"It is What It is." Donald John Trump

Of late, Trump has suggested that his likeness be put alongside those of four other presidents on Mt. Rushmore, a mountain in South Dakota. He has appointed a postmaster general who, despite objections by Congress, state governments, and postal unions, is seeking to impede delivery of the mail-in ballots favored by Democrats. He has repeatedly claimed that voter fraud alone can prevent him from winning re-election, leading to speculation that he’s preparing for a coup. He has threatened that, if he loses reelection, America won’t have a president “for years” due to legal challenges.

He has said that he wants three more terms as president (this would require a change in American law). He is accusing his own government of impeding development of a Covid vaccine in order to prevent his re-election. He is accusing his Democratic challenger of senility and of being “a tool of the radical left.” He has warned that if Biden becomes president, crime will run rampant and leftists and anarchists will riot in every city and town in America (much of which are already happening under Trump). His sister accused him of “cruelty”; called him a “liar and a cheat”; said he has “no principles”; and confirmed claims that the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” got into college by paying someone to take his entrance exams. 

A Trump insider was charged with multiple felonies, raising the number of Trumpian aides, donors and advisers, who have been indicted or imprisoned to twenty. The sixteen-year-old Trump-hating daughter of “counselor to the president” Kellyanne Conway petitioned the court for emancipation, saying that her mother has neglected her and her siblings in favor of money and fame. Ms Conway’s husband has also been vocal in opposing the president, who in response called him “a loser of a husband.” 

After three-and-a-half years of Trump, nothing that I have said should come as a surprise to most Americans, but what never ceases to astound me is that Trump’s approval rating among members of his own party has held steady in the mid nineties. I don’t know what to conclude from this other than that Republicans are infinitely more stupid and unethical than I would have considered possible even three years ago when I still entertained the hope that, as Trump’s depravity became increasingly blatant, his supporters would slowly abandon him. It would now appear that, unless he is caught on tape buggering a poodle alongside Putin and Kim Jong-Un (and I’m not confident that even this would do it), I can’t imagine what would give pause to people who prefer the shit of a golden-headed buffoon to the blood of a Jewish Savior. 

Why would I make such an outrageous statement? Because Trump’s “values”—aka his pandering to his followers’ ignorance and bigotry—clearly do matter to his disciples, while those of Jesus clearly do not, a fact that puts me in mind of Trump’s 2016 boast that his supporters wouldn’t care if he murdered a man in broad daylight on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue. I had imagined that such a boast might lose him the election, but I now see that he was right...

Then again, his supporters might care deeply if Trump were to claim that the man was a Democrat whose death was a Christmas present to the nation in which case, they would jump to their feet and cheer until they could cheer no more.

I will now leave you with what Trump said about the thousands upon thousands of people who have died of Covid due to his indifference to the welfare of anyone but himself:

“It is what it is.”

A week or so later, Michelle Obama repeated Trump’s words in the context of saying that Trump is what he is because he lacks the ability to rise to any occasion. While his followers deserve him, the rest of the nation and world most certainly do not deserve the curse that has been visited upon them.