TV gives us illusory X-rays of the politicians who appear on it. We think we see their dimly-lit white-on-black bone-structure exactly as it is, but we’re only seeing “through a glass, darkly,” as it says in 1 Corinthians (or, as Donald Trump would call it, “A Corinthian.”) Only a cheap armchair wiseguy would presume to analyze the psyche of a complete stranger—Donald Trump, for example–simply from watching the man on what Trump himself calls “the shows.”
Well, I’m that cheap armchair wiseguy.
The fact that Donald Trump has a Napoleon complex of the penis is obvious to anyone who sees him. But I sense that his problems run much, much deeper than that.
Donald Trump may well be the loneliest man in America. And I’m only 45%-60% kidding. This belief springs from his use of one single word—a word that every native speaker of the English language other than Trump knows does not, in fact, exist: the word “bigly.”
Consider this: Donald Trump is so rich, so insulated–and so truly bereft of friends—that he’s managed to walk around on this planet for more than 70 years without ever realizing that “bigly” is not an actual word.
He’s used this “bigly” in at least six or eight speeches. At first I thought he was saying “big-league,” as in “China is eating our lunch–big-league;” which, while obviously idiotic, would at least have had a kind of outer-boroughs charm. But no: he keeps embarassing himself with these sad adverbial “biglys”. It’s the linguistic equivalent of walking around with toilet-paper sticking to the bottom of your shoe. Imagine the pain deep in Chris Christie’s gut every time he hears The Boss embarrass himself with a brand-new bigly: Jesus, I’ve pinned my whole career on this nitwit! And yet no-one in Trump’s universe, not even Christie, is a big enough person to correct Trump’s use of the English language– if indeed that’s what it is. Because when Donald Trump is embarassed he lashes out, and when Donald Trump lashes out—well, as the great William Burroughs used to say, “that’s a rumble nobody can cool.”
So here’s a man who’s been nominated for the Presidency of These Exceptional United States who’s reached the age of 70—what his dog-eared copy of the Old Testament calls his “three-score and ten”–with no-one to call him out on his mortifying “biglys.”
You’ll hear it again, soon, because Trump has such a low ratio of thoughts to speech-time—1:150, let’s say, with 150 representing minutes of talking– that he’s forced to repeat himself endlessly: “we have to do it, no choice, we have to do it, believe me. Believe me, we just have to do it. We have no choice,” etc etc ad nauseum. This is his blowhard persona buying time for his terrified mind to sniff out another idea somewhere. But here comes that old demon loneliness creeping up on him again: no one in his family even cares enough to help him stock up on a few extra—what do you call them again?—ideas.
And get this: when Anderson Cooper asked Trump what his favorite McDonald’s meal is—and this is a man who eats a lot of McDonald’s—he started to panic, and finally he said “Fish Delight.” He really said “Fish Delight”: as Ring Lardner used to say, you could look it up. And yet…and yet in what we might laughingly call “the real world,” there is no such item as “Fish Delight” on the menu at McDonalds; not now, and never in the past. Donald Trump is feasting on a non-existent dish! (And here’s what infuriates all us Losers: it’s probably delicious. Sad.)
But saying “Fish Delight” makes him sound…weird. And here again, no-one in his retinue is compassionate enough to tell him that his beloved “Fish Delight” is pure fantasy. Not his “hot” daughter Ivanka, nor any of his seemingly endless string of unfortunate-looking sons. So Trump becomes the anti-hero of a stupid fairy-tale: “The Emperor’s New Fast-Food Item.”
You almost feel sorry for him. No-one seems to care about his physical appearance, either. If they did, they’d immediately tell him that the shirt-collars he wears out in public are a size-and-a-half two small for him, so that they push up, in the back of his neck, three distinct rolls of sunlamped fat that look like three Nathan’s hot-dogs stacked on top of each other.
And for the love of Christ will no-one help this man with his sun-lamp issues? The hideous Inverse Raccoon Effect of those corpse-white eyelids against that bubble-gum skin? Can’t someone—maybe Carl Icahn?—just call up and say yeah, Don, you’re absolutely right to wear the safety-goggles, but jeez, move ‘em around a little or something, because that Raccoon Effect is extremely distracting. Every single day, thousands of people look upon Trump’s Skin, and recoil in horror; yet no one’s kind enough to tell him how it really looks. Silence = Death, Mister Icahn.
Don, here’s a radical thought: maybe lay off the sun-lamp altogether? Somehow—and this is unique to you–the fake tan actually makes you look LESS outdoorsy. Though of course it can’t really described as a “fake tan:” it’s more like a “fake sunburn”—but no, not even that…Trump’s facial skin is the color of a salmon that’s just been diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
And consider this. Fat as he is, Donald Trump eats a pint of vanilla ice cream every night. Because he can! He probably considers vanilla to be the Trump of flavors, by which he would mean not that it’s bland (which is a very unfair rap on vanilla) but that “everyone” loves it, and “lots of people” tell him they are sick and tired of having pistachio and rum-raisin shoved down their throats by the Obama Administration and Crooked Hillary.
Donald Trump needs a friend, and the fate of America may well rest on who that friend turns out to be. Because all that stands between Trump and the White House is a corrupt and venal war-mongerer who America hates every bit as much as it hates Donald Trump. So if Trump’s new “bestie” turns out to be a savvy political operative—the Lee Atwater to his George Bush, or the Goebbels to his You-Know-Who–then this boorish, foppish, bloated, ludicrously third-rate, comically unaware, badly-sunlamped, grotesquely comb-overed, slow-witted slob will be the next President of these United States.
Talk about a rumble nobody can cool.