Trump is the walrus
In a recent interview with Rachel Maddow, E Jean Carroll told the harrowing tale of her first glimpse in court of her personal daemon since the day he raped her in the 1990s. It turned out, as is so often the case, that anticipation was worse than reality.
Prior to her confrontation with Donald Trump in court, Ms Carroll said she was “just a bag of sweating corpuscles as we prepared for trial. And four days before the trial I had an actual breakdown. I lost my ability to speak. I lost my words. I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t go on.” And then, for the first time in the twenty-first century, there he was, sitting before her. “He is like a walrus, snorting,” Carroll said, “… he is not there. That was the surprising thing to me.”
I’m sure Ms Carroll has nothing against walruses. She was merely reaching for a metaphor, and that image of something huge and unprepossessing was the first thing that came to mind. Too often our imaginations make monsters of our fears. She came expecting a slavering fiend, went away again seeing him for what he actually was, beached, flabby, impotent.
That vision of Donald Trump is a familiar one. People who have worked with him often describe him as far less than they expect. He is the opposite of a Napoleon or a Caesar, he is an un-great man, a colossal pile of tantrums and weaknesses in a baggy, badly-fitted suit and a ridiculous red ribbon for a tie. In the end he is, like James Thurber’s owl or Jerzy Kosinski’s Chance the Gardener, a counterfeit, an imposter, a nothing, a prop, crumbling like Mar-a-Lago into a pink mountain. He is nothing more than two hours of absurdist makeup. He is the walrus.
We have taken the measure of Donald Trump’s narcissism, and not even the loss of five million dollars — and now eighty-three million dollars — can contain it. He is a flaccid bag of prodigious lack of self-control.
Rachel Maddow pointed out that, while Trump has remained technically silent about her, he has started reposting articles critical of Carroll. Will Ms Carroll sue Trump again if he resumes his verbal attacks on her? “Absolutely,” she vowed without hesitation. Will Trump return to publicly defaming his rape victim? I would not be at all surprised.
This is the thing that the larger part of the Republican Party has hitched its wagon to, a narcissistic sociopath with no impulse control or any anger management. He is a rapist who behaves exactly the way rapists behave, without self-restraint, with blind, unreasoning lack of comprehension of consequences.
This is the man they again want to restore the nuclear codes to. This is the man they want to return the most powerful army in the world to. Republicans want Trump the rapist, Trump the weak, Trump the inept, Trump the stupid, Trump the evil, to once more hold the ultimate levers of power in his tiny, vulgar hands.
“Insane” is too kind a word for MAGA Republicans, because it implies they can’t see what Trump is. But you need not go any further than the E Jean Carroll civil trial, or the Miami documents theft trial, or the DC insurrection trial, or the New York Stormy Daniels trial, to see clearly what Donald Trump is. He is weak and stupid, and Republicans are weak and stupid for propping up this evil, grotesque and inadequate thing. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.