President Diceman
Denying insults of U.S. troops, Trump denies his entire schtick
N o sitting president in American history has dared to traduce indeed outright smear the men and women in uniform, those sworn to obey him as commander in chief, and to defend our Constitution.
It is the one fruit a president is not supposed to touch; the only one in the garden of norms that surely must neither be deflowered nor devoured.
But, as we have seen since 2016 — and as presidential aides who wish to keep their jobs have attested anonymously — the surest way to get Donald Trump to do something is to tell him that it’s just not done.
So, really, it should come as no surprise that Donald Trump, who wore a military uniform only once — in high school — referred to Americans who served in the Vietnam War as “suckers;” and called the war itself a “stupid war,” according to a recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic.
Trump immediately denied the story. And his legion of devoted apologists have taken to social media to aggressively dismiss his latest in a long line of verbal transgressions as “fake news” (i.e. facts that do not square with one’s personal beliefs which, once formed, are awfully hard to shake.)
Yet these facts square perfectly with the loud and proud public character of Donald Trump; the raw, unfiltered, shoot-from-the-lip, shaker and breaker of norms for whom his Myrmidons have roared and cheered all through the years; for saying and doing things he shouldn’t just because he can, and to hell with political correctness.
To state that key parts of The Atlantic story were in fact verified by The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post wouldn’t make a lick of difference to his tone-deaf supporters — those corporations, we all know, are part of the “fake news” mainstream media.
But that’s what makes this particular transgression stand out from the rest:: Trump’s attack on the United States Armed Forces was corroborated by Jennifer Griffin, National Security Correspondent for Fox News, whom Trump now wants fired.
Here’s what’s odd:: For a man who has unapologetically trashed, put-down, and insulted almost everyone and everything related to American Democracy — Republicans, Democrats, U.S. Congress, the U.S. legal system, the F.B.I, the NSA, etc., etc. — why in the world would anybody think that the U.S. Armed Forces were going to get a pass?
The King of Insult Politics
D onald Trump uses his Twitter account like a blow torch, squeezing off tweet after face-melting tweet at anyone who dares to criticize him. And even those who don’t.
During the summer protests against police brutality, he rage Tweeted more tweets in a single day than he did during his impeachment trial: 200 tweets and retweets, exactly.
Four years ago — several millennia in Twitter time — this was considered shockingly deviant behavior, something the American public had never seen, or expected, from a presidential candidate.
He was the candidate who was unafraid to subvert every social norm related to a presidential campaign. And it paid off. While every other major candidate, Republican and Democrat, played the game the old way, minding Ps and Qs, pretending to be all things to all people, Trump went “Bullworth” said Frank Rich.
While critics decried his antics as the end of democracy, others hurrahed him: “Since Trump declared his candidacy,” Rich wrote in 2015, “ he has performed a public service by exposing, however crudely and at times inadvertently, the posturings of both the Republicans and the Democrats and the foolishness and obsolescence of much of the political culture they share.”
He was the candidate who was unafraid to subvert every social norm related to a presidential campaign. And it paid off. In fact, it is not incorrect to state that he won the Republican nomination for being the candidate who violated those invisible, informal forces that have kept presidential candidates in line for decades:: Norms.
Trashing our military doesn’t seem out of character for Trump, but denying it does especially since, in his own, well-publicized words, he believes he could “shoot somebody and not lose votes.”
In the 2016 general election, nearly 63 million Americans made it clear that they were ready for anyone who was not cloaked in the camo of political politesse. They wanted someone who called everything and I mean everything the way he saw it; who ran a campaign as if there were nothing to lose, as a campaign without consequences.
It turned out that there were consequences for such norm-busting behavior:: Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States.
A Norm Too Far?
T rump didn’t stop being the deviationist after he took the oath. In fact, there isn’t a norm he has met that didn’t need busting, particularly related to presidential etiquette. With his endless stream of put-downs, he has become the Andrew Dice Clay of the Oval Office. (For a list of everyone and everything Trump has insulted on Twitter, click here.)
He grows bolder as he blows through one normative red light of the presidency after another, showing the world just how easy it is to violate all those shoulds and shouldn’ts of the office, and without a care in the world.
With every deviation, he reveals just how impotent the opposition remains, not only when it comes to bringing the man to book for doing and saying things that we, once, did not expect a president to do or say — at least not in public for Pete’s sake — but when it comes to violating actual oaths of office.
Remember: He is still impeached. And he is still president.
Like Michael Palin, bound to a chair and watching helplessly through tear-filled eyes as Kevin Kline devours his little gill-bearing pets in A Fish Called Wanda, opponents have cried and shouted and begged the man to behave, to be civil, to be a little kind — to please play the game as it was meant to be played: Make compromises the first term, go off the rails in the second, then let the media expose your wrongdoings a la Nixon, Reagan and Clinton.
But to no avail.
Every whimper from across the aisle only emboldens Trump to be more Trump-like, encouraging the man to look for still more norms to break in the cabinet of social expectations, which is almost bare.
For 1,376 days, Trump and his followers have been living the good ol’ life with him as their fearless norm breaker, even as America has become increasingly divided and troubled due, in large part, to the constant string of social deviations by its leader. There is only so much deviance a more perfect union can take before the union becomes less perfect.
And less of a union.
Like Icarus, who flew a little too high in the belief that there were no limits to those who dared and dared again, maybe Trump has forgotten or, as is likely the case, never learned that too much deviance from the wrong norms can bring the heat.
Enough to melt those wings of wax?
I’d be a fool to say with any certitude “yes,” given the man’s record. Having what is without a doubt the toughest of first terms for any elected president, running up against Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine, Robert Mueller, an impeachment, et al the man still reigns.
He knows nothing of the punishments or sanctions of deviating from social norms; he knows everything of their rewards…and the social change it can bring, though the value of said change, like beauty, is in the eye of beholder.
So why out of all the things he has said and done — and all that has been captured on camera and in print — has America’s presidential “Diceman” vehemently denied insulting one particular American institution?
Trashing our military doesn’t seem out of character for Trump, but denying it does especially since, in his own, well-publicized words, he believes he could “shoot somebody and not lose votes.”
If love and loyalty as he defines it means facts, any facts, don’t matter, why not man up and own the remarks, especially now that even Fox News has verified them?
If Trump decides to walk it back on this one, he’ll violate the very norms that got him the job — and that his supporters adore:: the norms of a cold, unfeeling and remorseless put-down king.
