One is hard-pressed to find a more brilliant characterization of the Trump phenomenon than George Will’s recent column “Trump is a sad specimen” (Jan. 19, TribLIVE). Will continues his Trump resistance, begun with his early take on 45 as “a bloviating ignoramus” when the “sad specimen” first emerged on the political scene.
The downside to all of this, however, is that it will have no effect on the Trump base, whom Will himself confesses “remains oblivious to his likely contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous fictions.” Some of his base recognize Trump for the fraud that he is, but rally to his banner because their bowl of economic porridge is full. They simply have sold their integrity for economic prosperity.
Lest honest Republicans fear that Will is a lone Republican voice crying in the wilderness, they might recall the late conservative psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer’s words published in 2016: ” I used to think Trump was an 11-year old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise. … He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.” The deflation is beginning.
Robert Jedrzejewski
Tarentum