Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Donald Trump talked about being president on The Apprentice for many years. The Apprentice was junk programming — which didn’t prevent it from running for 14 years. There’s a market for junk programing and Trump’s natural P.T. Barnum-esque instincts led him right to television. If you’re looking to define the baser angels of our cultural nature, Trump can point you in the right direction. That’s an absolute.
Then he finally ran. He hooked up with the grand maestro of fake news himself, Steve Bannon and away they went. Bannon himself was stunned when he heard Trump had actually filed to run. Bob Woodward reports that when Bannon heard “Donald Trump’s running for president,” Bannon replied, “Of what country?”
From that beginning we are now at the moment where Trump has been christened Inmate No. P01135809. How in hell did we get here? Michael Tomasky, the New Republic:
We got here because Donald Trump, now also known as Prisoner P01135809, has never had any regard for laws of any kind. We’ve known this for decades. When I was a young reporter in New York, and Trump was not yet a wannabee dictator, and the working-class men of the heartland registered him in their minds (if at all) as a swanky Manhattan rich guy who had nothing to do with their lives, Trump’s habits and attitudes were well known in New York. Sometimes, people went at him, but no one ever got him. And often, the people with the power to do so didn’t even go at him. […]
Trump was sued and deposed over and over and over, but he always had the money and the legal architecture to wiggle out. Like it or not, there’s a complex calculus involving the extent to which the law will pursue a rich and famous man who builds glitzy buildings and makes donations to the Police Athletic League. Prosecutors, too, have budgets, and they think twice before committing them to the pursuit of people who have the power to fend them off for years.
But once a person enters public life, the calculus changes. Then, the money and power and P.A.L. checks don’t matter anymore. All that can no longer insulate you. Presidents take an oath, and they are subject to federal and state laws. Period.
And so Trump’s great, improbable triumph—his ascension to the presidency—was also his fatal mistake: He finally put himself in a position where the law, however slowly, could catch up with him. He didn’t understand or accept this, of course, because he always thought of himself as above the law. He is probably shocked to find that there are potential consequences to saying to a state official that the official just needs to find him 11,780 votes. There’d never been consequences before for anything.
So that, in sum, is how we got here. It’s a simple and very American story of money, influence, and power. And while I wouldn’t say it could only happen in New York, the city was easily the most likely place for it to happen, because New York—especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when money, influence, and power really began to swallow the whole place, its possessors lionized in the newly celebrity-obsessed media—was far more susceptible to a Trump than any other American city.
Trump is an American creation, like the hot dog. An exec at Verizon, Anthony Citrano, quipped on then-Twitter, “It’s almost impossible to believe he exists. It’s as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it all up in an old hot dog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face.” That tweet went viral and became a meme.
Trump was always successful in buying off people who could hurt him, one way or another. Robert Morgenthau was the district attorney in Manhattan for most of the years that Trump operated in New York and while he left office with a sterling reputation, he also was a friend of Trump’s. Trump contributed to Morgenthau’s campaigns and pet charities and Morgenthau accepted an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, which, in all fairness, is not damning on its face. But it stands to reason that Morgenthau had a pretty good idea of what Trump was all about. He chose not to do anything about it.
But at the age of 100, shortly before he died, and three years into Trump’s presidency, Morgenthau’s biographer asked him, “What do you fear the most?” and the reply was “Trump.” So he knew.
We’ve been at this democratic experiment for about 250 years, counting the years we’ve been a country, officially, which is 245 and the years leading up to that. That’s a chunk of time but in the grand scheme of the age of the planet, of the galaxy, it’s an eyeblink. Trump may have nullified democracy. The GOP has become increasingly fascist and they have no leader of any substance up for the nomination right now. So whatever we get, it’s going to be Trump or a third-string player on the GOP ticket — unless it’s Ramaswamy, then it’s a fifth-string player. That’s it. That’s the state of the party. That a clown like Ramaswamy, who has mastered nothing political except the TV aspect of campaigning — like Trump did — can even be taken as seriously as he is shows you what a travesty the GOP has become. It also shows you the complicity of the media in all this, and that’s a topic for another essay.
There is no question but that Donald Trump is going up in flames. And the GOP is still locked into their Faustian bargain with him. The question now becomes, is he going to take the rest of us with him? And if not totally, then how much has he succeeded in dragging us down, both in our own culture and in the eyes of the world? Because just as a pickle can’t go back to being a cucumber or a butterfly never returns to the cocoon, America is not going back to a pre-Trump existence. If you’ve been thinking that, disabuse yourself of that notion now.
Because here’s the situation: We are soon to be rid of Trump. At least that’s the way things look. He’s finally in a position where he can’t buy people off. But what about where we go from here? Trump hasn’t just moved the Overton window, he’s thrown a chair through it. So what’s going to be “normal” from here on out? Russian interference in our elections? Claiming fraud at the drop of a hat? People talking about starting a second Civil War?
And Trump would like that, because he’s a child. He said on Tucker Carlson’s show the other night, when Carlson asked him about this very thing, “There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen [and] there’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen, and that’s probably a bad combination.” Make no mistake, Trump’s out for revenge. All you have to do is look at the mugshot. There’s a menacing look in his eyes, “I’m gonna get you for this.” That shot can also be interpreted as a child attempting to look menacing. It doesn’t compare to Charlie Manson’s mugshot, let’s just say that much.
Trump is in his new and we presume final phase, which is that of The Apprentice: Avenging Angel. This is where he becomes a martyr to some and a laughing stock to the rest of us. I cannot predict what will happen next because I can’t outguess the Great Screenwriter In The Sky, so all I can do is quote Trump: “Be there. Will be wild.”
I don’t think he had a clue what a fishbowl existence it is, to be President and live in the White House. That situation definitely exposed everything about him.
He didn’t have a clue. That is God’s truth. He thought that being president was ceremonial, like an MC, a PR guy for the country. He was quoted as saying, after he was briefed, “I had no idea there was so much work.” It’s a JOB and a damn hard one. There’s a reason presidents go grey in office, even relatively young ones.
What I love about this situation is its Shakespearean, classical aspects. His defects of character allowed him to scam and now his defects of character are going to destroy him.
the word hubris might have been coined just for him.
So he’s been exposed. BFD. Because too many tens of millions DON’T CARE.
“now everything’s a little upside down
as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
what’s good is bad, what’s bad is good
you’ll find out when you reach the top
you’re on the bottom.”
Idiot Wind…Bob Dylan
We are living in the Upside Down, Through The Looking Glass, all of it.
I like to say instead of being through the Looking Glass we are trapped in it. Can’t get out either side.
This is reality imitating art, or more precisely reality imitating reality TV. We are watching something like a continuous streaming of Dallas, except J.R. is now a dysfunctional wannabe NY crime boss with the mind of a 10 year-old. What is scary is that 70 million voters can’t seem to separate the fiction from the fact.
Maybe when this is all over, the producers of Law and Order will pick up on that brilliant parody. Law & Order, TCU would be a smash hit.
Roger, or anybody, what would TCU stand for?
My guess is Trump Crime Unit, maybe Roger will come back and tell you.
I don’t know either. People use esoteric abbreviations when there’s plenty of space for the full word. How about Texas Christian University. Naw.
My name is Roger, too, but there’s already a Roger in this thread. So, I’ll use Reeg.
Thank you Reeg and welcome. I agree about abbreviations. They drive me up a wall.
Ursula, this is one of the best essays I’ve read on this or any liberal site. The excerpts from Michael Tomasky’s New Republic piece are spot on. I doubt I would have known about it, much less read it if you hadn’t brought it to our attention.
As a bonus, I found out that New Republic has nifty quizzes.
You’re very kind. One of the things that I’ve found in this business is that some of my better written pieces (and this is one) don’t get read as much. It’s just something I’ve learned to live with. We need to have both here, the hot news items that get the clicks and also the thoughtful commentary.
I’m always grateful to the people who do read the “deeper” stuff, even though the headlines may not be as enticing as the hot news pieces.
“It’s almost impossible to believe he exists. It’s as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it all up in an old hot dog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face.”
Still, with all that grease, he’ll burn well.
Probably hot enough to sterilize the area for quite a while, I hope.
Concinnity, that could create superfund toxic cleanup site!
Don’t forget to salt it afterwards! There are things that should never grow back.
I have to say that during the 14 year run, I never watched the Apprentice once. I live in Minnesota and I knew Trump was a phony the minute he came down that escalator in 2015.
Read the book “Everything Trump Touches Dies”, by Rick Wilson. How many examples of that have we already seen. Think of the stream of ruined lives. Think of the 1000 COVID deaths. Trump is a destructive force. He needs to be stopped.
Apprentice Was on for fourteen years?!? Wow. Glad I missed I missed it too. All 14 seasons.
I had the same experience as you. I saw Trump and I knew who and what he was from the get go. And I’ve never been wrong.
His reptilian, smarmy, oily style repelled me from the the get-go; the Queens accent and tawdry gold-plated lifestyle simply rendered him that much more inappropriate.