Jay Willis, GQ: This Is the Real Donald Trump (must-read)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.gq.com/story/the-real-donald-trump

It's tempting to label this episode as some variety of "crazy," or "insane," or "deranged," or any of the other hyperbolic words we often wryly employ to explain away disturbing behavior we don't fully understand. Not now, though. Donald Trump snapped on Tuesday, revealing himself to be a deeply angry, bitter, and broken man who endured 72 hours of blistering criticism and then finally decided, Fuck this and fuck you and fuck everyone, I'm going to say exactly what I think. It was a cartoonishly disgraceful display of cowardice from a spiritually tiny person, and yet the implications of his inflammatory rhetoric for the future of this country, at a time when gleeful white supremacists are more emboldened than they've felt in decades, are too frightening to earn even the grimmest and most nihilistic of chuckles.

The garish mask that this president wears to hide his fear, his ineptitude, and his crippling mediocrity has been wearing increasingly thin of late, held delicately together by an endless stream of "clarifying statements" issued from his circle of apologists after each progressively more unsettling day. This was its grand undoing, and although it might get stitched together eventually—Donald Trump has certainly wriggled his way out of a pickle before—we saw him today for who he really is, even if only for a few minutes: a trapped, wounded animal who senses his nascent presidency already slipping from his grasp, and who will say and do anything to hold onto it.

This country is in the midst of a national emergency, and for so long as the White House's occupant is willing to offer a full-throated defense of people proudly marching under swastikas, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

[CentralMass]

1. K&R

[Goonch]

2. No Clothes

[BigmanPigman]

3. As an illustrator I can say that the artist drew his junk too big.