Donald J. Trump is the worst of us.
He is the ugliest American.
He is a garbage human being.
But we know that. Every morning, the most optimistic among us wake up and check their news feeds in the hope that something has happened overnight that will bring an end to our shared national nightmare.
Trump, for his part, however, daily tries to find new ways to drive home the message that never has a lesser man held high office in America, never has a more defective human being had so much power in our country.
You almost have to give him credit for the scope of his efforts. Pick a character failing and each week he will remind you that he not only has it, but that he wants to make a show of it like a hippopotamus in heat, flicking s–t and piss in every direction in order to attract a mate.
One day, he will let us know yet again that he is the greediest, most corrupt man to ever hold high office in the United States. On another, he will display ignorance at a level seldom seen among primates. Then will come his racism or misogyny; a reminder that he is a serial sex criminal. A fraudster. A liar. Then his pettiness or narcissism or vindictiveness or short-sightedness comes to the fore. Then he’ll let us see for ourselves yet again his disloyalty to family, to friends, to supporters and to this country.
Often, we see all these things at once. He is not just an execrable human being, not just flawed, not just without a single f–-king redeeming trait, but he is also the creepiest among us, the sleaziest, and, as we have seen with special clarity over the past few days, quite possibly the man with the worst, most vulgar taste in the country. (And I’ve been to the back streets of Atlantic City—I know what I’m talking about.)
Yes, the man who feels compelled to redecorate the White House to resemble the Caligula Suite at the End Times Hotel and Casino on the Vegas Strip is also the guy who is going to bring the WWE to the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of our nation’s birth. This past week, he announced he would bring an Indy Car race to the streets of DC, too, and build a 250-foot high triumphal arch that will block the views of our capital’s monuments and cast its shadow over the graves at Arlington Cemetery that Trump has in the past denigrated.
The same guy who has illegally torn down the “people’s house” in order to build a gilded ballroom for billionaires that will sit atop a bunker in which he will live to protect himself from the constantly growing hatred he has generated coast-to-coast has also decided to crown his assault on American culture by shutting down the Kennedy Center. He made no mention of the fact that any artists worthy of the name wanted nothing to do with him. Just as he has tried to debase it by adding his own name to the monument to our 35th president, now he implies in a social media post that he will tear it down and rebuild it in his own image.
Expect neon. Expect slot machines. Expect heart-shaped beds in the balcony with mirrors over them. Expect sales of 72-ounce margaritas renamed after the first lady and made in her honor with Trump-brand tequila and a splash of Slovenian schnapps. Expect it to make Ba-da-bing look like the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. (Do not expect many comedians, since Trump on Monday morning threatened Grammys host Trevor Noah with a lawsuit because he didn’t think one of his jokes was funny.)
Also this past week, at another event that brought together much of what is the worst about our slimeball-in-chief, we had Trump presiding over the opening of the world’s first bribeumentary, “Melania,” a film about America’s first animatronic First Lady. The opening event was attended by craven CEOs and cabinet members, all seeking to curry favor with the president and completely oblivious to how desperate to do so their attendance made them appear.
Excoriated by critics, attended primarily by curiosity seekers and paid seat-fillers recruited to help hide the degree which Americans just have no interest in America’s most vapid woman, the film was an embarrassment to all involved. Which is saying something since the director is an accused sex pest about a woman who recent “Epstein files” have shown was pals with Ghislaine Maxwell and who was poetically described by the president during the early throes of their relationship as a “hot piece of ass.”
Yes, folks, the past few days have revealed yet again that somehow we managed to find our president in the bargain bin for damaged megalomaniacs at the end of a poorly lit aisle at Mad Kings R Us. Somehow we got a lunatic who had less taste in architecture than Hitler, less concern for the citizens of his country than Nero, less grip on reality than George III addled by his porphyria, and less morality than the aforementioned Caligula. He has done more damage to Washington, D.C. than the British soldiers who burned the Capitol and the White House during the War of 1812—and he is planning to do even more.
And frankly, all that pales in comparison to the pain, suffering and lasting toll he has exacted on America, our allies and the world at large. Which is why once again, tomorrow and every morning, Americans will wake up and ask, “is he gone yet?”
And better still, it is why so many, like those in Minneapolis and cities across the country who protested his armed assault on our country and values this past weekend, are trying to accelerate the day when the only reminder that he ever led this country will be the fact that for generations to come people will spit on the ground when they hear his name.
