What makes Trump really mad

The civilized world looks upon Mohammed bin Salman and Vladimir Putin as they greet each other at the G20 Buenos Aires Summit and cannot believe their eyes. These two suspected (with good cause) murderers are laughing and high-fiving and fist-bumping like two teenage boys celebrating a little league victory.

One can only imagine how this image must infuriate Donald Trump, the man who lives in awe of these two brutal dictators. Trump makes no secret of his admiration for strong leaders—Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, Duarte—men the rest of the world recognize as bullies and murderers.

Among the many criticisms of President Trump is his seemingly inability to grasp the intricacies of how a Constitutional republic operates. The idea of checks and balances, a representative government accountable to the people, the simple concept of respect for those who don’t agree with you seem foreign to him.

He can’t understand why his Attorney General is loyal to the Constitution and not to him. He doesn’t understand why he can’t get the FBI, his FBI, to investigate his political opponents. He sees the opposition party as not that, but rather as traitors. In his mind, voting on principle is a vote thrown away.

All this should come as no surprise. His business empire is built, like most empires, on nepotism, not sound business practices. There was no board of director’s oversight. Laws regulating his business were seen as obstructions to be ignored.

Family, and the loyalty that family provides, were the cornerstones of the Trump organization. They remain at the center of the Trump administration.

But to say he doesn’t understand what democracy stands for or how it works is to shortchange him. That great brain that he is always pointing to, the one God could have given to anyone, but chose to give it to him, might not be all Trump imagines it to be, but he would be the first to agree that he ain’t stupid.

What bothers him most is not the difference between our system of government and the governments that his admired dictators rule over, but rather that there has to be a difference. Why can’t a president possessing his unique talent not still get the special treatment these dictators receive, despite living in a free country?

Every Trump move is questioned—by Democrats and Republicans, as well as foreign leaders. The press won’t leave him alone. He has publicly voiced his frustration that the American press won’t defer to him the way the North Korean press fawns over Kim Jong-un. It’s not that he doesn’t know the reason. It’s that he doesn’t think the reason should exist.

For two years, he has had to repeat constantly that there isn’t, and never has been, any collusion between him and Russia. He barely knows Russia. Yet, he can’t shake the idea that whenever he makes these proclamations, everyone in the room is winking and rolling their eyes.

At the same time, Putin is able to say whatever he wants and no one in Russia questions his motives.

In Helsinki Trump shared the stage as Putin admitted he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, an election that Russia interfered with, and who's interference Trump denies. Now, in Buenos Aires, Trump has to pretend his cancelling of talks with Putin is because of Putin's barbaric behavior in Ukraine and has nothing to do with revelations that Russia and Trump are, and have been for a long time, tight as thieves. 

Then he must listen as Putin's spokesperson explains that yes, Trump says it's about Ukraine, but the real reason is probably rooted in his domestic problems back home—problems Trump insists don't even exist. 

Trump is relegated to tweeting stupid stuff because he can’t speak the truth, while Putin can say anything he damn well pleases and face no repercussions. When Trump exclaimed that he could shoot someone in Times Square and get away with it, even he knew that while his supporters might accept that behavior, such action would be seen by everyone else as unforgivable. Such is not the case in their own countries for the real life murderers that Trump holds in such high esteem.

Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, and guys like them can say and do whatever they want. They can literally get away with murder, while Trump is unable to get away with what he considers no more than political shenanigans, things he thinks everyone does—mainly because they are things he has always done.

Trump is a great believer of democracy. He just wishes that when a great leader like him comes along, democracy could cut him some slack, and operate more like a dictatorship.

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"