No, I’m not talking about former NFL tight end and longtime broadcaster Bob Trumpy. I’m talking about a certain mouthy Presidential candidate who seems to have finally peaked. That’s right, the guy known around here as the Insult Comedian with cotton candy piss hair whose main connection to football was smothering the USFL baby in its infancy,
Politico Magazine continues to be a better publication than its parent. They recently published Trump Is…13 Historians Scour the past for Trumpian precedents. It’s a distinguished group including Garry Wills and Sean Willentz, which largely eschews the Perot comparison that drives me bat shit. My second favorite Trump Is segment came from Jeremy Mayer who called the Insult Comedian, “sui generis with a touch of Silvio Berlusconi.” I would have said a sliver of Silvio but it’s still an apt comparison. Hmm, I wonder if the Donald ever has bunga, bunga parties?
Been patiently waiting for the QOTD? It comes from historian and son of David, Alan Brinkley:
Donald Trump seems to think that he can become president, although few serious people believe him. Is he a populist who is tapping into a covered well of real feeling? Is he an outlier who is unafraid to speak the unsaid truths of politics? Does he speak for the sliver factions of party? No. Trump is not in the tradition of great—and sometimes dangerous—populists like Huey Long or Father Coughlin in the 1930s. Nor is he a passionate outlier forcing his party to move beyond a centrist position like Edmund Muskie did in 1968. He isn’t even a lightning rod for a single, and unattractive, ideological issue the way George Wallace was in the ’60s and ’70s. Donald Trump just wants to be heard.
It is amazing that a candidate for president has no discernable policy nor any belief system other than the certainty that anything he says is right. Trump is not seeking votes, he is simply demanding attention.
He nailed it. The Insult Comedian is fundamentally a spoiled 5-year-old who wants to be loved, and pitches a fit when he’s not the center of attention. That explains the threat of a lawsuit over a negative ad by the Club for Growth. It may, finally, be the moment when the Trump candidacy jumps the shark. It doesn’t fit his public image as a 1% tough guy but it *does* fit his reality as a spoiled brat who cannot take criticism.
The Insult Comedian is a classic bully. He can dish it out but he can’t take it. He’s just another rich asshole with a glass jaw:
What, no “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” immediately following “Glass Jaw”?
Guess I have a glass jaw too. We seem to have eerily similar musical taste at times.
Interesting. After reading this post, I was in the toy aisle of a local Target and came upon a five-year-old in mid-tantrum sprawled out on the floor. I mused aloud, “Huh. So that’s what Adrastos is comparing Donald Trump to.” The five-year-old heard me (not sure how), but stopped in mid-squall, got to his feet, and said, “Trump? That dude needs to dial it back.”
As for Brinkley’s observation that Trump’s guiding philosophy is that anything he says is right, I would add “even if it’s totally at odds with what he said five years ago, two weeks ago, or in his previous sentence.” I’m glad that some media outlets are beginning to piece that together, what with their multi-million dollar budgets and access to the internet and stuff.