Friday, October 1, 2021

Trump, P.T. Barnum, And Suckers




In one descriptive paragraph from her book "I'll Take Your Questions Now," Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to First Lady Third Lady Melania "Melanie" Trump describes life in the White (Supremacist) House:

"Working as Trump’s spokesperson was like sitting in a beautiful office while a sprinkler system pours water down on you every second and ruins everything on your desk — except in this case the water took the form of tweets and words and statements. I can give you endless metaphors to describe the Trump White House from a press person’s perspective — living in a house that was always on fire or in an insane asylum where you couldn’t tell the difference between the patients and the attendants or on a roller coaster that never stopped — but trust me, it was a hot mess 24/7. How people did the job without going crazy was a question in itself. Maybe none of us did. Trump, by the way, never understood that he usually was the one screwing up the messaging. Instead, he would complain to me, 'I need a P. T. Barnum!' as his spokesman, just as he would always say, 'I need a James Baker!' whenever he was complaining about his current chief of staff. By P. T. Barnum, I think he meant a communications whiz who could somehow charm reporters into writing whatever he wanted them to write. But maybe he just meant he wanted some expert con man. After all, P. T. Barnum’s most famous line was 'There’s a sucker born every minute.'” (our emphasis)

The malignant former guy is a consummate con man, first in his real estate / branding / Trump University hustle, then, sadly for America, as a politician, forever on the lookout for suckers to sell his latest "deal" to. As a gigantic narcissist, he would never accept that he was the source of the vast majority of screw ups in his disastrous reign, and that he was fundamentally a loser. But he managed to find 74 million suckers in November, 2020, and most, if not all of them, remain loyal to their P.T. Barnum.

You'll find many examples of the Trump shit storm in the above-linked story, including examples of the incompetence and self-entitlement of dilettantes Jared and Ivanka ("the interns" as both Trump's staff and Melania would mockingly refer to them), whose interference in policy matters always left messes for others to have to clean up.

(illustration: Wikimedia/Library Of Congress/AP/John Locher/Salon)

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