{"id":126705,"date":"2025-08-07T15:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126705\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T15:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:51:08","slug":"trump-wants-the-stars-to-shine-for-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/126705\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump wants the stars to shine for him"},"content":{"rendered":"

It did not take Donald Trump long to put himself at the center of a media circus. In the days following the launch of American Eagle\u2019s ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney and a plausibly deniable shout-out to eugenics<\/a>, the president had a lot of fires to put out. The media was anxious to talk about what made him can the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>; people were once again waiting for a straight answer on his tariff plan; everybody dished on his about-face on the Epstein Files<\/a>. What better time to issue a statement of support for a young blonde who had been revealed as a registered Republican<\/a>? Except that the statement ended up in a very different place than it began.<\/p>\n

In his August 4 post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that Sweeney \u201chas the \u2018HOTTEST\u2019 ad out there,\u201d following it up with an exhortation to \u201cGo get \u2018em Sydney!\u201d Grandpa Culture War could have left it there, except he couldn\u2019t: His statement of support concluded with him revisiting one of his longest-running grudges, that against Taylor Swift<\/a>, writing, \u201cEver since I alerted the world as to what [Swift] was by saying on TRUTH that I can\u2019t stand her (HATE!) She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT. The tide has seriously turned \u2014 Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Donald Trump calling Sydney Sweeney hot was not on my 2025 bingo card pic.twitter.com\/dibFfpFcio<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 greg (@greg16676935420) August 4, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not our attention the president seeks. Trump\u2019s preoccupation with popular culture is, for many people, his only relatable quality. He\u2019s captivated by Shark Week, pro wrestling and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. He\u2019s a sucker for Village People sing-alongs. Before Twitter became his favored mode of attack, it was the platform on which he issued impassioned pleas to Robert Pattinson<\/a> to break up<\/a> with \u201cTwilight<\/a>\u201d costar Kristen Stewart<\/a>, writing, \u201cEveryone knows I am right . . . In a couple of years, he will thank me. Be smart, Robert.\u201d<\/p>\n

But pop culture rarely returns the love. And the speed with which the president\u2019s defense of one young woman morphed into a rant about another underscored a not-so-secret torment: All his power, legitimate and otherwise, can\u2019t compel cultural icons to his side.<\/p>\n

American presidents have always leveraged the media tools available to them: From Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s televised \u201cfireside chats\u201d and John F. Kennedy\u2019s Sinatra-scored campaign to Bill Clinton\u2019s sax solos on Arsenio Hall and Barack Obama slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon<\/a>, mass culture has helped the nation\u2019s leaders connect with voters and showcase their best angles. But Trump is the first purely pop-culture president, pivoting from reality-show stardom into a presidential run with no interstitial period of holding local or state office and no previous engagement with the nuts and bolts of legislation, diplomacy and statecraft. The\u00a0media magic that for other presidents was a means to an end was, for him, the end itself.<\/p>\n

The speed with which the president\u2019s defense of one young woman morphed into a rant about another underscored a not-so-secret torment: All his power, legitimate and otherwise, can\u2019t compel cultural icons to his side.<\/p>\n

Ronald Reagan is often name-checked as the man whose trajectory from entertainment to politics<\/a> most resembles Trump\u2019s. Both successfully spun ugly racial animus into so-called populist rhetoric, but Reagan used his Hollywood background to create an epic, cinematic vision of optimistic national go-getting that would ensure good\u2019s triumph over evil.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s own vision, by contrast, was narrower and meaner right out of the gate thanks to his own background in the combative, ink-smeared world of tabloids and deal sheets in which everyone was plotting, watching their backs and calculating where they stood. He became famous by planting stories about himself in gossip columns and assuming the identity of PR flacks<\/a> in order to brag about himself in the third person. He became infamous by centering himself in the racist media circus that saw five young Black men<\/a> unjustly charged for the rape of a jogger in Central Park. His desire to be legitimized by New York City\u2019s media elite was the stuff of legend; when satirical magazine Spy described him as a \u201cshort-fingered vulgarian,\u201d the resounding specificity lingered for decades. In a 2016 Politico story, former Spy co-editor Graydon Carter<\/a> claimed that Trump vehemently contested the charge, and gleefully renewed it: \u201cNow that [the insult has] become sort of part of the whole campaign rhetoric, I\u2019m sure he wants to just kill me \u2014 with those little hands.\u201d)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not difficult to envision a world in which Donald Trump came to be an American president in a different way, given that almost as soon as he began garnering notice outside the five boroughs, talk-show hosts began asking whether he intended to run for president. (If you were a mediagenic white man with money in the 1980s, it was a foregone conclusion that you eventually would.) According to biographer Michael D\u2019Antonio, Trump actually used the pretense of a presidential run<\/a> to promote his first book, \u201cThe Art of the Deal.\u201d In conversation with Larry King in 1999, he again teased the possibility, and even identified Oprah Winfrey as his ideal VP.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

But his actual candidacy ultimately grew from an uglier, more reactive place. His resentment of Barack Obama was rooted in race and expressed via open racism, as New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted in a 2017 piece titled \u201cTrump\u2019s Obama Obsession.\u201d<\/a> But it was also a resentment of the ease with which Obama drew the cultural validation Trump had chased for years. What Obama had that eluded Trump, wrote Blow, was a public embrace that wasn\u2019t about power or fear, but about genuine admiration: \u201cTrump accrued financial wealth, but he never accrued cultural capital, at least not among those from whom he most wanted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter<\/a>, Crash Course.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This remains as true in Trump\u2019s second term as it was in the first. The difference is that he is now weaponizing that resentment wherever and whenever he can against the individuals and institutions that have shown him insufficient deference. In February, he mounted a takeover of Washington D.C.\u2019s Kennedy Center<\/a> performing-arts complex, installing himself as the head of a new board of trustees and proposing that the name be changed to honor his wife, Melania. In May, he used Truth Social to announce the firing of the director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery \u2014 something the president does not have the authority to do \u2014 on the grounds that she supported D.E.I. initiatives. Last month, artist \u00a0Amy Sherald canceled her upcoming solo exhibit<\/a> after gallery leadership suggested that her portrait of a transgender Statue of Liberty might upset the president.<\/p>\n

Then there was the fight Trump picked with Bruce Springsteen<\/a> this spring after a run of concerts at which The Boss whipped up audiences with some choice words about restoring democracy. One of the allegedly defamatory phrases cited in the subsequent lawsuit is \u201ccon man,\u201d the common diminutive of \u201cconfidence man\u201d \u2014 which also happens to be the title of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman\u2019s 2002 book about the president. (Trump has not sued Haberman for defamation.)<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, after bringing CBS to heel, the president gloated over the cancellation of \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a>, and is likely fuming that the show drew record-high ratings the following week. This week, the target of his ire is \u201cCBS Mornings\u201d cohost Gayle King, whose \u201cwoke\u201d show he predicted would soon follow Colbert\u2019s. The Season-27 premiere of \u201cSouth Park<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a ruthlessly profane dunkfest that was also the series\u2019 most-watched premiere since 1999 \u2014 was followed by the announcement that the CBS executive responsible for axing Colbert<\/a> is now the show\u2019s big boss. Offscreen, Trump\u2019s evidence-free accusation that Barack Obama committed treason by investigating his ties to Russian election meddling in 2016 has resulted in the announcement that his Department of Justice was launching a grand-jury probe; on CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk Box,\u201d Trump denied having anything to do with the action, but was also quick to state that \u201cthey deserve it.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that Trump spurns those who do show him deference: In April, he graciously let Kid Rock broker a meeting with longtime critic Bill Maher<\/a>, which resulted in the talk-show host rolling over for presidential belly rubs in record time. But like many powerful men, he\u2019s more likely to be captivated by those who don\u2019t bend to his will \u2014 and to make his unfulfilled desires everyone else\u2019s problem. It\u2019s no longer possible to take comfort in his torment. A fragile ego is a weapon that gets more dangerous with time, and this one has already caused too much damage.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Trump\u2019s vendettas<\/p>\n