The presidential nominating contests have been decided and here we are, faced with a choice that a majority of Americans don’t want to see: the Grumpy Old Men election, the septuagenarian vs the octogenarian. Don’t hold your breath for the lofty rhetoric of Roosevelt and Lincoln, or Clinton and Obama. Get ready for mumbled words, snarled syntax and thoughts as organized as frogs in a wheelbarrow.
Joe Biden’s rhetorical challenges are long and legendary. But by now, we’re used to them and have even accepted them in a way. Trump’s rhetoric is of an altogether different world. As the campaign has progressed, his oration has become ever more ornate and fantastical, bordering at times on hallucinogenic.
In another universe, Trump might be seen as an experimental artist like Gertrude Stein. She was famous for her “a rose is a rose is a rose” style of repetitive writing, to which Trump pays homage with circular sentences like “Crooked Joe, you’re fired, get outta here, you’re fired, you’re incompetent, get outta here, you’re destroying our nation, get the hell outta here, you’re destroying our country.”
Or Trump might be seen as an acolyte of William Burroughs of “Naked Lunch” fame, whose jarring “cut-and-paste” style of composition opened the door for a generation of experimental writers. The way Trump changes topics, often several times in a single sentence, is head-spinning.
The best literary comparison is probably with William Faulkner, whose novel “Absalom, Absalom” once held the Guinness Book of World Records’ slot for the world’s longest sentence at 1,288 words. Some of Trump’s sentences are so long that you could have Domino’s delivered before you get to the end. They aren’t, however, as artful as Faulkner’s.
But in the universe where we all live Trump, of course, isn’t interested in art. He’s only interested in himself and victory at all costs. And at this point in his political career Trump’s unlikely to change his style; in fact, he seems to become more shocking — linguistically, intellectually and morally — every time he speaks. He’s become the edgiest of edgelords.
So as a small contribution to the health of democracy, JEP has waded through a couple of Trump’s recent rally speeches in Georgia and Ohio — just so you don’t have to — and come away with some examples that illuminate the workings of a mind that has a good chance at becoming the 47th President of the United States. We’ve skipped the excerpts that have already made headlines, like the “bloodbath” remark, since they’ve been covered elsewhere.
What we’re focusing on today is the language of a narcissist in full bloom — unchecked, unscripted and unhinged. You’ve been warned. Please note: these are all verbatim quotes, so to the extent they don’t make sense all credit goes to the speaker.
Excerpts from a rally in Rome, GA on March 9:
You take a look at MSDNC1, how evil they are, they’re evil, they’re sick, they shouldn’t even be allowed to do what they do, they’re so corrupt, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it, they are fighting me, and to think that I had The Apprentice on NBC and I do so great for them, I said before the election, long before (unintelligible), well one thing for sure, I did so much I made so much money for NBC they hadn’t had a number one show in years they were dying and that idiot Jeff Zucker was running it poorly, he was running it into the ground and I came on and I gave them ratings they hadn’t had in years, and when I said I’m gonna leave the show now, they wanted me to extend, instead they got Arnold Schwarzenegger, and what happened was I said no, I’m gonna leave because (here Trump pauses and looks directly at the front row), boy are you quiet when you hear this one cause you haven’t heard this one before, this isn’t part of the repertoire, right Burt? You haven’t heard this one, you’re so quiet, it’s almost like when I do The Snake2, it’s very quiet. You can hear a pin drop. I said one thing that’s going to happen, if I decide to leave the show, they wanted me to extend, they offered me three years, anything I wanted, I said no, I’m gonna run for President. You give up prime time television, Thursday nights, it was a hard thing to do but I said no, I’m gonna run for president and they were so upset and they said no, no, no, and I decided to do it.
But then they used Arnold Schwarzenegger, big movie star, and he failed so badly.3 Actually, they asked me, because I own (the show) with Mark Burnett, Mark Burnett’s great, I own it and they said you own it would you like to have it do well, I said yeah, they said would you rather have it do unbelievably well with Arnold, a big movie star, or would you rather have it fail, so I thought about it for a little while and I said, honestly, I’d much rather have it fail because it makes me look better, right? I’m not looking for him to come and top Trump.
There’s never been a person who’s run for president who hasn’t been a politician or a general, I think it’s 92 percent were politicians and 8 percent were generals — did anybody know these little facts, these little facts of wisdom? So I guess you had to be a general, I guess an admiral and all, but there were no admirals, 8 percent generals and 92 percent politicians. I said I don’t care, doesn’t matter to me, I’m gonna give it a shot and I announced and immediately went to number one and stayed there for a long time. And remember I had center of stage and then I got angry and then I said, no, no, because I want to be center, I don’t want to be tied for center, those guys don’t come close, so we had to have a different number, we had to have nine or it had to be 11, it had to be something but it couldn’t be an even number and they got angry at me so I said no, I’m not gonna do it, so then they ended up doing what I said.
Women love me, I protect women, I protected, I protect. They talk about suburban housewives, and look at that (points to the audience), they are suburban housewives from North Carolina, they follow me, this is their 117th rally, you believe that? 117. I don’t know what the hell their husbands are doing, they’re at home saying, ‘Is my wife OK?’
Suburban housewives want something very important, they want security. They don’t want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying I’m gonna use your kitchen, I’m gonna use your bedroom and there’s not a damn thing, and that’s the nice ones, OK, that’s the nice ones.
We have to be careful of WWIII, I’m not gonna let that happen, but right now we’re very close to a world war in this whole mess we’re in. When I left we had no problem, everybody was respecting us, they respected the president and they respected the country. We had no problems, now we have problems all over the place. I had dinner last night with a great gentleman from Hungary, the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, very tough, very, very tough, some people don’t like him because he’s tough. And they were interviewing him and he said two months ago — he said it again last night and I appreciate it — he said the problem with America is they need Trump back as president, when Trump was president there were none of these problems. Israel wouldn’t have been attacked, Ukraine and Russia wouldn’t be fighting, I know Putin very well, there was no way he was going in, Putin would never have gone in under any circumstances.
Pundits and inside sources say the attacks on me will be violent. Biden said it. You know what their whole plan is? It was leaked the other day by one of the many people who probably thought it was wrong. Their whole plan is to go after Trump every way possible, especially criminally and legally. How would you like to have my life, you like that life? Darling, I go home to my wonderful First Lady, she’s never heard the word indictment, neither did I until — I got indicted so many times in the past few months, I got indicted more than the late, great Al Capone, did anyone ever hear of him? Alphonse Capone. He was the meanest of them all, he was a gangster, if he had dinner with you and he didn’t like you, you would be found dead the next morning and your wife would not talk either because she was petrified. No, no, this was Al Capone, I got indicted and my parents were looking down on me and they’re saying this is my son, he’s such a good boy, he didn’t do this shit. Think of it! I got indicted more than Alphonse Capone, the meanest Scarface — did anybody see the movie ‘Scarface?’ He was not a nice man, even Jim Jordan (points to Jordan in the audience) would be afraid of Scarface. Everybody was afraid of Scarface, but Scarface had a different kind of thing, they go after him like they go after me, I can tell you that.
Excerpts from a rally in Dayton, OH, March 17
It’s a beautiful day, a little windy out here I must say to be honest with you, but that’s OK, it’s good when you don’t have to use a teleprompter cause I can’t read a word, they’re moving around, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing up here Bernie (Moreno),4 these suckers are moving, my guys did a great job of planting them solidly. Thank goodness we can do a non-teleprompter speech, it’s actually much better. Isn’t it nice to have a president who doesn’t need a teleprompter?
(Speaking of Laken Riley) “Instead of apologizing to Laken’s family, Joe Biden apologized to the killer for calling him illegal. Oohh, I shouldn’t have done that. That’s the problem. They’re more concerned with criminals than they are with the people of our country, that built our country, that are keeping our country afloat. And let me tell you, seven months is not a long time in one way, in another time it’s an eternity because these guys can do damage like nobody’s ever . . . I don’t know, they either hate our country or they’re grossly incompetent, and anybody that can cheat on elections the way they do is not incompetent, OK? I think they hate our country.
(Trump reads “The Snake,” the song lyrics he’s recited for years as a self-described metaphor for illegal immigration). That’s where we are right now, we’re taking in snakes, taking in snakes. We gotta smile about this, we gotta smile, it’s so crazy. We gotta keep our chin up because nothing like this has ever happened before, it’s never happened before.
And what’s happening with the Catholics? Any Catholic that votes for this numbskull is crazy because you are being persecuted. Now I’m being persecuted I think more than anybody, but who the hell knows. You know, all my life, you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson, a great general and a very good president, they say he was persecuted as president more than anyone else,5 second was Abraham Lincoln, this is just what they said, it’s in the history books, they were brutal, Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died because of it, died of a broken heart, but she died over it, he was never quite the same, but they say Andrew Jackson, they say Abraham Lincoln was second, but in all fairness he did have a Civil War, so you would think that would cause a problem, right? But nobody comes close to Trump.
On his Republican opponents: We campaigned for a year and I obliterate my competition, you know, and they said, Sir, please don’t talk about these people that way, they’re Republicans. I said, I don’t give a shit, they’re terrible. I said I don’t care. My highly paid advisors said, Sir, you shouldn’t talk to them about that, one of the people said, they said, are you going to run against the president and he said I have no comment. To me, that meant he’s running so I hit him hard, I hit him low, just like we did with ISIS, we hit him hard, we him low, we hit him high, we hit him in the middle, we hit him from on top, we even came under the ground. We hit this guy so hard by the time he announced he didn’t know what the hell happened. People said, what happened to him? He’s a shell of a man.
You look at what Democrats have done, look at Illinois, you have this guy Pritzker, I don’t know, he’s too busy eating, he eats all the time. Would you like a hamburger, how many would you like? Five. I’ll have five burgers. You go to his office, would you like a hamburger, yeah, OK, I’ll have five hamburgers please. Who the hell orders five burgers?
If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.
Trump often likes to refer to MSNBC as an outlet of the Democratic National Committee to highlight the outlet’s liberal slant.
“The Snake” is, ironically, a song written by civil rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963 that Trump often quotes as a “metaphor” for illegal immigration.
Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeded Trump as host of “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2016, but resigned from the show a year later. “I loved every second of working with NBC and Mark Burnett. Everyone – from the celebrities to the crew to the marketing department – was a straight 10, and I would absolutely work with all of them again on a show that doesn’t have this baggage,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement following an interview with Empire magazine, in which he said that the show suffered from its association with Trump.
Bernie Moreno, a Republican businessman from Cleveland, won the Ohio primary for U.S. Senator this week by a landslide after being endorsed by Trump.
Andrew Jackson’s primary historical legacy is not as the most persecuted President in history, but as a slaver and ethnic cleanser who was responsible for forcibly relocating Native Americans from the South to make way for slave plantations.
It's terrifying.
Saw this on FB with pic of Biden: He's not the lesser of two evils. He's the far better human and it's not even close.
So, there I am. I’m reading. Reading Iike no one’s ever read before. One of the best readers ever, they say. No one’s ever read before me. And I’m breathing while I’m reading. Very hard to do, reading and breathing. I go in and I go out. Sometimes I go in twice. Very hard to do. Breathing. Twice But you gotta go out. Never forget to go out. Lincoln forgot to go out and it killed him. Read the “Something” Address. Forgot to go out. Dead, right there. Worst address ever.