Seems, madam? I know not seems
Is it news that Trump is a reckless imbecile? Hardly.
This week, the Guardian reported that what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents describe Donald Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual”. Vladimir Putin, the documents say, therefore decided to assist Trump’s rise to power in 2016 as a way to weaken America. Five years on, as America digests a string of bombshell revelations about the last days of Trump’s presidency pulled from a string of new books, Russia’s judgment seems born out.
Well of course it does, but it wasn’t in doubt anyway. We’ve always known that Trump is impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced, along with greedy, cruel, stupid, lazy, corrupt, empty, and trashy.
In Landslide, Michael Wolff’s second sequel to Fire and Fury, the book that birthed the genre, Trump is shown isolated and unhinged in the White House, pushed to extremes by Rudy Giuliani before, during and after his supporters’ deadly attack on the Capitol…
In Frankly, We Did Win This Election, Michael Bender reports the 2020 campaign in exhaustive detail. He also tells us Trump believed Adolf Hitler “did a lot of good things”, wanted to “execute” whichever aide leaked news of his retreat to a White House bunker as anti-racism protests raged last summer, and told his top general to “just shoot” those demonstrating in Lafayette Square outside.
We need to know all this, but let’s not pretend any of it is surprising. There is no bottom to the badness of Trump.
Many Trump books report important news. Many trade in salacious gossip. But all in some way document a moment in US history that is unprecedented – and which has not ended.
Trump retains control of a party committed to advancing his lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud and to attacking the voting rights of opponents. It is therefore important, Setmayer said, for the media to continue to cover both Trump and the avalanche of books about him.
Indeed. Just don’t pretend he’s ever been any better than what he is now.
I really don’t know how anyone assesses him as anything other than a dipshit. A wealthy one, yes, but inherited wealth. He’s not a self made wealthy person, in fact he would be much wealthier if he didn’t make so many bad decisions (“deals”) and wasn’t such a stupid asshole. I saw a video of Jordan Peterson saying he was above average intelligence because he was involved in complex situations, had his own tv show, became president, and cetera… I completely disagree with that. He has had more failed business dealings than successful ones, they will put anyone who people will watch (and they will fucking watch anything) on tv, and as far a politics go, he had enough celebrity status and financial backing to run for office due to his conning and swindling people. These things don’t even require average intelligence. He’s been on the uphill climb of the bell curve of intelligence all his life. Like Sisiphus, he keeps pushing himself up that hill, never able to attain the summit. Ambition and egotism are not intelligent qualities, and if you take that away, and the money his daddy left him, you have an arrogant bully, with an ambitious ego, who also happens to be pretty stupid. Just look at his offspring, even with the benefit of their mother’s collective genes, they are also snooty dullards who’s favorite pastime is trolling people who they think are beneath them. He’s disgusting and his offspring are disgusting. They are the worst examples of arrogant entitled Americans I can think of. How they have any following or have people fooled into thinking they are good people in the slightest completely eludes me. Jordan Peterson is no idiot, but he’s wrong about Donnie Dipshit.
One also needs to note that every vile political movement and politician needs his (almost always a “he”) sniveling sycophants. I know among the alt-right Peterson is considered all-that, but has he ever said anything intelligent in his career as a “pubic intellectual”?
twiliter, I agree with almost everything you wrote except for:
I think a surprising number of people still think Trump is playing an extra-long game of 4D chess and that for decades people will be drinking bleach and, er, injecting light because he said so. Although probably not more than once. You’re absolutely right about the facts but if people cared about those, Trump wouldn’t have been elected in the first place. I think there’s a very real possibility that he could be elected again, next time, and the left doesn’t seem to be doing anything to prevent it.
I’m not convinced of the veracity of this, either. His track record seems to speak for itself. A lot of people (and not just on the right) seem to find him compelling, although I can’t understand why, personally; all I see when I watch his videos is barely-suppressed fury that he’s not being treated by all as their intellectual king. He certainly knows how to be popular, but foolishness has never tended to get in the way of popularity. He reacts well and quickly to certain trends and profits greatly from it… but so has Trump. All you really need to do that is abandon any principles you might once have had and sat whatever elicits the loudest, meanest cheers.
But you are definitely 100% right about Trump’s intellectual and business ability, not to mention his lack of any redeeming personal qualities.
Brian:
He was an early dissenter on the issue of preferred pronouns… He’s widely credited with uncanny prescience and being a long-time stalwart campaigner against compelled speech. But I’m fairly sure he was just being an arsehole and happened to be more or less right, for reasons that were partially correct, entirely by accident.
twiliter:
Hm… Now my eyes are working properly, I see that you said “how anyone assesses”, whereas I was previously convinced I’d read “that anyone assesses.”
Carry on, nothing to see here.
I don’t think Peterson is a Trump fan, he has criticized him elsewhere, but I think he misses how Trump has not earned his positions of power honestly or deservedly. Trump has been plopped into roles because of circumstance and ambition, and ones that he can afford financially to fail at without much consequence, particularly on someone else’s dime. He accepts (or seizes) these roles to get attention, not because he’s any good at them. Then people can assume that he’s the big cheese because he has some virtuous qualities or talent that got him there, despite the lack of evidence for either, so I think some people actually do assume this. The constant displays to the contrary during his time in office and elsewhere lead me to different conclusions. I might be able to, if presented with enough evidence, be persuaded that Trump is of average intelligence, or in that range, but the onslaught of blustering bullshit he has subjected us to over the years makes me think he’s solidly below average.