The 12.26.2024 issue of The London Review of Books includes Eliot Weinberger’s stunning piece on the Trump presidency, “Incoming!“.
It begins:
“They came from Florida, from Fox News and Fox Business, square-jawed men and women with big hair and collagen lips.
They came from professional football and World Wrestling Entertainment.
They came from daytime talk shows and reality television.
They were ‘straight out of central casting’, as the future president said.
Some of the women resembled his daughter and some of the women resembled his wife. None of the men resembled him.
A squad of them came with the future president to Madison Square Garden to watch Ultimate Fighting matches.
The future secretary of defence is adorned with the white supremacist tattoos of a Jerusalem cross, the Crusader rallying cry ‘Deus vult’ and an AR-15 assault rifle flanking an American flag.”
And ends:
“The future president is currently selling caps, wrapping paper, blankets, football jerseys, boat flags, pickleball paddles, necklaces, earrings, silk ties, chopping boards, Christmas decorations, slippers, tie clips, door mats, aprons, pyjamas, socks, Advent calendars, Christmas stockings, mugs, keychains, sweatshirts, note cards, bracelets, scented candles, beach bags, flip-flops, bathrobes, towels, sunglasses, corkscrews, water bottles, stickers, jogging pants, wine and champagne glasses, earbuds, hoodies, jelly beans, cookies, chocolates, honey, jewellery boxes, whiskey decanters, trays, wallets, flasks, wines, coasters, umbrellas, golf bags, plates, ashtrays, sports bras and dog leashes – all with his name on them.
Also available are a $100,000 gold watch, a $11,000 autographed guitar, digital trading card NFTs featuring the future president in heroic historic tableaux, God Bless the USA Bibles, Never Surrender High-Top Sneakers, Fight Fight Fight Cologne for Men (‘For patriots who never back down’) and a celebratory Victory Cologne, which comes in a bottle in the shape of the future president’s head.
The future secretary of state had previously called the future president a ‘con artist’, a ‘Third World strongman’, ‘the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency’, ‘a person that has no ideas of any substance’ and a ‘guy with the worst spray tan in America’ who wets his pants. He now says: ‘I didn’t know him as a person.’”
Ouch! If Trump was a private citizen he would be incarcerated in a mental institution for being “a danger to himself or others”…in MA that is the bar for when clients are by law institutionalized.