Time to end our obsession with Trump
President embodies much of America like the Marlboro Man embodied Big Tobacco, but it’s time to snuff out this nasty habit
I’m starting to think that President Donald Trump isn’t going to reveal his national health care plan to replace the “disaster known as Obamacare,” as he called it.
I’m also beginning to doubt that our president will “bring back manufacturing” as he promised at so many political rallies. Or “appoint a special prosecutor” to investigate Hillary Clinton. Or “deport all undocumented immigrants.” Or, well, you get it. Campaign promises, huh?
Sorry, I couldn’t resist any last jabs at our punching bag of a president.
On Wednesday, Trump is getting evicted from the White House and I’m going to miss him. I’ll miss mocking him, scrutinizing him and using him as the perfect poster child for tens of millions of Americans who think like him, act like him and idolize him.
I’ll miss having such an easy target to lampoon for the past four years. Wait, check that. Probably for the past five years. Wait, I guess for the past nearly 20 years, dating back to before Trump’s rise to cultural popularity on the TV show “The Apprentice.” “You’re fired!” Mr. Trump. Obviously, he didn’t take it as
well as all the aspiring business associates that he fired on that show, and throughout his career.
Just between you and me (please don’t tell this to the president), I expected Trump to get reelected in November despite his sins, flaws and arrogance. He embodies much of America like the Marlboro Man embodied Big Tobacco – one addicted customer at a time, myself included.
Our country has been obsessed with Trump whether you love him or loathe him. It’s similar to how Americans were obsessed with former president Richard Nixon. Or serial killers. We can’t help ourselves. They’re just so damn fascinating. Still, it’s time to snuff out this nasty habit.
Contrary to what many Trump supporters believe, I don’t hate their hero. Hate demands an emotional passion or zealotry that I lack with Trump, as I do with too many things in our world. If I truly hated Trump, I’d support his impeachment, which I consider a waste of time. To me, its only benefit, beyond more public ridicule, is that it could ban Trump from serving again as U.S. president. However, this would only further continue to forge his coveted identity as a martyr to his believers.
I say let him run for the White House in 2024 and make him earn it. If he wins, again, we deserve it, again. Trump has kept us on our toes as a people. Complacency is no longer our collective sin, from both sides of the political aisle. We should forever thank him for this parting gift.
“Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action, and action now,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans in his first inaugural speech in 1933.
President Abraham Lincoln said in his 1861 inaugural address, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.”
How will history remember Trump and his enemies? Its unblinking eyes will be watching the transfer of presidential power in our nation. The world is watching as well. On Tuesday, I received an email from Shirley Jackson, a reader from northwest England, regarding one of my previous columns on our president (I’ve written too many, I know).
“Making sense of the madness. Thank you from all of us here in the U.K.,” she wrote. “You journalists are very brave people.”
I told her there’s a blurry line between bravery and stupidity. I’ve straddled it for 25 years in this business. Please pardon me if you’re a Trump supporter who’s been offended by my opinions about him and his presidency.
“What do you mean can we now agree to disagree?” asked Barbara K., a reader who supports our outgoing president. “Where were you when Trump and the Republicans were asking the same question? You’re nothing but a flaming liberal one-sided double-standard person.”
She has a point. I’ve been absorbed with Trump in an unhealthy way, similar to most late-night talk show hosts who’ve made jokes about Trump on a nightly basis for the past few years. However, not as often for Stephen Colbert, host of the “Late Show” on CBS, who no longer utters Trump’s name on his show. I’m not allowed to do something similar in this column space, though I’m not sure if I could refrain from it anyway.
I promised myself when Trump was defeated by President-elect Joe Biden that I would stop being so obsessed with The Donald when he leaves office. Here we are at Inauguration Day and I’ll have to fulfill my promise. Damn.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump tweeted when he still had an active account.
His wife, Melania
Trump, will also break from tradition – and from common decency – by not inviting her First Lady successor, Jill Biden, to tour the White House living quarters. I’m impressed that Melania lasted through her husband’s full term without aborting the role she never wanted from its conception. She likely packed her bags on Nov. 6.
Trump is expected to issue pardons to dozens of people before he slips away before the inauguration ceremony. Will he pardon himself and his family as well? It doesn’t really matter. Will Trump’s critics and haters ever pardon him?
The least we should do is use this Inauguration Day as an inaugural moment to end our unhealthy obsession with Donald Trump. Can we do it? I’m reminded of something else Roosevelt told Americans at his address.
“Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”