The Defining Trump Aphorism

“A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself,” said A.A. Milne, creator of the incorrigibly slothful Winnie-the-Pooh. Like his ursine progeny, too many writers lean on cribbed quips to make a point. Same for non-literary types, who increasingly resort to memes and emojis to express a simple feeling, without the labor of picking the correct cadence of words.

To paraphrase one afroed bunco-puller, if you typed out “I love you,” you messed up. It should have been a “❤️”.

In that lazy vein, I’ll offer up an easy heuristic on understanding the decade of Trump, which is fast becoming the most consequential political age of the past half-century. Journalists take note! Same with you, adjunct community college history professors. I’m cramming years’ worth of copy down for you. Bookmark this page!

In the early Trump era, occasionally referred to as “first term,” the President was defined by Salena Zito’s memorable apothegm: “the press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” You recall the air-castle claims: building a southern wall Mexico picks up the tab for; carpet bombing the MidEast with impunity; tariffing every saleable jot and title coming into the country while simultaneously sending the stock market skyward.

Trump took the usual political promise of “free glory” and hyperbolized it to such a comic degree that no rational person took this gold-gilded future prima facie. But, most, from the lowliest rural voter to foreign heads of state, understood that Trump meant to shake up the neoliberal consensus. He succeeded, albeit with the tiny handicap of not effecting America’s total shirking from its shrieval role. Baby presidential steps.

What, then, is the tagline for Trump Term Two? Maybe a cine-cliché? “This time it’s personal”? Or “Now he means business”?

MAGA underlings in the EEOB have already coined their own will-to-power motto: “You can just do stuff.” It’s an echo of Karl Rove’s famous “we create our own reality” bluster. It’s also at odds with our constitutionally tethered system that was written to forfend Caesarism. Not to mention the practicalities that buoy voter sentiment. “Doin’ stuff” ain’t doin’ enough. General prices seem stubbornly high. The Federal Reserve is averse to rate cuts. Pledged deportation dragnets have aroused violent resistance. Vanity projects, like constructing a White House ballroom or restamping the Kennedy Center, are Antoinetteish, doing not a whit to ameliorate middle class anxiety.

Opinion polls follow this distractedness downward. Trump’s negatives outweigh his favorables. Since we’re on the prosiness theme, some nautical metaphors: the President is underwater; the Administration is bound to the anchor of ineffectualness, sinking fast; full fathom five thy presidency lies.

The seesawing of plus to minus for a president means the so-called soft, squishy mean has slipped away. For Trump, losing the moderate gentry is not surprising. The guy tweets—or “truths” because his musings once upset Twitter’s terms of service—like a subterranean troll who hasn’t showered in weeks. He also employs a panting coterie of sycophants whose only redeeming quality is a feral fidelity to the boss.

Trump tromps propriety with another inveterate trait: his inability to mouth anything in a concealed whisper. Euphemisms, code, double-meaning, sophistry—all a foreign tongue to the outerborough builder. Instead of delicately masking his intention by announcing a desire to “expand the United States’s zone of security to ensure strategic defense of our nation and allies,” Trump just blurts out that he hankers for Greenland and damn the Danes for objecting.

On illegal immigration, the top-chop issue of Trumpism, the Administration can’t help but operate overmuch. The Minneapolis mischigas demonstrated how overzealous law enforcement elicits its own counterforce, resulting in headlines that make the average insurance salesman uncomfortably gulp his breakfast shake.

That queasiness is the spirit behind the quintessential quote of Trump’s sequel run. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, heterodox novelist Lionel Shriver pithily summed up the President’s negative regard. “Trump does things I would like him to do but not the way I would like him to do it.”

In one sentence, twenty words, and a missing comma, Shriver captures the normie-suburban-bourgeois feeling about Donald Trump. Do the swing-state moms and minivan-driving dads approve of illegal-alien deportations, tax cuts, and rebuilding American industry to compete with China? Yes. Will they suffer a hit to their 401(k) to do? Absolutely not. Do they want to argue out the pros and cons of the administration over Thanksgiving with their shrieking liberal nieces? No again. Do they want to be accosted and called “racist” by septum-pierced protesters when trying to pick up a pack of chicken thighs for dinner? Ditto no.

In politics, Gore Vidal wrote, those “who seem to oppose are often secret supporters.” The inverse is true: those who vote for something come to regret it when the sausage is made plain.