This is hands down the best Donald Trump piece you will read this election cycle, describing the near instant revulsion many of us have with the man:
The first time you meet Donald Trump, he’s an older male relative who smells like cigarettes and asks when you are going to lose that weight. You’re nine years old. Your parents have to go out and buy a bottle of vodka for him before he arrives. His name is Dick. No, really, it is. At dinner one night, he explains to you that black people are dangerous. “If you turn around, they’ll put a knife in your back.” Except Bill Cosby. “He’s one of the good ones.” Turns out he’s wrong about Cosby and everything else, but the statute of limitations on Dick’s existence on Earth will run out before that information is widely available.
***The next time you meet Donald Trump, he’s your boss. Well, he’s your boss’s boss. A vice president in marketing who seemingly literally cannot stop talking. He’s on his third wife, and that’ll be over in a few years. He can’t believe your mother is his age. He thinks you are friends. He asks you if you’ve changed your hair every time he sees you. Sometimes during meetings he’ll turn away and open a magazine while someone is presenting. One time he comes to a halt in the middle of his own sentence to stare at a woman’s boobs for somewhere from seven to 27 uncomfortable seconds. (It’s hard to gauge time accurately during a truly aggressive boob-stare.) When he finally gets fired years later, his HR file as fat as a pig knuckle, the rumor is he’s caught stealing his own office furniture on the weekend. They don’t even stop him. They just let him go. It’s like the building itself sighs with relief.
Perfect.
SiubhanDuinne
One minute! A new record?
Yes, saw that Atlantic piece on the weekend. It is spot-on.
polyorchnid octopunch
Was gonna say. That’s about as big a foot as there is.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Damn, I think I actually heard that foot come down.
I agree, perfect description of Trump, BTW.
Villago Delenda Est
Great description, yup.
Note to Allain: I’m still getting “site not found” errors.
? Martin
@polyorchnid octopunch: The mark of a master is when he gets the post in before the other can get its first comment. Cole will be one of Trumps first hires – to find foreign football forums and front page something about the Steelers before their Man U or Real Madrid post can get any attention. Trumpian American exceptionalism, bitches.
Irony Abounds
It is so depressing our country has come to the point where an absolute asshole has a decent shot at the Presidency. I guess I’m an elitist, but I find it horrifying that the election could come down to less educated white males voting their ugly prejudices.
Larry Handlin
Yeah, but I had a lot of older male and female relatives like Dick. Having only one would have been an improvement.
Big Ole Hound
I had that guy for a father in law but luckily his daughter is just the opposite and he died 20 years ago or he would be out shouting for Trump.
RaflW
Dunno why this thread seems to have been orphaned.
Don’t be a Dick, that’s all I can say.
ETA: I’m completely confused by the timestamp on the OP. The first comment is as 12:59pm, but the post is claimed to have been up since 1:45am? Alain, did something weird happen here? And why the bigfoot comments if there is a 12 hour gap? I’m getting a Nixon tape in the whitehouse vibe…
Oh, and Nixon’s first name was … Dick!
RaflW
EETA: I think I get it, seeing that this thread was tweeted one minute after “A sigh is just a sigh”.
JC did bigfoot, and then played timelord with the post.
Tricky Dickie indeed.
NorthLeft12
Hello! Where is everybody?
donnah
I’m still flabbergasted that Trump is an actual candidate. I know, pretty naive of me, but honestly when I hear him talk I cannot believe my ears. He cannot complete a sentence. He repeats himself, he uses a bizarre aount of superlatives, (It’s GREAT! It’s the BEST EVER! It’s AMAZING!) and what President has ever spoken like that? And then when he’s actually trying to sound serious, he still sounds like a sixth grader.
How anyone can get behind him is a mystery, other than the obvious: He’s representing the Republican Party. Shame on everyone who supports this egotistical blowhard.
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
John originally put this post up at 12:52 p.m., bigfooting Doug!’s post by literally one minute. John took it down and at 1:45 p.m. put it up again, but the comments all seem to be on the “old” clock.
Aimai
@donnah: he makes his losers feel like winners. That’s how he does it. If someone got him on tape pissing all over the white power dudes or making fun if his miuth breathing loser supporters that is the only thing that will knock him off stride.
JPL
@Irony Abounds: Wait until next time when their nominee is the guy from Duck Dynasty
Trollhattan
@donnah:
Inevitable (perhaps) consequence of the Republican “Deepest bench ever.” Right metaphor, wrong conclusion; bench was a mile wide and an
inchmillimeter deep, leaving the door wide open for the braying carnival barker wannabe dictator. Lucky us.Still maintain that Ted Cruz would have been a worse nominee, indicating how dangerous the party has become to the country it claims to lurve so very much.
MuckJagger
Just took a peek at 538 because of one of the threads below — it’s now been updated to reflect Hillary at 49.1% and Trump at 50.9%. Ugh. I pray she kills him dead in tonight’s debate.
I understand the desire for change, but I’ll never understand the desire that some people have to see a complete and total asshole assume the Presidency.
RaflW
@JPL: Wait until next time when their nominee is the guy from Duck Dynasty
Unlikely. Here’s why:
President Trump will resign because he gets bored. VP Pence will end up in charge, and somehow Ted Cruz will finagle being appointed Veep. He’ll have Pence poisoned, and we’ll have Cruz, and he’ll create a massive, panic-sweeping crisis and get himself the job of Emperor for Life.
So no ‘next time.’ Though Ducky will be appointed to Cruz’s cabinet, so you’re close!
raven
@MuckJagger:Who will win the presidency?
Chance of winning
FiveThirtyEight
Hillary Clinton
53.6%
Donald Trump
46.4%
JMG
@MuckJagger: That’s the NowCast, the 538 model for if the election was today. Or rather, this afternoon, this morning Clinton was at 45 percent. How this differs from the Polls Only and Polls Plus models, which show Clinton at 53 percent, only Nate Silver knows. All I can say for sure is that all three models are VERY sensitive to the very latest polls.
donnah
@Trollhattan: Yeah, Cruz is a dark nightmare and he would be a terrible president because his policies and beliefs are as dangerous as any. I wonder, though, if he could have commanded a lead over Hillary in the long run. Could he have fired up the Republican base as much as Trump has?
Trump’s popularity is based on his image as a non-conventional, non-Beltway business tycoon who’s savvy with deals and money making. He has made his way by pretending to be something he’s not, and that’s going to be his undoing, I hope. He can’t win, he just can’t!
Gindy51
@MuckJagger: We have a distinguished, sane, gentleman for a president now and “they” want a raging homophobic, misogynist, racist, insane creep for a president.
MuckJagger
@raven: I get those same numbers you do, Raven — then my screen *further* updates to reflect the 49.1/50.9 numbers. It could be there’s something wrong with my computer, but I’ve refreshed the site several times and it keeps bouncing back to 49.1/50.9,
I’m not happy.
MuckJagger
@JMG: Okay — but it doesn’t make me feel at all better that he’s still within spitting distance of the White House.
srv
When all you can do is cling to some fictional narrative, a meme on your facebook or a tweet of whatever someone said on TV last night, your grasp on reality is truly lost. You will not wake up until after the election.
And then it will be too late.
piratedan
@JMG: and Silver makes no disclaimer about if the polls also happen to over sample white people, or white males or people over 45 … we can only dance with the numbers we have not the numbers that have any basis in reality, right?
Lizzy L
Oh, yeah. Wendy Molyneux nails it. I’m using the Clinton campaign calling app to GOTV in Illinois. (Same thing I did for Obama in 2008 and 2012 in Ohio.) GOTV GOTV GOTV. Go Team Hillary.
raven
@MuckJagger: Hang in there.
Betty Cracker
That Atlantic piece rings absolutely true, and that’s why I still believe women will be Trump’s undoing in the end. We know that motherfucker. We’ve dealt with him all our lives. We don’t like him.
Shana
@MuckJagger: My husband called me from work not a half an hour ago about 538. He’s in a panic about this. I tried to talk him down but I’m not sure how well I did.
Eric U.
I always knew that the remaining republicans were racist morons, but I thought there was enough self preservation built into their system to keep someone like Trump from getting the nomination. But no, the powers that be in the Republican party really are that stupid. I see GWBush as the harbinger of this. With his father and Reagan, you could tell that they were mostly just manipulating the rubes. GWBush’s administration was the first one where everybody believed their own dogma. And now it turns out they are the decent ones.
piratedan
@Shana: direct him to Sam Wang’s site instead, Nate has sold his soul to punditry.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: Do you mean feminists, or female humans? Around here, a lot of the latter not only don’t hate Trump, they prefer him. Don’t know if that is true nationally, or not.
kd bart
Trump’s that guy in the bar on an NFL Sunday afternoon who’s always go on and on about he could’ve played pro ball and how the athletes of today are not as tough as he was. You notice that the stools surrounding this guy are always empty.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: which is poorly worded, sorry. I did not mean feminists aren’t female humans, only that, as I’ve warned before, “feminist” is not synonymous with “female human.”. And if we really do end up with a President Trump, which is not my preferred outcome, maybe Democrats will finally wake up and realize this.
Betty Cracker
@Pogonip: Women as a group. Sure, some of us are morons. But the gender gap is the highest ever recorded in the polls, and I think that’ll prove true on election day too.
ETA to address your clarification: Are there Democrats who’ve made the assumption that all women are feminists? I haven’t seen such a creature in the wild.
catclub
@JMG:
I wonder how badly early voting screws up polls. I presume polls do include questions to determine if you have already voted.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: I see it a lot on liberal blogs. Present company excepted, of course!
Do you really feel women who disagree with you politically are morons? Can there be no other possible explanation?
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
The most recent polling was showing that white women with at least some college were strongly for Hillary, and even whites women with a high school diploma or less only had a small majority in favor of Trump.
Basically, if you’re white and poorly educated, you’re voting for Trump. Everyone else, not so much.
Pogonip
@catclub: I sure hope so! There was no early voting back when I was a pollster, except for absentee balloting, so it didn’t come up. Maybe someone currently working in the field will address this interesting question.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: You have put your finger on it! It’s all about class (“caste” may not be too strong a word at this point).
Vance Packard predicted the widening division between the castes 60-some years ago in “The Status Seekers”; see the chapter “The Diploma Elite.”
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
I can’t speak for Betty, but I feel pretty confident in saying that anyone who votes for Trump in November is a moron.
We’re not talking about general political disagreement here. We’re talking about people who look at a former US Senator/former Secretary of State vs a game show host and think, “I want a game show host for president!” It’s the political equivalent of hold my beer and watch this.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
We have two different systems in this country: an economic class system, and a racial caste system.
For 300 years, white people who were at the bottom of the economic class system were told that it was okay, because they were high up in the racial caste system to compensate.
Now those people are stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder AND they don’t get to lord it over black people anymore, so they’re pissed at people who are breaking down the racial caste system.
What they need to do is work to break down the economic class system, but they don’t want to. They just want to be back on top of the racial caste system so they can say, I may be poor, but at least I’m better than those n’s over there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip:
Also not speaking for BC, but, IMO, if one votes for Trump, one is some combination of the following: moron, racist, misogynist, and/or evil. I will also not that some of the categories overlap to some extent.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: The ones I know aren’t thinking that. They’re thinking more along the lines of “Hillary represents the people who hate me and hold me in contempt. The people who think I’m a moron because I didn’t have the money or the time to buy that magic piece of paper. Trump does not represent those people. And he promises to deport all those illegal aliens so I can maybe keep my job another couple of years. Guess I’ll try him.”
Now, if you say Hillary probably doesn’t have anything against the peasantry, I agree. If you say the fault lies with those who hire the illegal aliens, I agree. (I say keep the illegal aliens, who are an amiable lot in general, and deport their bosses to that libertarian paradise, Somalia.). But the people out here in West Deplorable don’t see it that way, and the reason they don’t see it that way is the Democratic party switched from representing The Working Person, in the sense of the guy on an assembly line, to the person sitting in front of a computer.
Also, they’re getting damned tired of being called racist when they’re not.
Or that’s what I hear around here, since one can’t get away from political discussions right now.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
Of course, Trump has cost hundreds of those people their jobs by employing illegal aliens to build his hotels and stiffing small businesses on the debts he owes them. Meanwhile, Hillary is talking about her plans to overhaul childcare so those women you’re talking to don’t have to spend most of their paycheck just to make sure someone reliable is watching their kids.
That’s why the people you’re talking about are morons: they’re only looking at the surface, and not looking at reality. Trump says he’s on their side but everything he does proves the opposite.
They actually think that the multi-millionaire’s son who ran a ca$ino into the ground and drove the contractors who built it into bankruptcy while he walked away is going to stand up for them? It is to laugh.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
Also, this:
Here’s the simple question to ask: are they pissed that Colin Kaepernick is not standing for the National Anthem to protest black people being shot by police? If they are pissed at Kaepernick, they’re racist. They may not realize it, but they are.
Betty Cracker
@Pogonip: You haven’t argued in good faith above, but fuck it, I’ll address your last comment instead of torching your strawmen because I think there’s some truth to it, even if you’ve arrived at it disingenuously. I agree the race angle is often overblown in liberal circles — not because it’s not present but because there’s no single, unifying theory that explains US politics and voting bloc behavior: It’s almost always way more complicated than any one factor.
That said, the West Deplorables who are voting for Trump because he supposedly doesn’t represent the people who hold them in contempt ARE morons, in the sense that they are so gullible they shouldn’t be allowed to carry cash to the corner market for fear of being sold a handful of magic beans. And they display such a depraved indifference to non-whites that they qualify as racists, even if they don’t run around in white hoods burning crosses.
They are morons for believing that a laughably obvious conman like Trump is for the working people — Trump outsources manufacturing for his own goddamned products and buildings to cheap foreign labor and stiffs working people who serve his businesses while he lives it up in the penthouse, fercrissakes! How goddamn dumb do you have to be to think he’ll do anything other than enrich himself at their expense? Oh yeah, a moron! And yes, if they are willing to vote for a bigot who wants to ban an entire religion from entering the US and makes common cause with out-and-out white supremacists, yeah, they’re racists too.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Well, my point was a strategic one; since Dems need every vote they can get, especially in battlegrounds where there are many white peasants, it might be prudent for Dem politicians and bloggers to ease up on insulting them till after the election. After President Clinton is safely installed, that’s the time to resume telling them how awful they are.
Mister Forkbeard
@Mnemosyne: This is what I was thinking – a lot of them ARE racist but don’t want to think they are.
I have a long-term online friend who’s convinced that ‘mexican illegals’ are taking our jobs and a huge drain on society. He regards it as “fact” and therefore not racist. He’s appalled when anyone suggests that this obviously untrue belief is kind of racist, even if they don’t directly accuse him of it personally.
He’s internalized this on a bunch of other things. To him, if a position is called “racist” by the media or by Democrats, then it’s almost certainly the correct position and Liberals are just calling it racist because that’s what they do.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@donnah: “And then when he’s actually trying to sound serious, he still sounds like a sixth grader. ”
He has the body language and tone of a six grader trying to lie too. That’s the bit that surprises me that he still has support. It’s not that Trump lies, it’s he’s so bad about it.
Mister Forkbeard
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: I had a discussion with my brother about this. Every bit of his speech and body language screams “insincere liar” or “currently talked out of his ass” to me, to the point where it astounds me that anyone can actually think he’s persuasive. My bro (who’s in the psych field) tells me that there’s a high correlation between generosity/altruism and being able to spot others faking generosity – research indicates that its something you learn to avoid being taken advantage of.
Additional research puts more altruistic people in the democratic camp, meaning that if you trust the psych field at all then Trump has basically found his niche: The people who are most inclined to screw others over can’t tell that he’s screwing them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mister Forkbeard: You can’t con someone who isn’t looking for a shortcut to whatever they want.
JR in WV
@donnah:
Well, naow, don’t be so negative about the “great” man Trump. Sixth grade, really? When he’s trying to be serious he’s at least into Junior High, so I’m going for 8th grade at his best.
But mostly more like, ummm, it’s been a long time for this older person… mostly like 4th grade, to me. Which if you average it with 8th grade seriousness score, that’s a 6! So maybe you’re right, after all.
…. ;-)
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
Well, if we’re talking strategy, THE most reliable voters are now African-American women. They have surpassed old white voters in their reliability and willingness to vote in every election.
So your strategy would have us piss off our most reliable voting block in the hope that angry working-class whites will vote for us instead. That’s a gamble that just isn’t worth taking.
JR in WV
@Shana:
Husband terrified of 538 – answer: Tell him to go to election.princeton.edu, Sam Wang’s site. They aren’t looking for clicks to make money like 538 is. They don’t fool around with MLB stats.
Sam just does election stats. Right now, this is his take:
Snapshot (146 state polls): Clinton 307, Trump 231 EV Meta-margin: Clinton +2.4%
Clinton Nov. win probability: random drift 79%, Bayesian 87%
Senate snapshot (47 polls): Dem+Ind: 49, GOP: 51, Meta-margin: R +0.7%, Nov. control probability: Dem. 55%
So there, That’ll calm him down.
EBT
All trump has to do to win is not say whore, faggot, or nigger. Truly the lowest of all hurdles.
Millard Filmore
@JR in WV: and also @Shana … there is a Finn with a fascination with numbers, polls, and stats, that is following the USA presidential race. Having no direct interest in the election, except if Trump breaks NATO apart it will be very bad for Finland, he goes by real numbers and tries to keep wishful thinking out of his analysis.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/
Chyron HR
@shomi:
What happened to “Ball Juice told me the race is close because Al Gore”?
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s an excellent and overlooked point.
@Mnemosyne: I’d argue that Clinton has made a pitch to the white working class voters who are looking for serious answers to the complex questions that bedevil us in the age of globalization and the technology revolution. Her proposals are much more developed and realistic, certainly, than anything that transparent fraud Trump has said about bringing jobs back to the U.S.
If Trump were every bit the fool he is but minus the bigotry, I could believe white working class voters voting for such a clown were merely made irresponsible by frustration with a complex and often corrupt and impenetrable system, much as the people who voted for Jesse Ventura were. But it’s impossible to separate Trump from his bigotry at this point — he has demonized immigrants and Muslims like a modern-day Hitler, and anyone who still plans on voting for him after that is either evil, stupid or both. Period.
Chris
@donnah:
If George W. Bush hadn’t convinced me that that was an asset rather than a flaw in Republican candidates, Sarah Palin would have. By the time Donnie rolled around, I was utterly and completely unsurprised.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: No, my strategy would be not to piss off anyone.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: Yes, I too think Clinton’s proposals are better for West Deplorable. Also she might get at least some of them into law, whereas the Congress will give Trump little, if any cooperation, because he’s NOKD.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pogonip: Not an option. POC (especailly the aforementioned AA women) needed to see HRC punch back at the deplorables. Look at the reaction to the deplorables remark (overwhelming positive) from this blog’s AA commenters for an example.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: True. And it’s also just the right thing to do when fascism rears its ugly head in your country. A major party candidate is openly playing footsie with white supremacists and neo-Nazis and has appointed the dude who ran a prominent conspiracy-mongering hate site as his campaign CEO.
Clinton couldn’t stay silent. I think she’s banking on the American people being better than that. So am I. Maybe it’s a bad bet. But regardless, speaking up against that bullshit is required.
Miss Bianca
@Pogonip:
And if they believe this, then they’re morons…or, if you or they prefer…”the common clay of the New West”…precisely *because* they believe this.
If they are for Trump’s stand on “mass deporting illegal aliens”, they are racist whether or not they like to think they are. Because they’re for damned sure not thinking about people whio look like, say, Melania Trump – they’re thinking BrownMuslim/Other.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: That too.
debbie
Brilliant article. I wish it had been around earlier.
terry chay
I’ve said to people for the last six months or so, “You better HOPE Trump voters are morons because the only alternative view of them is much, much worse.”
(BTW, it’s not just race(the Mexican rapists and the N—s) it’s also anti-religious (anti-Muslim) and sexist (the C—s). The media has normalized it, Trump is just the symptom.