The Vulgar President

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

For a pathological narcissist like Donald Trump everything is always about him.  He considers himself the most impressive person in the world and an infinite source of wisdom.  Therefore everything he says or does is important, in fact the most important thing that’s being said or done at that particular point in time.  Trump has that trait in common with other narcissists, although he’s the most visible of all of them and his mental disorder is on constant public display, but there is more to his condition.  The President of the United States also lacks severely in cultural development and interest, and, as a result, is a very vulgar man.  We had already learned about the depth of Trump’s vulgarity when the ‘pussy-grab’ tape came out, but during the last week it came to full fruition in a political context, on numerous occasions when he made public statements or when information about his behavior leaked out of the White House.  Since Trump cannot change, and nobody controls him effectively, this is what we’ll get the next four years.

On the occasion of Black History Month, Trump – as Bill Maher observed – had brought all the black people he knows together in one of the smallest rooms of the White House.  Seated between Omarosa Manigault and Ben Carson he somehow brought up the nineteenth century black scholar, writer and educator Frederick Douglass, a former slave, about whom he clearly knew nothing.  Douglass, in Trump’s words, had done ‘an amazing job,’ for which he was ‘more and more’ being recognized.  There was a lot of cringing in the US that day, and probably even in the White House, although Sean Spicer repeated Trump’s characterization of Douglass during the official press briefing.  At the announcement ceremony for his candidate for the Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch, Trump could not help but start his remarks by pompously mentioning that he had just attended a ‘very impressive’ event, without providing more details.  Later it became known that he had witnessed the arrival of the dead body of a Navy Seal at Dover Air Force Base.

Apparently Trump felt that his presence at that ceremony enlarged him, although some modesty would have been more fitting since the Seal’s death resulted from a botched operation for which he had given the go-ahead.  He took his vulgarity to the next level at the National Prayer Breakfast, which he opened by bragging about his own ratings when he was still presenting ‘The Apprentice,’ and by suggesting a prayer for Arnold Schwarzenegger, his successor.

The inappropriateness of Trump’s remarks at those three occasions was complemented by his phone call with the Australian prime minister, during which he bragged about the crowd at his inauguration and got angry about an existing agreement between Australia and the US concerning the transfer of eleven hundred refugees, which caused him to abruptly hang up.

Since then the president threatened his Mexican counterpart to send troops into his country to go after ‘bad hombres,’ called a federal judge a ‘so-called’ judge, and accused unnamed Americans of being killers in the mold of Putin.  And it’s only been two weeks now.

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