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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNational Review: "Death of a F***ing Salesman: Donald Trump can't close the deal. "
Found via a tweet from the NYT's Glenn Thrush:
Link to tweet
From that stunning NR article by Kevin Williamson -- which I hope you'll all read in its entirety:
Whats notable about the advice offered to young men aspiring to be alpha males is that it is consistent with the classic salesmanship advice offered by the real-world versions of Blake in a hundred thousand business-inspiration books (Og Mandinos The Greatest Salesman in the World is the classic of the genre) and self-help tomes, summarized in an old Alcoholics Anonymous slogan: Fake it til you make it. For the pick-up artists, the idea is that simply acting in social situations as though one were confident, successful, and naturally masterful is a pretty good substitute for being those things. Never mind the advice of Cicero (esse quam vider, be rather than seem) or Rush just go around acting like Blake and people will treat you like Blake.
If that sounds preposterous, remind yourself who the president of the United States of America is.
Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans and America went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is. Trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man.
He has had a middling career in real estate and a poor one as a hotelier and casino operator but convinced people he is a titan of industry. He has never managed a large, complex corporate enterprise, but he did play an executive on a reality show. He presents himself as a confident ladies man but is so insecure that he invented an imaginary friend to lie to the New York press about his love life and is now married to a woman who is open and blasé about the fact that she married him for his money. He fixates on certain words (negotiator) and certain classes of words (mainly adjectives and adverbs, bigly, major, world-class, top, and superlatives), but he isnt much of a negotiator, manager, or leader. He cannot negotiate a health-care deal among members of a party desperate for one, cant manage his own factionalized and leak-ridden White House, and cannot lead a political movement that aspires to anything greater than the service of his own pathetic vanity.
He wants to be John Wayne, but what he is is Woody Allen without the humor. Peggy Noonan, to whom we owe that observation, has his number: He is soft, weak, whimpering, and petulant. He isnt smart enough to do the job and isnt man enough to own up to the fact. For all his gold-plated toilets, he is at heart that middling junior salesman watching Glengarry Glen Ross and thinking to himself: Thats the man I want to be. How many times do you imagine he has stood in front of a mirror trying to project like Alec Baldwin? Unfortunately for the president, its Baldwin who does the good imitation of Trump, not the other way around.
-snip-
catbyte
(34,485 posts)Cirque du So-What
(25,999 posts)which I really appreciate. Great expansion on the 'born on third base but thinks he hit a triple' theme.
Tanuki
(14,924 posts)Loge23
(3,922 posts)Reading through articles like this may be the biggest difference between the #IPOTUS supporters and the rest of us.
Great article!
lark
(23,166 posts)It gets to a real truth, drumpf is all fake and fury about nothing just to make himself look tough. Must be tough when he's such a natural whiney crybaby, poor little handed man.
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)I may just make that my sig!
calimary
(81,527 posts)"He is soft, weak, whimpering, and petulant. He isnt smart enough to do the job and isnt man enough to own up to the fact."
You can actually stop at the word "petulant." He's a large-size piss-ant, whiny-ass and juvenile. I keep wondering if he's five years old, or eight years old, or three years old.
I have very little respect for the equally simpering, sighing, ready-to-collapse-onto-her-fainting-couch Peggy Noonan, who worshipped Ronald Reagan so shamelessly that I later took to referring to her as "Reagan's Monica." I don't think the whole "presidential kneepads" thing fit - literally, at least - although figuratively, I felt you could almost see hints of them peeking out from below the hemlines of her skirts.
Shit - I keep being reminded of an appearance she made on "Hardball," and Chris Matthews was starting to bear down on her about the failings of her republi-CON heroes (I think it was bush/cheney), and her response was classic. Classic drama queen. She signed deeply. Tilted her head to one side with this melodramatic facial expression of abject pain and pathos, and in a great, gushing display of agony tried to stop him with "CHRIStopher... CHRIStopher... " What's next, Peg? Tearing your garment and passing out, clutching your pearls in full-on drama school desperation before you prostrate yourself down across the railroad tracks waiting for some Reagan figure to rescue you and scoop you up in his manly arms and carry you away to that dream castle in the clouds? Have you lost ALL self-respect, girlfriend?
SHAMELESS. DISGRACEFUL! Spectacularly EMBARRASSING! Yet sometimes she still turns a phrase rather well. Useful idiots are available EVERYWHERE.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,914 posts)I've always despised her, never understood how she could possibly have been a Reagan groupie. And generally don't pay any attention to her proclamations.
SergeStorms
(19,204 posts)and he could portray a strong, effective leader, even though he was a pathetic wuss himself. Who calls their wife, "mommy"?
Trump isn't much of an actor, or a human being. Reagan could make many people temporarily suspend their disbelief. Trump could fool weak minded malcontents, and for the most weak minded, still does. For the rest of us though, Trump has become, to paraphrase Hamlet;
Trump's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: He is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
MLAA
(17,340 posts)hedda_foil
(16,375 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Perfect description of Trump. A very weak man trying so hard to pretend that he is strong. He will never be strong. It's just not in his character. He is all id and weakness.
dalton99a
(81,637 posts)riversedge
(70,349 posts)I am hoping they coffee themselves out of the WH--and soon.
....... Hence the cartoon tough-guy act. Scaramuccis star didnt fade when he gave that batty and profane interview in which he reimagined Steve Bannon as a kind of autoerotic yogi. Thats Scaramuccis best impersonation of the sort of man the president of these United States, God help us, aspires to be.
But he isnt that guy. He isnt Blake. Hes poor sad old Shelley Levene, who cannot close the deal, who spends his nights whining about the unfairness of it all.
So, listen up, Team Trump: Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.
Got that?
Saviolo
(3,283 posts)... my brain substituted the "word" Covfefe.
(despite the fact that it was meant to be coverage)
RainCaster
(10,929 posts)"Scaramuccis star didnt fade when he gave that batty and profane interview in which he reimagined Steve Bannon as a kind of autoerotic yogi."
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)if Dump reads it. Not likely since he doesn't read, but we can always hope!
SunSeeker
(51,745 posts)Elwood P Dowd
(11,443 posts)I'm 70 and can't remember anything like it.
Abu Pepe
(637 posts)JHB
(37,163 posts)They made a President Trump possible. Trump thumped the same drums that they have. They've spent a half century failing against "liberal media bias", and laid the blueprints for the conservative media bubble.
They built his base.
They're complaining now because they lost control of the beast they spent 50 years feeding and nurturing.
hedda_foil
(16,375 posts)livetohike
(22,165 posts)Paladin
(28,277 posts)McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)highplainsdem
(49,045 posts)barbtries
(28,813 posts)very much.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)are on their knees to admire these same degenerate qualities in Comrade Casino, the ignoble republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief.
I just don't get it. Why do republicans go all submissive to kiss the flabby keester of lameass whiney liar? Kinda bizarre & frankly un-manly, it must be observed.
JHB
(37,163 posts)...remarkable what sort of things they will swallow whole and line up for seconds.
malaise
(269,219 posts)and accurate - nailed him!
rpannier
(24,342 posts)underpants
(182,949 posts)In less words that I am using here. Just saying. We can't imagine the National Review to have an original thought.
Miles Archer
(18,837 posts)That concept was discussed in a similar fashion on MSNBC...it was a roundtable discussion, and it might have been Eugene Robinson who made the observation...not 100% positive as I tend to have these shows on as "background noise" rather than something I watch with rapt attention...but the statement made was "Scaramucci is Trump's "ID"...this is the man who Trump wants to be."
I thought the article was well-written and the thoughts were well-organized, but it was more of a summation of what we already know, rather than a "lightbulb moment." Trump IS Biff from Back to the future, Scaramucci THINKS he's a bastard son of the Baldwin character AND Joe Pesci, and together, it's called "The Trump Administration."
Blue Owl
(50,529 posts)n/t
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Seriously?
rpannier
(24,342 posts)The Never Trump Review
They were opposed to il douche from the beginning
That has not changed
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)HE'S YOURS. You own this. Donald Fucking Clusterfuck Trump is the natural and LOGICAL outcome of all the shit your party and ideological wing has done for the past 30, 40, 50 years or more. The anti-intellectualism. The Xenophobia. The hate. The coldness, the callousness, the meanness.
Don't be like "oh, no, where'd all this come from?" Like you weren't the fucking party of Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or Pat Buchanan or Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew or Joseph McCarthy.
You gave us this.
Cosmocat
(14,575 posts)The very embodiment.
That is why, when he came down the escalator I said he was no joke, and he was a very real threat to win their nomination.
These people not only gave skull fucked 1/3 of the country, they turned their own brains to mush, the disconnect needed to spew their bullshit leaves them completely oblivious to how poisonous what they say is.
Demsrule86
(68,715 posts)We still have the gerrymander.
NNadir
(33,574 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,364 posts)Resist and impeach