He’s doing it again — the thing where he says something cringeworthy and somehow ends up the one we feel protective of, as if we know deep down he isn’t consenting to his behavior at this point. At the Coast Guard Academy commencement last week, Trump made a string of strange little asides about young cadets’ looks and muscles. To the class’s top academic graduate, walking off after his handshake, “I hate good-looking men.” Another cadet got summoned to the podium so the President could admire his physique on a jumbotron.
It is not clear whether anyone flagged lust or envy at Trump’s National Day of Prayer event, but make no mistake — he is deep in his old-timey envy phase. It’s gross. Not yet the wide-eyes-and-head-nod gross that means don’t leave the kids alone with him. More the kind that costs you ten seconds of your day while you scan yourself for any flicker of levity. Finding none. Resentment? Still bupkis.
Then today, his third physical exam in 13 months — “perfect,” obviously. Last fall, after fumbling the word abdomen mid-sentence—science words were never his forte— he flirted with a female reporter about his scan like it was a graded assignment he aced. Victorious. Like totally conquered. This came amid the usual snapping at women in the press pool: piggy, stupid, a disgrace, insubordinate.
The West Wing once did an episode where the President hid a health issue, and Toby quietly war-gamed the legality of a coup. We have come a long way from gravitas and transparency. Toby was actually scared of the Constitution, of the people, of God. And this made him upright and moral. And yet now, with us, a kind of consensus has settled. The active anti-Trump war is over, the impeachment chatter has gone quiet. We made this mess, even if we didn’t, and now our aging loved one needs help with his daily activities — while we put off, again, the hard conversation about assisted living and the transition to the time when we begin covering his ears and whispering our concerns while standing right over him.
