Opinion
Ordinarily, I love stories of obsession: Wuthering Heights, The Story of Adèle H., Remembrance of Things Past, The Caine Mutiny, Fatal Attraction, The Good Wife, Moby-Dick and the new Generation Z horror hit Obsession.
My Netflix algorithm is trained to compulsively hunt for tales of compulsion.
But US President Donald Trump has reduced the grandeur of obsession to something pathetic. When you commandeer primetime, or try to, you’d better have something prime to say. Trump didn’t. His speech on Thursday (US time) was a dud — a batty stew of whiny complaints stemming from an election that he claims was stolen that wasn’t, during a period when he was running the country. If something was wrong, dude, why didn’t you fix it? He still has no proof, and he muddied matters by releasing documents containing information already known and warning about “vulnerabilities” his administration has made worse.
And, if the president believes what he is saying about China being a huge danger to our elections, why hasn’t he retaliated against President Xi Jinping, the man he warmly calls a “friend” and a “great leader”?
Trump seemed very low-T in his East Room address. I’m surprised that Pete Hegseth, who says his “High-T Department of War” will start screening testosterone levels of “war fighters” age 30 and older, didn’t rush over to shoot up the flaccid 80-year-old commander in chief with the elixir of manhood needed, as he put it, to give America “the leading edge of lethality”.
There was barely a peep from Republicans on Capitol Hill about the speech. No organised effort to polish his tirade. You could almost hear the fervent wish of Republican politicians watching the president: Please, Donald, move on!
But he can’t. His father’s admonition that there are only “killers” and “losers” plays in a loop in his head, reducing him to jelly.
He is willing to undermine and destroy any institution, law, norm or ideal cherished by Americans in a bonfire of his vanities. He claims to be Christian but mocks the sanctity of human life with his cavalier attitude about Immigration and Customs Enforcement killings. He puts his own ego above everything else, even democracy.
As The New York Times′ Peter Baker wrote, the deeply unpopular Trump “seems intent on laying a predicate that, at the least, could explain away a defeat and, at most, his critics fear, potentially justify direct intervention aimed at changing the results” of future elections. Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s new homeland security secretary, picked up on Friday where the president left off, threatening jail time for local election officials who dared disobey the administration’s diktats.
Trump’s Ahab-like fixation on the election he lost has gone on for six years. As Maggie Haberman reported five years ago, Trump said after he lost that he expected to be reinstated to the presidency by August 2021.
Usually, the president is able to whip up some Poseidon-level winds of conspiracy to blow his critics off course. But, on Thursday night, he seemed impotent, raving about nonsense, threatening to punish ABC and NBC for not taking his weird rant live. He struggled to wield his superpower: creating a fake alternate universe for his supporters. Does anyone believe Trump’s make-believe that “there’s no third world country that has elections like we have”?
(Trump has also failed to convince people that vandals made a gash nearly three football fields long with a boxcutter in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, rather than that his crony contractor applied the liner wrong.)
Even Fox News acted more skittish than sycophantish for a change, not wanting to relive its $US787.5 million ($1.17 billion) debacle as part of its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after claiming its machines switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
Aishah Hasnie, a Fox White House correspondent, warned on Hannity that the network was “not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements and claims at this time,” echoing almost word for word what Bret Baier had said earlier.
The next morning, Mediaite reported, Fox & Friends did not mention the address once in its three-hour show.
Trump’s profiteering in office seems to be breaking through to Americans concerned about their own stretched finances.
After making $US2.2 billion in his first year back in office, Trump and his family are jumping on corrupt ways to cash in. His media company is planning to sell faster access to his posts, which in the past have shaken the stock market.
The aroma of venality in the White House is so powerful that even minor players want to get in on the act. A teleprompter operator for Trump won about $US100,000 placing bets on Kalshi, the prediction market, auguring what he already knew: what Trump would say in his speeches.
King Midas has finally persuaded Scott Bessent to put the braggart president’s face on our currency — a $1 gold coin.
If Trump wants to continue to be “the world’s most famous sore loser,” as Democrat senator Jon Ossoff, calls him, he’s going to need to be more high-T. But can that hormone be prescribed to babies?
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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