I have always aspired to be a writer who can slice and dice politicians I dislike with just the right amount of bitchiness and razor sharp tongue. My blogger friend Pam Spaulding has always exceeded at turning the English language into a polished weapon. Another such writer is New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who when in stride can simply amaze with her wit and sarcasm. In a column yesterday, Dowd took aim at Donald Trump and out did herself. Here are some wonderful excerpts:
Melania has learned a few things from the master. The first lady will never be as brilliant at trolling as her husband. He is an idiot-savant who plays in the roiling ocean of Twitter as naturally as a blubbery-necked sea lion.
But the Slovenian Sphinx has her moments. It started when she seemed to sartorially upbraid Trump for his Billy Bush vulgarities by wearing a pussy-bow blouse to the St. Louis debate. Then, in a master stroke, she chose a first-lady project that could only be interpreted as a wicked rip on her husband: fighting vicious cyberbullies. Last spring, Melania’s personal Twitter account favorited a GIF of her own downcast face at the Inaugural Address with an accompanying crack: “Seems the only #Wall @realDonaldTrump’s built is the one between him and @FLOTUS.”
Last weekend, on the anniversary of the inauguration, Melania Instagrammed a throwback picture of herself in her powder-blue Jackie suit, not with her husband but with a hunky Marine escort. She wore a delighted ear-to-ear smile, the kind she never seems to flash around the Donald. (It would have been even funnier, of course, if she had posted a photo of herself in front of some empty stands and a sparse crowd, but we’re talking more grounds for divorce there.)
After the Stormy Daniels story broke — about Trump cavorting and watching Shark Week with the porn star and telling her not to worry about Melania, at home with a new baby, and then having his lawyer allegedly pay Stormy $130,000 during the campaign to hush her up — a wintry Melania canceled her plan to accompany her husband to Davos.
Instead, . . . . Remembrance Day. This looked like a subtle reproach to Trump for his unspeakable defense of the “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., and an allusion to the president’s statement last year on remembrance day, which somehow neglected to remember Jews or anti-Semitism. What a Stephen Miller special that was.
[A]s Stormy Daniels began her media tour on “Inside Edition” and booked an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel,” Melania was making a stealthy landing in Florida on an Air Force plane.
Trump could humiliate his wife by being a big, horny pig, but he is the one who comes off as the embarrassment. He’s an embarrassing husband and an embarrassing president and an embarrassing leader of the free world. Barack Obama was always calling to our better angels. Donald Trump is paying off porn stars and denigrating struggling countries that send minorities to the U.S. as “shitholes.” How did we drop so far and so fast from class to crass?
Everyone wondered if Melania’s rebellious vanishing act — combined with the simultaneous Times scoop that Trump had already tried to fire Robert Mueller but was blocked by the White House lawyer, Don McGahn — was the beginning of the “unraveling,” as one top Democrat put it. (Surely, the Trump unraveling began with his birth, like Damien in “The Omen.”)
“It’s like ancient Rome where they’re all turning on each other. McGahn is taking out the long knives to stick Trump in the back. At some point, General Kelly may do the same. Bannon is exiled to the outer walls of the city, where he is collecting wayward Roman soldiers to go back and attack Trump. There are orgies and payoffs and mud wrestling, so beyond anything we’ve experienced anywhere.”
It’s a shattering moment for the country, when many of the institutions that gave America its identity as a smart, brave, generous, fair country — the presidency, Congress, sports, faith, Hollywood, big business — seem corroded and immoral. When we look in the mirror and try to figure out who we are now, elevating a corporate tax cut over our fundamental values is not going to cut it.
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