail. Trump is dead serious about this. If Trump wins Ukraine will cease to exist. And if I were Poland I’d be shaking in my boots about now.

    1. Austin

      Some people don’t actually want to live in a nuclear wasteland, even if it does mean the annihilation of their country and/or the end of their lives. Countries like Germany, Japan, and especially South Korea and Taiwan are geographically small enough that, even if they “win” a nuclear exchange with Russia or China, they will have near-zero inhabitable land for their citizens who somehow survive to eek out a decent life. (What’s the point of “winning” a war if your people will have nowhere to live and will suffer excruciating lives of radiation poisoning and economic deprivation afterwards?)

      1. iamr4man

        I get that, but the point of MAD is that if you have nuclear weapons you can’t be forced to surrender without a fight. “Winning” isn’t the point.

        1. Solar

          The thing about MAD is that for it to work it needs to be reciprocal.

          Austin's point is that you'd need a US sized arsenal of nuclear weapons to reach that MAD status with regards to Russia or China. Both of them could wipe out any of these nations in their entirety before the retaliatory attack is big enough to be of equal proportion.

  13. ProgressOne

    Sure, Trump daily does these:
    Asshole
    Revenge
    Anti-woke
    Forgetful
    Liar

    But Trump is flexible, and so many more adjectives and nouns fit. A few come to mind:
    Malignant narcistic
    Sociopath
    Rapist
    Wife rapist (according to ex-wife Invana’s court document)
    Sexual assaulter (for those not getting raped)
    Cruel
    Viscous
    Nasty
    Unforgiving
    Duplicitous
    Deceitful
    Ignorant
    Racist
    Sexist

    And so, so many more ...

    1. RadioTemotu

      Treasonous

      He was commander in chief and fomented an attack against the government. He is a traitor.

      There’s a penalty for that …

  15. Lounsbury

    Merely saying what he said re NATO - even in braggart mode - shows he is fundamentally unqualified in terms of sheer basic judgment.

  17. Martin Stett

    “What we wanted we did not know; but what we knew we did not want. To force a way through the prisoning wall of the world, to march over burning fields, to stamp over ruins and scattered ashes, to dash recklessly through wild forests, over blasted heaths, to push, conquer, eat our way through towards the East, to the white, hot, dark, cold land that stretched between ourselves and Asia – was that what we wanted? I do not know whether that was our desire, but that was what we did. And the search for reasons why was lost in the tumult of continuous fighting."

    Ernst von Salomon, ”The Outlaws", 1931

    1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

      It's actually ENSHITTIFICATION. Total of three T's. I only know this because I'm a Scrabble player, and some of us in the community were disappointed to realize the word has 16 letters and thus can never be played.

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