The-Ave.US

Everything.

It’s been said that everyone has some good in them, but I’m hard pressed to think of any of Trump’s redeeming qualities. As far as I can tell, he has none.

On the other hand, it’s easy to recall his failings, weaknesses, and bad traits, because he has so many of them. The main challenge is trying to remember them all, and not overlooking important ones. However, I’m going attempt to assemble a basic catalog here, without going into much detail.

Ready? Here we go:

1. He’s dishonest. This is his most obvious, pervasive, and salient character trait. (Did I say “character”? He doesn’t have any.) We all tell little white lies now and then, but Trump spews big lies, all the time, loudly, about everything. NBC News counted over 30,000 lies during his presidency. But his dishonest doesn’t stop with being a pathological liar. He cheats almost everyone who does business with him, doesn’t pay his bills, and has gone bankrupt multiple times. He brags about making his creditors settle for pennies on the dollar, and leaves trails of unpaid bills behind him. He’s under investigation for allegedly cheating on his taxes (details will be forthcoming from one or more grand juries). He even cheats at golf (you don’t have to take my word, or Michael Bloomberg’s, for this; even Golf magazine says he cheats.) And, needless to say, he’s corrupt and used public office to line his own pockets; his administration is one of the most scandal-ridden ever. (For a brief rundown of his many personal scandals, go here.)

2. He’s an adulterer. He’s had three wives, and cheated on all of them. You wonder why he bothers to get married; but, more to the point, you wonder why anyone marries him.

3. He’s a racist, bigot, misogynist, and has no respect for other people. The policy overarching Trump’s entire presidency that took precedence over everything else was white supremacy. Two white nationalists, Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller, were his chief of staff and top political adviser. He put the latter in charge of his immigration policy, which consisted of banning Muslim travel to the U.S., belittling people of color, and trying to build a wall between us and Latinos. He praised neo-Nazis who chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and stoked the fires of anti-gay and anti-Asian bigotry. He treated women like sex objects, claimed “they let you do anything,” and bragged about “grabbing them by the p***y.” He made demeaning remarks about disabled people, women, minorities, and even America’s war dead.

4. He’s intolerant, and encourages intolerance in his followers. Narrowness in thinking and acceptance is a fault, not a virtue. But it also has negative practical ramifications. There are 330 million Americans, and we’re not all alike. America historically is a melting pot of many different ethnicities and religions, and there are many ways of being “American.” We think, speak, dress, worship, and celebrate in many different ways, and don’t necessarily have identical ambitions or values, yet we share enough in common to make us a strong and prosperous nation. Yet Trump refused to acknowledge or respect the differences among us. He made no attempt, or even pretense, of being the leader of all Americans. He represented only his core group of followers; made no effort to speak for the interests and concerns of a broader audience; and, worse, he sought to delegitimize and exclude those not members of his core follower group. He was a divider, not a uniter, and that’s not good for our country, or for us individually.

5. He’s a coward. Within days after Trump’s inauguration, Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative magazine National Review, wrote: “The good news is that Trump’s a coward. The bad news is he’s a fool.” Lowry said this in the context of foreign relations, and what he meant was that for all his bluster Trump lacked the nerve to order military action (luckily for us), but was a naif our adversaries could (and did) easily push around. Trump is a coward at the personal level, too. For his generation, the Vietnam War was a sort of litmus test; he was a draft dodger. (For soldiers who didn’t have to serve with him, that was a blessing; he’s the last person you want your life to depend on.) He’s a coward in simpler, everyday, things, too: In owning up to mistakes, facing critics, accepting criticism, and taking responsibility for his actions — he does none of those things.

6. He’s a narcissist, attention hound, and megalomaniac. These aren’t admirable qualities in anybody, and Trump has them to excess. He craves adulation, which makes you wonder which psychological deficiency he needs cheering crowds to feed. He’s an obnoxious braggart, and especially brags about his wealth; Dizzy Dean, the baseball great, famously said “it ain’t braggin’ if you done it,” but it’s certain that Trump exaggerates his wealth. He’s rich, but not by his own efforts; he came from a rich family. He brags about being a businessman, but by all appearances he’s a lousy businessman; his casinos went bankrupt, his golf courses don’t make money, and if you believe his tax returns, he didn’t earn enough income to pay taxes for years running.

7. He’s self-centered and selfish. By all appearances, Trump care about no one but himself; and he exhibits a striking lack of empathy and compassion for others. That’s not good in any context, least of all in public service; and putting someone like him in our nation’s top public service position makes no sense.

8. He’s cruel and insensitive. This ugly trait is exemplified by his infamous mocking of a disabled reporter, but manifested itself in many other ways. For a very partial catalog of his offenses against basic human decency, go here. Trump has no sense of humor; when did he ever laugh, except at someone else’s expense? There’s nothing funny about him; every side of him is mean and nasty.

9. He’s ignorant, closed minded, and thin-skinned. Trump comes across as a classic know-it-all. Most of the time, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, to the point of sounding silly (as when he suggested injecting bleach to cure Covid-19). He has no curiosity, doesn’t read, or listen to others; has preset and inflexible ideas about nearly everything; and reacts angrily to criticism, even the constructive kind. He’s a revenge-seeker and “goes after” anyone who disagrees with him, apparently based on some notion that browbeating and bullying constitute leadership.

10. He demands loyalty, but gives none in return. Loyalty plays an important role in our lives, but Trump has a distorted understanding of it, and no grasp of how it works. Coming from a business background, it’s not surprising he expects loyalty from subordinates; but government employees are our employees, not his employees, and they take an oath of loyalty to the United States, not a personal oath of loyalty to him. They’re supposed to work for our benefit, not his. Trump understood none of this. He even expected — and was surprised not to get — personal loyalty from the judges he appointed to federal courts. But even when he did get personal loyalty, he didn’t reciprocate. He threw everyone under the bus. One who learned this the hard way was Jeff Sessions, who gave up a U.S. Senate seat to become Trump’s first attorney general, a mistake that ended his public career and destroyed his reputation.

11. He has no boundaries. In a way, this is saying he doesn’t know right from wrong, which also appears to be true. He certainly has no sense of propriety. Not with women (he even lusts for his own daughter), or social norms (he violates them all), and certainly none stemming from the Constitution, laws, or institutional limitations on presidential power. Trump’s presidency was characterized by lawlessness, and was even more notable than Nixon’s for abuses of power. He’s the only president to be impeached twice, and he deserved to be: The first time for using military aid approved by Congress for an ally to coerce a foreign government into fabricating a smear against a domestic political opponent, and the second time for inciting a violent insurrection after losing an election. But Trump’s abuses of power ran much deeper than that; for a partial catalog, go here.

12. “He has something wrong with him.” This became a favorite line of Keith Olbermann in his long-running series of monologues on Trump’s failings, which you can watch on YouTube.  Psychology Today magazine said, “There’s something of an industry devoted to the psyche of President Trump.” Meaning figuring out what’s wrong with him. Whatever it is, it may not be solely his fault. We know Trump had an abusive father. He spent his teens at a military boarding school, a traditional dumping ground for unwanted children of rich people. But responsible citizens don’t vote for someone with serious psychological disorders, no matter what caused them, which implies there’s something wrong with Trump’s fanatical supporters, too. (I can’t believe they’re all stupid and gullible, although some are; but what they all have in common is a lack of good judgment — no sensible person idolizes someone as deficient in civilized behavior as Trump.)

This isn’t about whether you agree or disagree with Trump’s policies. It’s about the fact Trump is an awful person. If you agree with his policies, there are other vehicles for your policy aspirations; and you need to take another route if you want to be heard, because Trump’s failings overwhelm and drown out everything else.

Return to The-Ave.US Home Page