So much for Donald Trump’s superpower
It’s a common bit of masochism for a certain kind of liberal wishing to establish his or her credentials for fair-mindedness to positively gush over Donald Trump’s alleged “strengths.” Expect that propensity to become even more pronounced now that Trump has been criminally indicted (God how I love writing those five words!) Permit me to be perfectly clear. Trump doesn’t have any strengths.
If you insist on including the fact that he has a certain low criminal cunning I might reluctantly concede that. But, I hasten to add, as I am not a criminal, I have no way of knowing how good he is at the business of criminality. After all (joy!) Trump has been criminally indicted!
Besides, it seems to me that when I consider what a big mouth he has, I must conclude he’s rubbish at the criminal stuff as well. Nobody rats out Donald Trump better than Donald Trump. Just check out the fact that, ah, Trump has been criminally indicted.
If somebody put a gun to my head and I was forced to concede that Donald Trump had some kind of superpower thingy, I think I’d allow that it has to be his shameless shamelessness. Trump’s shamelessness has the baffling effect of causing stupid people to aver that he’s bold, brilliant and honest. Yes, they really do that, I am not making that up.
It has the knock on effect that, given the astonishing number of mallet-headed cretins in the United States who actually think that way, a lot of Republicans in power pretend to think that way too. They pretend that because they want votes. They pretend that they think Donald Trump is smart because they love power and they love money, and they still couldn’t care less even though they’re now defending an indicted criminal.
Trump is about to enter the long, long corridor towards possible justice, the corridor known as Due Process. Don’t kid yourselves, by the way, Trump’s punishment has already begun. He will walk through a positive fever dream of hell, of highs and lows, of hopes created and hopes dashed, before this drama is over. But if by some miracle he should be acquitted in the end, it won’t be because he’s somehow smart. Trump is an idiot, and we’re about to see just how much of an idiot he is.
So how do we know that Trump is truly an idiot? There is a lot of historical precedent for it. For one thing, just about everybody who’s ever worked with him and aren’t idiots themselves says so. They came away amazed at how massively ignorant Trump is.
Even Vladimir Putin was frustrated with how dumb the guy is, and found it almost impossible to talk to him because Trump doesn’t know much of anything. China’s Xi actually once called Japan’s Abe, not because they’re friends (they aren’t), but because Xi couldn’t get a coherent statement out of the guy, and thought Abe might know how.
When Trump was president, his briefers began by making presentation decks shorter, then they started using mostly pictures, then they finally started putting Trump’s name on every page, and finally they put it in bold typeface just so he’d pay attention, if only for a few seconds.
Recall Trump’s famous trip to Helsinki when he betrayed every security agency in the United States in order to cover for Vladimir Putin? Just prior to that his security team tried to brief him on the wide rage of issues likely to come up in the meeting. Trump said he wasn’t interested and went golfing instead.
Of course, these days all you have to do is read his posts on “Truth” Social or listen to him talk to know what a mallet-headed imbecile Donald Trump is. It’s self-evident, and will become more so as time goes on. His criminal defence lawyers will no doubt try to get him to shut up but he won’t. Like with most fools, Trump has rarely had an unspoken thought, even if that thought is obviously self-incriminating.
“Oh,” you might insist, “he’s a billionaire and you’re not!” No he isn’t. He’s a sociopath who was born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, who skated through life protected from the consequences of his actions by the four hundred million dollars he got from his father. Even that he squandered and went two billion dollars in debt.
Donald Trump is a moron who has had astonishing good luck. His success was bound to happen, given the number of morons there are in the world and the almost infinite chances they’ve been given. And that moron has finally been criminally indicted, and boy am I ever happy about that! And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe and celebrate responsibly.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.