After Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News for consistently broadcasting what the former president perceived as unflattering images of him,Trump Not Happy with the Orange Label he has insisted the only picture of him he will allow the channel to use will be the one of him as “the boxer.”
Mr. Trump’s communications assistant, Mort McCurrly, said the boxer is the former president’s favorite Trump Trading Card and he knows his admirers hold him in high regard as a fighter. He also felt since it worked so well for his friend President Putin, more nipple exposer would boost contributions to his various PAC’s and internet cash contrivances.
“Such all promises/All lies and jest/Still a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest” Simon and Garfunkel THE BOXER
Sarcasm aside, projecting a tough guy image has always been integral to Trump’s identity, and maybe his central characterstic that attracts supporters. There is a logical rationale to that. Decisiveness and fortitude are normally incorporated into it, positive attributes of leadership. But Trump’s kind of tough guy has an edge to it that is insidiously vindictive and cunningly dangerous. His form becomes a civil failing, and he compulsively interjects it into comments and conversation whenever he feels threatened or slighted. And of all his many faults, this uncontrollable urge to denigrate and intimidate distinctivley looms over all others as the reason he can not enlarge his base of supporters and the reason for the chaos he has caused, and frankly, encourages.
The RICO charges in Georgia are aptly fitting- ironic justice, in many ways, for someone who conducts himself and controls subordinates like a mob boss. It is refreshing to finally see Ruby Freeman and Wandea Moss incorporated into the cause of justice. Unfortunately there are so many others, and so many reprecusions from Trump’s incendiary ranting. So many innocent, honorable lives upended and even destroyed by a careless, detached narcicist.
Poll workers, election officials, jury members, prosecuting attorneys, witnesses, all just doing their jobs, are constant targets of Trump’s vitriol. Trump gets upset, the word is passed to supporters via conservative media, and people are doxed, threatened, and even killed. There is a phalanx of Trump terroristic lunatics ready to swarm at his beck and call. And doing so can of course backfire and get you arrested or killed, as it did January 6th, and recently in Utah Everything Trump Touches Dies and Texas Arrested Development.
We have had presidents who were aloof, incompetent, even crooks. But never was there one who attacked his own citizens. Trump is simply incapable of anger restraint. It is not leadership in any fashion, unless you consider provoking people into criminal action is leadership somehow. He is constantly attacking people who are performing the duties inherent in a democracy that any normal president, current or past, is obliged to defend. The Republican hierarchy that continues to carry the weight of Trump’s lies is complicit in his undermining of our democracy.
