It’s Squib Saturday. Time to share the best, most interesting (or most entertaining, or most outrageous) tidbit of information I’ve gleaned from all the stuff I’ve read this week. Today: Why I’ll Never Eat Lunch at Mar-A-Lago Again
In the seventeen months since we witnessed Trump’s glide down the Trump Tower escalator and his announcement that he was running for President of the United States, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of words have been written about the man who still might possibly become the next occupant of the White House.
Here is but a meager smattering of my pithy favorites from the last couple of months together with photos I took at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-A-Lago, on my last visit (as in: I will probably never again be invited, and, even if invited, probably will not go.) I was there with teammates to play the Mar-a-Lago tennis team — and for a buffet lunch (Trump’s team won; lunch was “amazing”, “beautiful,” “terrific.” )
From Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View : “After a year on the campaign trail, Trump still really hasn’t gotten beyond his own fantasticality as the basis of his policy agenda” – “Trump’s Hopeless America” (July 22, 2016)
Gail Collins, New York Times : “At times, Trump seemed to be exceeding expectations just by speaking in complete sentences ” – “Trump and Clinton Take Up Arms” (September 8, 2016.)
Maureen O’Dowd, New York Times: “Disintegrating like a mad king locked away in his Fifth Avenue castle, ranting about a cabal of corporate and media elites conspiring against him […] he can’t see how offensive his defense is that the women accusing him were not attractive enough for assault.” – “Michelle Schools Donald Trump” (October 16, 2016)
Jill Lepore, The New Yorker: “Trump leads the Republican Party the way the head of a rebel army holds a capital city […] This is a siege. He plans to build walls, he promises to put his opponents in prison. He enjoys harems. He admires tyrants. He erects monuments to himself in major cities.” – “Donald Trump, the Great Embarrassment” (October 11, 2016)
The Editors, The Atlantic : “Donald Trump has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster. He traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution. He appears not to read.” – “Against Donald Trump” (November 2016.)
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone :”[I]t stops computing when you get to the part where the solution to the vast and complex dilemmas facing humanity is Donald Trump, a man who stays up at night tweeting about whether or not Robert Pattinson should take back Kristen Stewart. ” Later in this fabulous article which I recommend reading in its entirety (link below), reporter Taibbi writes: “Trump was unable to stop being a reality star [but] was he supposed to be a genuine traitor to his class and the savior of the common man, or just be himself, i.e., a bellicose pervert with too much time on his hands?” – “The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump” (October 14, 2016.)
Finally, this from The Crusader, the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan which came out in support of Trump, because it likes his “nationalist views.” However, the paper stated : “It is not an endorsement because, like anybody, there’s things you disagree with,” mangling the language beyond comprehension, and committing the grammatical no-no of ending a sentence on a preposition, thus lending credence to the theory that illiterate sentence manglers stick together.
Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article may be accessed here.
My own article, “Trump and the Politics of Hate” which I wrote in July may be accessed here.
Photo credits: Top photo: Bigstockphoto.com
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