{"id":196885,"date":"2025-11-24T01:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T01:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/196885\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T01:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T01:54:09","slug":"step-by-slimy-step-trump-has-made-us-numb-to-his-crudeness-and-cruelty-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/196885\/","title":{"rendered":"Step by slimy step, Trump has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Step by slimy step, US<\/a> president Donald Trump<\/a> has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty.<\/p>\n

The solipsistic Trump, with the parasitic tech emperors and the internet itself, is degrading American values, making honour and integrity seem anachronistic.<\/p>\n

Still, some moments shock beyond the pale. Whatever the pale is any more.<\/p>\n

On Air Force One recently, Trump cut off Catherine Lucey, a Bloomberg News journalist pressing him about the release of Epstein files that could further implicate Trump in the lurid mess. Stabbing his finger at her face, the president of the United States snapped at Lucey: \u201cQuiet! Quiet, piggy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt later preposterously said, \u201cThe president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is, frankly, a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was nauseating, if not surprising. Trump loves to call people who annoy him \u201cpigs\u201d and \u201cdogs,\u201d and in the case of his inamorata Stormy Daniels, \u201chorseface\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/us\/2025\/11\/22\/zohran-mamdani-and-donald-trump-enjoy-new-yorker-bromance-at-white-house\/Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It was misogynistic, but Trump bullies both men and women, attacking their looks and character and hurling nasty, intensely personal epithets and nicknames. He mocked Chris Christie, once an ally, as \u201ca fat pig,\u201d \u201ca slob\u201d and \u201csloppy.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I interviewed him decades ago in his more appropriate incarnation as a flashy developer hogging attention in New York, he would rate the looks of supermodels and actors, dropping snap judgments like \u201cSadly, Heidi Klum is no longer a 10.\u201d Sometimes he sent me pictures of female journalists from newspapers, commenting with a Sharpie scrawl on who he thought looked good or bad.<\/p>\n

Politicians were never insult comics before Trump. But in the 2016 primaries he learned that sneering deflected from substance.<\/p>\n

Trump followed up his \u201cQuiet, piggy\u201d moment by berating another female journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, who asked Saudi Arabia\u2019s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during his appearance with the president, about his culpability in the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. US intelligence said that the crown prince gave the order.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,\u201d Trump chided Bruce. When she later asked why Trump was waiting for Congress to release the Epstein files when he could do it unilaterally, he called her question \u201ca horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.\u201d He said that Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, should look into revoking ABC\u2019s broadcast license.<\/p>\n

Trump even defamed Khashoggi, saying that a lot of people didn\u2019t like him and noting cavalierly that \u201cthings happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, Things Happen when you have no morals and your family is doing lucrative business deals with the Saudis.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Trump was his most charming self Friday in his \u201cfascist vs socialist\u201d meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. He had blasted Mamdani earlier as a \u201ccommunist\u201d and \u201cJew Hater\u201d and threatened to withhold federal funding for New York and send in troops. But by the end of their Oval Office news conference, the two were so lovey-dovey, a Fox News anchor warned that JD Vance might have to move over for Mamdani. And Trump, who once warned that wealthy New Yorkers and businesses would flee if the democratic socialist were elected, dramatically flipped, saying he would feel very comfortable moving back to Gotham under this mayor.<\/p>\n

It just proved that Trump admires charismatic winners more than he cares about ideology \u2013 or consistency. Mamdani was prepared, focusing on their common ground while flattering Trump by noting his election statistics and hometown roots, and avoiding Dear Leader fawning. He strategically embraced Trump as he touted the affordability issue, which the billionaire president loved. Seeing Americans restive at his fixation on foreign conflicts, Trump is feigning a newfound interest in grocery prices.<\/p>\n

The president was so taken with Mamdani, he even jovially told him, in response to a Fox News reporter\u2019s question, to go ahead and repeat his campaign claim that Trump is \u201ca fascist\u201d. Trump also defended Mamdani from the incendiary falsehood of Elise Stefanik, the Republican who\u2019s running for governor of New York, that the Muslim mayor-elect is a \u201cjihadist.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Stefanik, a Trump henchwoman, broke away from the president on this issue, doubling down and posting Friday evening that Mamdani is \u201cKathy Hochul\u2019s jihadist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we don\u2019t get to see this genial Trump very much these days. He\u2019s mean when he\u2019s cornered, like the snapping turtle I had as a pet when I was a child. Republicans got creamed in the recent elections. To extend the porcine metaphor, Trump\u2019s polls are dropping, to use a Dave Barry phrase, \u201clike a pig out of a helicopter\u201d.<\/p>\n

The president, ordinarily a master at recasting reality, had to give up his ludicrous attempt to paint the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. Labelling Marjorie Taylor Greene, his former acolyte who now says she identifies with the Epstein victims, a \u201ctraitor\u201d backfired.<\/p>\n

Friday night, Greene announced in a social media post that she was leaving Congress and said she didn\u2019t want to face a \u201chateful\u201d primary stirred by Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cStanding up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men,\u201d she wrote, \u201cshould not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cI refuse to be a \u2018battered wife\u2019 hoping it all goes away and gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Trump\u2019s jeering post about Rep Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the Republican co-sponsor of the bill to get the files released, wasn\u2019t well received. Trump mocked Massie, a widower, for marrying again 16 months after his wife died. \u201cBoy, that was quick!\u201d This coming from the man who went straight from cheating with Marla Maples during his Ivana marriage to marrying her at the Plaza a year later.<\/p>\n

Maligning members of his own party raised questions about why he was so desperate to hide the files of a child molester who was once his pal; the two bonded over their leering predilection for young women.<\/p>\n

In a rare show of rebellion, republicans refused to bend the knee and pretend that it was okay to shield a sexual pervert and give his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, treats in prison and pardon dreams just because Trump didn\u2019t want the details of his involvement with Epstein to surface.<\/p>\n

In emails Democrats released, Epstein wrote that \u201cTrump had spent hours at my house\u201d with one of the victims and that he believed Trump knew more than he had acknowledged, and called Trump \u201cevil beyond belief\u201d. You know you\u2019re in trouble when someone evil beyond belief calls you evil beyond belief.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Step by slimy step, US president Donald Trump has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,10471,12300,6862,4633,13,14,3428,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,187,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-196885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-campaign","12":"tag-congress","13":"tag-election","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-government","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-trump","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-world-news","28":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115602185508312128","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}