Even under the best of circumstances, Trump is almost dead. I’m speaking actuarially. He’s old, obese, can’t stay awake in meetings, and his hands increasingly look like something that crawled out of the Black Lagoon. This is not a well man.
This means that, each time he disappears for more than a few hours—as he did last weekend, when he was out of the public eye for about 72 hours—rumors spread like the coronavirus that almost killed him last time around. Emergency trip to Walter Reade! Dude stroked out! Melania did it! Who’s got a bead on JD?
An entire genre of social media clickbait regarding Trump’s eventual demise has evolved, with posters cryptically alluding to how they will react when Trump meets his end. For example, the Canadian writer of (mostly) topics related to menswear, Derek Guy, wrote, on April 5: “One day, “It” will happen, by which I mean sudden and unexpected news that you want to celebrate. In such cases, you will want the right outfit.” There is little doubt to which “sudden and unexpected” news Guy is anticipating.
Trump also knows his time for rampaging and grift is coming to an end. He’s made several statements alluding to his mortality in recent months, speculating that he may not be exactly heaven-bound. In September of last year, Trump mused, “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.”
It’s one of the few things he’s said with which I wholeheartedly agree.
So, we have to ask: Is the entire second Trump administration a last-ditch effort to secure his place in “the good place”? Or, should St. Peter ultimately bar his entry through the pearly gates, which Trump would have done in gold, can we understand the president’s increasingly bizarre behavior as a flailing attempt to secure a better earthly legacy than the string of scuzzy businesses and bankruptcy proceedings by which he was likely to be remembered before entering politics?
The stupid ballroom. The stupid arch. The stupid wars. The stupid tariffs. The stupid glowering face hanging from banners scattered across the nation’s capital like flyers for the world’s worst used car auction. All of it to soothe our special boy’s existential crisis. All of it, of course, destined to fail. Some savage beasts will simply not be soothed.
The implacable ego remains implacable. And the rest of us find ourselves in the current predicament: our naked emperor pretending to be hale and hearty while his cabinet flunkies compliment his tailoring. As the man himself might say, “Sad.”
It’s sad, too, for the country. Trump was already the oldest person to assume the presidency at his second inauguration, surpassing the previous record set by Joe Biden. And we know how that turned out. Must we be forever ensnared in presidential gerontocracy?
To go from the enfeebled Biden to the delusional Trump is to trade sleepy but kind for demented and racist (and, actually, no less sleepy either). We wouldn’t let either man drive the kids home, yet we’ve entrusted the fate of the nation to their care.
Frankly, this business of getting old is getting old.
One would think Americans deserve to know the state of their leader’s health. Yet just about all we hear are literally unbelievable reassurances from the current White House physician, Captain Sean Barbella, who reported last April that “President Trump remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and general physical function.”
Don’t pay too much attention to the droopy mouth, stunted speech, and reptilian skin condition that popped out from his shirt collar just last month, OK?
The White House has a long history of obscuring presidential maladies; FDR, Grover Cleveland and JFK all kept their medical woes secret from the public. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke serious enough to incapacitate him for the bulk of his second term, but the American public never knew the full extent. The mysteries around Trump’s health are nothing new.
What is new is that Trump seems to be the first (or possibly second, if you count Reagan) president to actually lose his godd–ed mind. The dude is full-on Looney Tunes. Others have suffered from depression (Lincoln) and paranoia (Nixon), but none have displayed the alarming combination of malignant narcissism, sociopathy, and delusional thinking that characterizes our forty-seventh POTUS.
So at least he’s surrounded himself with the best and the brightest. Oh wait, did I say “the best and brightest”? I meant the crooked and dumb. Woodrow had his wife Edith. Trump has…. Laura Loomer?
Personally, I’m not cheering for the president’s demise. I do not want death to cheat me from the tribunal I’ve concocted in my head. In that dream, presiding judge AOC sentences him to life in Ft. Leavenworth for the crimes of sedition, conspiracy, accepting bribes, stealing classified material, inciting an insurrection and repeatedly shitting himself in public.
Like I said, it’s a fantasy.
Also, do we really want Trump to die and have JD Vance become president? He’s certainly younger and healthier than Trump, but his soul is just as rotted. Pope Leo is mad at JD for being a lousy Catholic. I can’t have our first American pope mad at the first couch-f’ing (or possibly second, if you count Reagan) president.
The great promise of modern medicine is that it keeps people alive longer. Unfortunately, the downside of modern medicine is that it also keeps the wrong people alive longer. I obviously don’t know how much longer Trump has to live, and I honestly don’t wish for his death, or anybody else’s. At the same time, I’m keeping my eye on the discount rack at Nordstrom’s. The day will eventually come and when it does, I would like to be dressed to the nines.
