The Laziest Man in America —getting under my skin

DURING THE 2016 campaign, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of having no stamina and Jeb Bush no energy. How ironic, coming from Donald Trump—the laziest man in America.

Being in your 70s and being lazy is no crime. There are lots of 70-year olds, who are kicking back, watching a little more TV than they should be. As the saying goes, “They earned it.” For the record, say what you want about Hillary, but I don’t think she has ever been lazy or lacked stamina, but this isn’t about her.

The thing about Trump is, he’s been lazy all his life.

Many will take issue with that assumption. How can he be lazy? The man is everywhere. He’s into everything. He barely sleeps. If nothing else, his twitter thumb is working around the clock.

One can be busy and still be lazy. In fact, being busy might be a sign of laziness—if nothing else, at least intellectually laziness.

An intellectually lazy person like Trump doesn’t take the time to think things through. He won’t make the effort because he doesn’t think the effort is necessary.

I can’t prove it, but I honestly think he came up with the idea for the wall during that famous ride down the escalator. He looked at the crowd on either side and saw how well protected he was from them. After all, he’s no Bobby Kennedy, mixing it up, shaking hands, patting supporters on the shoulder. He likes to keep his supporters at a distance. The closest he gets to them is his name on the sign they’re carrying. Walls are one way of achieving the separation he relishes.

Trump doesn’t read because that is only getting someone else’s thoughts. Likewise, he doesn’t need briefings. He hardly needs a staff. He’s got ideas popping into his head every minute, and a device in his hand to get those ideas out there.

Trump’s first instinct is to always trust his first instinct because in his gut, he knows that instinct is right.

If that instinct were right, he’d have a valid point, but it’s wrong, so he doesn’t. What he does have is a case of laziness.

He goes for easy answers to difficult or sometimes non-existent problems because it reinforces his brand—that he’s a strong and decisive businessman. On a side note, I think making money through branding is probably the laziest way to make money.

Here is the president, in his own words, acting off the top of his head—posing the problem and arriving at his solution.

“All Mexicans are rapists and murderers.” “We will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it.”

“I think Islam hates us.” “We must have a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

“Football players kneeling during the anthem are unpatriotic.” “Fire the sons of bitches.”

“Democrats are un-America and treasonous...and don’t love our country.” He insults them, belittles them, blames them and demands we vote them out.

“Journalists are the enemy of the people,” He says. Refers to ‘Fake News’ more than any other term, except maybe “no collusion,” securing his position alongside past dictators like Stalin and Hitler and current ones like Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

Where there are real issues like Russia interfering in our elections, he doesn’t see them. “Putin says he didn’t do it and I believe him.” “Mueller’s investigation is a witch hunt, a hoax.”

When his staff puts loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to him, he shames and bullies them, calling them names you’d expect to hear in a playground from a five-year old.

When they put loyalty to him over loyalty to the Constitution, they are pretty much given a green light to do anything they want—separate children from their parents, find their wives jobs, or just run the country into the ground.

These are the instincts of an intellectually lazy man. A man who has never met a perceived problem that didn’t catch his fancy—or an easy solution, he couldn’t latch onto and stick with as if bound with super-glue.

He lives in a world where everything we thought was true is false, where friends become enemies and foes become new best friends. Putin is a strong leader, not a dictator. Kim Jong-un is a funny and honorable man, but Trudeau is dishonest and weak.

His lack of substance and unmatched shallowness feeds the national nightmare of a nation divided. His flights of fancy are met by citizen’s fits of fury and 200 years of at least a charade of mutual respect morphs into twitter wars, which solve nothing, but sure do make everyone mad—except him.

For the last three years we’ve listened to our frustrated Congressmen and Senators publicly offer tired prayers that Trump will mature, do the right thing, grow into the office; that he will get serious by getting down to serious work. Where Obama’s iconic “Hope” poster became a symbol of change, Republicans only hope is that he changes before he screws up.

Newsflash: 70-year-old men don’t suddenly see the error of their ways—especially when those ways have worked out so well, even leading to the presidency?

I’ll tell you what 70-year-old men can do. They can remember Louie Prima.

The country’s relationship with Trump reminds me of the Louie Prima/Keely Smith duet. She, foreshadowing our current political climate, sang, “I got it bad, and that ain’t good,” and Louie, as the voice of the laziest president in history, responds, “I got it good and that ain’t bad,” before quickly adding, “I ain’t gonna change.”

This essay appears in my recent "Trump Dismantles Washington"