Trump's Taste for Blood

[Zorro]

If Republicans won’t convict, bring on the handcuffs.

By Maureen Dowd

Every scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” is perfect, but there’s one I find especially haunting.

Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence returns to Cairo after successfully leading the Arabs in battle against the Ottoman Empire and tells a military superior that he does not want to go back. Slumping in his Bedouin robes, looking pained, he recalls that he executed an Arab with his pistol.

There was something about it he didn’t like, he says.

The irritated general tries to brush it off, assuming the erudite Lawrence is upset at killing a man.

“No, something else,” Lawrence explains. “I enjoyed it.”

The first time I realized that Donald Trump took pleasure in violence was back in March 2016. In an interview, I asked him about the brutish rhetoric and violence at his rallies and the way he goaded supporters to hate on journalists and rough up protesters. Even then Mitch McConnell was urging Trump to ratchet down the ferocity.

I told Trump that I had not seen this side of him before and that he was going down a very dark path. With his denigrating mockery of rivals and critics, he had already taken politics to a vulgar place, and now it was getting more dangerous.

Shouldn’t parents be able to bring children to rallies without worrying about obscenities, sucker punches, brawls and bullying, I wondered?

He brushed off the questions and blithely assessed the savage mood at his rallies: “Frankly, it adds a little excitement.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/opinion/sunday/trump-violence.html

This is actually a pretty decent opinion piece by Maureen Dowd.

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[Blue Owl]

2. Is there any facet of tRump that isn't disgusting and vulgar?

[MustLoveBeagles]

6. No

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

A couple weeks later, I pressed him again on his belligerence and divisiveness, and, with utter candor, he explained why he was turning up the heat.

“I guess because of the fact that I immediately went to No. 1 and I said, why don’t I just keep the same thing going?” he said. “I’ve come this far in life. I’ve had great success. I’ve done it my way.” He added, “You know, there are a lot of people who say, ‘Don’t change.’”

Dear reader, he didn’t change.

And everything bloodcurdling that happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 flowed from his bloodthirsty behavior. He had always been cruel and selfish, blowing things up and reveling in the chaos, gloating in the wreckage. But it was only during his campaign that he realized he had a nasty mob at his disposal. He had moved into a world that allowed him to exercise his malice in an extraordinary way, and he loved it.

He became his own Lee Atwater, doing the dirty stuff right out in the open. He embraced the worst part of his party, the most racist, violent cohort.

The faux-macho, Gotti-esque air of menace he cultivated as a real estate dealer, the Clint Eastwood squint, just seemed like performance art; mostly he was around New York, acting genial at parties and courting the press. He would say stuff sometimes; after Sacha Baron Cohen pulled a prank on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars, Trump said that Seacrest’s security guard should have “pummeled” and “punched” Baron Cohen “in the face so many times” that he’d end up in the hospital.

But once Trump got into politics, he realized, with growing intoxication, that the more incendiary he was, the more his fans would cheer. He found that he could really play with the emotions of the crowd, and that turned him on. Now he had the chance to command a mob, so his words could be linked to their actions.

Trump never cared about law and order or the cops. He was thrilled that he could unleash his mob on the Capitol and its guardians, with rioters smearing blood and feces and yelling Trump’s words and going after his targets — Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.

...

[Irish_Dem]

4. Dowd is being a bit coy, not coming right out saying that Trump is sexually aroused

by violence. The insurrection had to be extremely satisfying for him on many levels.
The sexual turn on, the excitement, the thought people would die, and that he could get rid
of Pence. His plan to become dictator for like was a grandiose fantasy come true.

It is reported that at the WH he was thrilled and happy as he watched the insurrection.
His aides were shocked.

It is becoming more difficult not to call Trump a psychopathic violent sadist.

[MustLoveBeagles]

5. This

The violence gave him a woody. He's a horrible person. Very twisted and broken. Nixon, Reagan, and W, for all their faults and the bad things they did, at least had some redeeming qualities. Dump has none. He's a failed human being and he's fine with that.