Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
President Donald Trump wandered through a litany of grievances and a long list of concerns during his announcement of the Kennedy Center honorees at the iconic Washington, D.C., venue on Wednesday.
During his lengthy remarks, Trump falsely claimed once again that he won the “rigged” 2020 election that he actually lost, he spoke about renovations to the White House and the Kennedy Center, he gave a lesson about the importance of grass, he praised U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for newly-released favorable poll numbers, he repeatedly attacked Democrats, talked about purchasing new seats rather than refurbishing the ones at the Kennedy Center, claimed trillions of dollars in tariffs are coming in from foreign countries all over the world, acknowledged accusations of being a “dictator” after taking over Washington, D.C.’s police force, claimed D.C.’s crime statistics are fraudulent, and warned that he may do the same to top Democratic cities across the nation that he did to the nation’s capital city — all before taking questions from reporters.
As he took questions, the President continued to veer off topic. He told reporters that Congressional Democrats are led by “insane” and “crazy” people, he called the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York a “communist,” he claimed that there are no taxes on Social Security payments, he complained about “potholes” in D.C.’s roads, called for a “very talented asphalt-type person” to repave the roads, and brushed off news Russia had hacked into U.S. federal court computer systems.
Trump continued talking to reporters, saying that he turned down “a couple of wokesters” who were nominated, talked about viewership for his Apprentice TV series, claimed he “finished” building the wall at the Southern border during his first term, complained about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s building renovations, talked about his nicknames for Powell — “Too Late” and for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — “Pocahontas,” U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) — “Shifty Schiff,” and Hillary Clinton — “Crooked Hillary.”
Some excerpts:
“The bones are so good,” Trump said of the Kennedy Center. “The bones of a building, you don’t have good bones, you might as well forget it. I’m working in another building, a thing, called the White House. We’re fixing it up so beautifully. It needed it.”
He also said, “we’re going to also fix up a place called Washington, D.C. We’re going to make it so beautiful again, we’re going to be redoing the parks, redoing the grass. You know, grass isn’t a lifetime like people have a lifetime, and a lifetime of this grass is long been gone when you look at the parks where the grass is all tired, exhausted, we’re going to redo the grass with the finest grasses. I know a lot about grass because I own a lot of golf courses, and if you don’t have good grass, you’re not in business very long.”
“Lindsey Graham. By the way, you have very good poll numbers. Lindsey, I just saw congratulations.”
“We ended the woke political programming, and we’re restoring the Kennedy Center as the premier venue for performing arts anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world.”
Trump also said, “we secured the critical funding necessary to rebuild the building and we’re gonna get all brand new, highest level seats magnificent seats, and it’s gonna be all new. We could have taken the existing ones and do it a little paint job, a little fabric, but it’s not the same thing. So we’ll be taking out next season, all of the seats will be taken out.”
“If we say, ‘We want to stop crime in this country, or, as an example, bail, we want to make it so that people if they murder somebody, they’re in jail, they don’t get out on no bail,” Democrats “say, ‘We don’t want that. We want people to murder somebody, and they immediately are released, and they go out and murder somebody else.”
Crime in Washington, D.C. “is the worst that’s ever been, but it started as of about yesterday. It started, you see a big change, and people are feeling safe already. I’ve had so many calls. ‘Thank you, sir, thank you.’ They were afraid to walk out. They’re not afraid anymore.”
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Reprinted with permission from Alternet
I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on with Donald Trump’s recent use of profane language and the new level of personal attacks he’s hitting on the campaign trail. Listen to how he described Kamala Harris in Detroit last Friday: “She’s a shit vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here, you’re fired. Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Kamala.”
The next day, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump led a call-and-response to his audience with, “Such a horrible four years. We had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to…”
“Shit!” came the eager response from his rally-goers. Trump then urged them to get out and vote to send the message, “We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president.”
The New York Times reported that in his opening at the same Pennsylvania rally, Trump’s “monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis.” Trump’s “monologue” about his “friend Arnold Palmer” consisted of this: “This is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s unbelievable.’” The Times reported that Trump “chuckled” at the crowd’s reaction, later confiding, “I had to tell you the shower part of it because it’s true. What can I tell you? We want to be honest.”
The Times reported that Trump’s advisers “billed Saturday’s speech as the start of his efforts to make a closing argument to voters.” If it’s true that this is all part of his “closing argument,” then what Trump said in Detroit and Pennsylvania wasn’t the decompensation Mary Trump wrote that she saw in him the other day. It was purposeful. He meant every word.
What does that say not only about Trump, but about his voters? What is he trying to do?
Without necessarily knowing what he’s doing, I think he’s breaking down childhood permission structures and inviting his audience to join in. Think about learning so-called dirty words for the first time as a child and your parents’ reaction when you came home and used them. A common reaction would be, Wash those words out of your mouth! We don’t talk that way in this house.
Because you’re not expecting it, the word, “shit,” coming out of the mouth of a nine-year-old can be at once shocking, endearing, even titillating. Now turn that scenario upside down and think of the same word uttered by no less an authority figure than a presidential candidate. The reaction by a crowd of adults can be nearly identical. Oh, my God, he went there! Isn’t that amazing? I was just thinking the same thing myself.
Trump is doing what he’s always done: breaking rules and norms. He’s like the bad boy in class that called the teacher an asshole and his parents got called into the principal’s office. He got in trouble, but it made him famous, because everybody agreed with him, even some of the teachers. The teacher is an asshole. He’s the one who had the guts to say it.
Trump has been bringing his MAGA base along with him as he has crossed one boundary after another, from calling Mexican immigrants “criminals and rapists” to saying “there are good people on both sides” of a demonstration by Nazi sympathizers and white supremacists in Charlottesville, to calling the attack on the Capitol on January 6 “a day of love” in a speech at a rally on Thursday, to comparing those arrested for crimes at the Capitol to “the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”
All this stuff is far outside the bounds of political discourse in this country, and pundits have pointed out time and again that his MAGA base has come to expect it of Trump. In fact, they love him for it.
He has built a primal connection with a large part of our population that was clearly looking for one. To be part of what we might call America’s white underclass – those without college educations, who cannot afford to buy a home, who live paycheck-to-paycheck, who believe that “others” have been given what they haven’t, such as preference in college admissions or going to the “head of the line” when it comes to jobs – is to remain in a childlike state of need and jealousy of those seen to be “better” than they are.
And along comes Donald Trump, the guy from The Apprentice, and his followers think that not only does he believe in them, but he also speaks their language. He isn’t afraid to describe a woman as “hot,” he’s not afraid to make fun of disabled people, he’s not afraid of being called out for saying that Blacks are given advantages denied to whites.
This is the way Trump got away with the stuff he said on the Access Hollywood tapes. He said it was “just locker room talk,” and for many people, especially those who voted for him a couple of weeks later, that’s exactly what it was. What was his description of Arnold Palmer in the clubhouse showers? Locker room talk. What’s dropping the occasional N-word? Locker room talk. What’s a joke about the guy who “spazzed out” on the third tee? Locker room talk.
At his rally in Detroit, Trump riffed on an attack on Joe Biden, couched in language about his wife: “Jill, get your fat husband off the couch,” Trump yelled. “Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump, he’s going to save our country. Get that guy the hell off our— get him up, Jill, slap him around. Get him up. Get him up, Jill. We want him off the couch to get out and vote.”
That’s the rant of every employee who ever had a boss he disrespected. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He even throws in “we” in the final sentence of the rant, bringing his MAGA followers along with him. To Trump It’s not just him who disrespects Joe Biden and his wife, Jill. It’s everyone at his rallies, everyone in their neighborhoods back home, everyone in their families.
This stuff is way more dangerous than it seems. Adolf Hitler talked about what “we” know about the Jews, how “we” need them out of our country, how “we” know about their greed and their otherness, their non-Christianity, their Jewishness.
Trump is closing his argument with his base by reminding them how much they are like him, that “we” all feel the same way he does about immigrants and Blacks and women and the disabled and everyone who is not just like they are, which is white and Christian followers of Donald Trump.
We’ll see in two weeks how well the two closing arguments work: Kamala Harris’ empathy for, among others, those Trump and his MAGA base hate, versus the hatred itself.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
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