The Puerile President

Donald Trump’s most serious defect, among many, is that he learns nothing.

He is incapable of learning from history, because he doesn’t know any.  He is incapable of learning from his mistakes because his vanity won’t allow him to admit to any. 

Large events on the world stage seem not to interest him.  Small events, like perceived slights by critics at home, consume him.  This is the trait of a spoiled self-centred brat who can only think in terms of retribution.

Which is why he’s still issuing puerile, misogynistic tweets, the latest to a television news presenter, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC who, he claims, was “bleeding from a face lift” when she stayed at his Florida house in Mar-a-Lago in January.  Back then, Brzezinski and her on-and off-screen partner Joe Scarborough, were Trump fans.  Since then, apparently, they have soured on the man and the president, attacking him both personally and politically. Brzezinski recently called him on air a ‘proven liar’ and made a reference to his ‘teensy’ hands.

Going after Trump because of some perceived physical inadequacy was on her part childish enough.  Responding to it, as Trump did, and the way he did it, simply compounded the felony.  

Why does the president of the United States stoop to such juvenile personal exchanges that would be embarrassing in a junior school playground?  He can’t help himself, that’s why.  He can’t help himself because he carries in an adult’s developed body a seriously underdeveloped child’s brain.  He can’t help himself because he has never learned how.  He has no wish to learn how.  He probably couldn’t learn how even if he wanted to.  Those misogynistic impulses he releases on Twitter are deeply imbedded in his genetic structure. 

That is why he must attack a television presenter with silly ‘ya-boo’ jibes.  And why, last week at the White House, he embarrassed an Irish television reporter, as the cameras were clicking, by complimenting her on her smile.  And why, during the election campaign, a tape emerged of him boasting about ‘grabbing pussy’.  

Nothing has changed.  Nothing will change. 

Bad as Trump’s manners are, his grammar is worse.  The two are mutually inclusive.  Here is the full text of his tweet to Brzezinski.  “I hear poorly rated (programme) Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch any more).  Then how come low IQ Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came … to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve and insisted on joining me.  She was bleeding badly from a face-lift.  I said no.”

This is the language of a semi-literate half-wit.  He not only tweets like that, he speaks like that.  Worse, he thinks like that – all of which demeans the office of the presidency, demeans the man, and demeans the country.  The demeaning goes on, and will go on, like the Mississippi, in full flood, ever-widening and unstoppable.

Abusing the language falls well behind abusing women but both put me in despair of the American body politic, the American body everything..  

To misquote Henry II, will no one rid us of this turbulent clot?