The perfect word for Trump
Finally, President Trump’s apoplectic detractors have hit upon just the right word for him after trying out hundreds of other epithets. The word is “roué.” It’s French. Pronounced roo-ay.
Means a debauched person. A reprobate. A self-indulgent hedonist lacking moral qualms.
I overheard the word in a conversation between two young ladies who boarded a Septa train at Bryn Mawr (Pa.), likely students there at the pricey, hoity-toity college of that name.
One of the ladies had a backpack with a big button on it that said “Resist!” During a conversation about Donald Trump, that lady wrinkled her nose and said to the other: “He’s absolutely a disgusting roué.” The other gave a vigorous, affirmative nod.
Roué. It’s a fancy enough word that readers of the New Yorker, for example, should feel comfortable using it.
Roué. Looked it up on my phone. A rake, a cad, a lech, a libertine. Ah, the perfect word for this vulgar bounder with the infuriating Mussolini smirk.
After all, he has had well-chronicled assignations with various babes over time, has he not? The very thought of this now seems to elicit a belated, shocked gasp from Democrats.
Why aren’t the Born Again elect of the Right Wing joining the highminded Progressives in demanding Trump’s sinful head on a pike?
Complementing Trump’s reputation as a roué is the well-chronicled saga of his involvement, up to his hairline, in sleazy business environments.
He was a flashy presence on the Atlantic City casino and New York real estate scenes. Those are hardly places or activities the morally fastidious are drawn to.
For years, leading Democrats eagerly accepted political donations from this roué, this reprobate, Trump.
Now, apparently, they suddenly realize the sinful nature of that relationship, although guilt hasn’t quite yet nagged them into returning the tainted money with interest.
Trump all at once has Capitol Hill Democrats acting like a collection of latter-day Church Ladies and Moral Majority Jerry Falwells.
They’re worried that Beelzebub is Trump’s constant sidekick. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a long-time hack fixture on New York’s ethically blighted political landscape, is now Parson Nadler. He’s going to save America’s soul from Trump and certain perdition. Such paragons of virtue as Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, surely will be willing to help out.
“It’s a moral issue.” All of the party’s new deacons — Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and many others, say so. Say it right on cue.
“It’s a moral issue.” Talking Point No. 1.
Trump’s wall must be opposed. It’s a moral issue. The Mueller probe must be supported. It’s a moral issue.
Whatever the controversy involving Trump, it’s — all together now — “a moral issue.”
Whatever Trump proposes to do is not only racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic, it’s a moral issue.
During a recent congressional committee hearing, Church Lady and Moral Majority Democrats grilled Trump’s former lawyer on whether the lawyer might be able to share any dirt on Trump-financed abortions or Trump-sired, outof-wedlock children.
Alas, the lawyer said he couldn’t. All the same, congressional Democrats remained shocked, shocked, that such a scoundrel as Trump enjoys the run of the Oval Office.
Yes, it’s the same Oval Office where Bill Clinton once copped feels and cadged fellatio from the entry-level female help.
And it’s the same Oval Office where JFK, according to FBI wiretaps, once took phone calls from a Mafia consort he shared with mobster Sam Giancana, through their mutual pal, Frank Sinatra.
Now Democrats are not only eager to know the salacious details of Trump’s priapic activities, they’re also anxious to get the lowdown on how their one-time generous political donor accumulated his felony-tainted fortune.
Democratic congressional panels are now demanding years of tax and business records not only from Trump himself, but also from his offspring and his son-in-law, Jared Kusher.
Jared is the scion of a New Jersey real estate empire.
The magnate of that empire, Charles Kushner, Jared’s pop, was the sugar-daddy bankroller of New Jersey’s Democratic Party until a politically ambitious prosecutor named Chris Christie brought him down.
The party had a long and beneficial relationship with the elder Kushner, to the extent that in 2005 the Federal Elections Commission fined him $508,910 for funneling illegal donations to party candidates.
(Soon thereafter, in a tawdry scenario involving a prostitute and a blackmail scheme, the Kushner patriarch was convicted of fraud and tax counts. He was sent off to do 14 months prison time.)
Democrats at the time seemed to take the developments with a ho-hum equanimity.
But all at once now there’s a new moral and ethical fussiness afoot in the Democratic Party. Lots of concern about immorality.
Swamp Democrats are aghast at suspicions that Trump amassed his ostentatious riches through corner-cutting means, possibly while also conniving to avoid forking over his fair share of taxes.
The mighty IRS, of course, can easily categorize virtually anybody a tax cheat, based on arcane technical allegations that even CPAs or tax lawyers have difficulty grasping.
By whatever means Trump amassed wealth, whether by bluffing, by bankruptcy manipulations, or by throwing sharp elbows, it must be noted that he attained his glittery lifestyle through toil in the private sector, not in public office while on the taxpayers’ dime.
The same could never be said for, to take one example among many others, President Lyndon B. Johnson. After a lifetime in public office, he left an estate valued at more than $650 million in today’s dollars. It was a fortune built mostly on government-regulated radio and TV licenses.
There was never much indication, however, of any great Democratic curiosity regarding the provenance of LBJ’s material blessings. Nor did congressional Democrats ever ask questions at committee hearings about his muchwhispered amorous antics. They never inquired about abortions he may have financed or out-ofwedlock children he may have propagated.
Certainly, there was never the scale of curiosity there is today regarding Trump’s business activities and sex life. Inquiring Democrats are dying to know today: Did Trump the private-sector business hustler, who used to share some of the loot with the party, transgress any obscure subsections of the criminal or tax code?
Democrats now believe it highly likely. One question they’re not asking, though, is why, then, didn’t the Justice Department or IRS move to rectify matters during the eight years of the righteous Obama presidency?
Why the sudden obsession with such matters now?
Could it be that the obsession reflects a “Russia collusion” probe that’s about to come to a fizzling, anticlimactic conclusion after two years of brow-beating witnesses and still coming up with nothing?
Hmmm. Meanwhile, real fear grips the Democratic Party, and it’s not the fear of Trump immorality. The real fear is: OMG! What if this mouthy scoundrel is actually delivering results?
Now that’s truly scary!