I may even have to name it “The Donald Trump Award.”
At a New Hampshire campaign rally yesterday, the former President drew laughs and cheers from his crowd of human seals when he did an imitation of President Joe Biden being disoriented and getting lost on stage.
Nice. Stay classy, Mr. President.
“You would think at least one time he’d get up and say, ‘I’m running for President — where, where am I going, where the hell am I going?’” Trump, said, doing his best imitation of an addled old coot. “I want to get out, oh, no over there, over there,” Trump said as he wandered away from the podium.
The ugly routine evoked this episode from his 2016 campaign, in which Trump mocked a disabled reporter (and later denied that he did.)
Trump is out of control at this point, assuming he’s ever been in control. He’s convinced that he’s invincible and already has the GOP nomination wrapped up. The political hit jobs on him from the George Soros prosecutors, the House Democrats and the Justice Department have only made him stronger politically.
Trump has never displayed many scruples or inhibitions in his public demeanor, but now he apparently feels empowered to let it all hang out, and “it” is his cruelty, bad taste, narcissism, and complete lack of respect for the dignity and image of the position he seeks to regain.
Oh…the runners-up in the 2023 “Asshole of the Year” competition are those Trump fans who thought a former U.S. President behaving like a 7th grade class clown was wonderful.
I’m ashamed to share a country with them.
Addendum: I just reread the 2015 post linked above. Wow, I was really rolling that day! Here’s my favorite section…
One theory is that Trump has chosen this week to go all out to see if there is anything he can say or do so beneath the dignity of the office he is seeking and so repugnant to core American values that the idiots supporting him will finally wake up and say, “What was I thinking?”
If so, his experiment is working well.
And yes, it is fair to identify anyone who supports Donald Trump at this point as an idiot.
Please ask the Donald Trump fans at your Thanksgiving dinner whether this is really how they want to see their President behaving in public. If the above is correct, I assume that he’ll eventually don a Hillary mask, glue a herring to his forehead, and recite dirty limericks while riding on the Spinning Teacups ride in Disneyland nude. Hell, why not?
Ethics Alarms 
Unfortunately this argument is about 30 years out of date. This country already signaled that character didn’t matter when it looked the other way on the president having oral sex in the over office with a woman who was not his wife, then lying about it. It signaled more that it didn’t matter when the chattering classes started making all kinds of excuses for this behavior and saying that behavior like that was private, that Americans needed to stop being so blue-nosed about consenting adults, and that, at any rate, the president had more important things to do than fend off this nonsense.
The same country that said that was ok, including those who said that it was okay and even desirable to mock Reagan as senile, doesn’t now get to turn around and say it’s not ok to mock a president who is clearly senile, perhaps dangerously so, and running this country into the ground.
I believe it is critical both to get Biden out of office asap and make sure that Harris doesn’t follow him into office. If that requires fighting dirty, then so be it. Losing honorably is still losing, and there’s too much to lose at this point.
President Biden and his handlers are responsible here. Let’s not forget that there were more idiots on the other side who elect the cognitively disabled to serve as mindless robots to advance an agenda. Pointing out the fact that Biden is as inarticulate as Trump or seems to have great difficulty understanding rudimentary directions is not mean and hateful if the person ridiculed has sought to be and has been elevated to the highest office in the land. Biden is no Quasimodo who was put on display as the fool but thought it was an honor. Sorry, Biden the man deserves no respect from me when he routinely denigrates anyone who does not jump aboard his and Kamala’s short bus.
When Trump had a message of restoring America to its fundamental values it was a message I could support. When he plays to the lowest common denominator by ridiculing his opposition he lost me. Nonetheless, I will not lose any sleep over his schoolyard antics by ridiculing the mental capacity of our divider in chief.
There is no impediment to making the points regarding Biden’s lack of necessary faculties without stooping to taunts and ridicule—unless lack of taste, self-control and decency are the impediments. That’s how adults behave. A President is supposed to be a role model and represent/model/stand for the best of American values, not the worst of American boorishness.
Trump had three opportunities to expose Biden in the debates. One he blew by refusing to shut up. One he stupidly gave away by boycotting the debate when he could only benefit from it. The third was too late. He shares the blame for Biden’s victory…and this latest is also part of the problem. He never even tried to make himself less repulsive to those who want their President to be someone they don’t have to apologize for constantly. That’s on him and his handlers. Might a Trump who had the same accomplishments but who did not act like such an asshole pick up those few extra votes that decided the election?
If Biden stops acting ridiculous, then Trump should stop ridiculing, and not before.
Wow.
I can see it now: Wendell Willkie imitating FDR trying to walk in his leg braces…Adlai Stevenson doing his impression of Ike’s post-stroke speaking issues. Ronald Reagan making fun of Jimmy Carter’s accent.
Or ads showing Andrew Jackson stabbing someone in the back with a sword cane or mocking Grover Cleveland’s supposedly having fathered a child oud of wedlock… Reach out to Mark Levin, he’s the KING of the cruel insults, like calling Biden “Plugs” or Hillary “Her Thighness.”
Levin’s low-rent insults are the main reason I refuse to listen to him.
Low-rent, maybe, but effective. No one can take a person seriously after he’s been hit with a cruel but funny and truthful insult.
Trump has lost me and so to has Nicki Haley for creating the circular firing squad in the party. Because I don’t follow Trumps activities it is unlikely he will Reagan my support for president. So why should those of us who will not vote for Trump in the primary concern ourselves with him illustrating the incapacity of our current president. For god sakes Biden could not remember the last country he visited which was just last week. A child had to remind him.
As I said Biden himself put himself out there and mockery is part of the job. Because, no editor of any major paper will say anything negative let alone call into question his incapacity the messages that must be sent have to be sent by others with equivalent mouthpieces. It is unfortunate that Trump is the standard bearer in his questionable style but Biden, his appointees and his handlers are doing everything possible to threaten separation of powers and install a perpetual totalitarian power structure so I am not going to get my nose out of joint on this one.
I respect the office of the presidency but when the person with that title is a mere placeholder for behind the scenes unelected partisans I have no obligation to respect that placeholder.
Isn’t this another of “Trump gotta Trump”?
jvb
Biden is obviously senile. Someone ought to point it out. Forcefully. If you elect someone to run the entire country who is so senile he cannot find his own way off of a flat box set at an elevation that gives him a clear view of the entire room…I think mockery is warranted at minimum. If you are so mentally degraded you cannot figure out how to get off a box, you are probably too mentally degraded to decide to start wars, blow trillions of dollars worth of other people’s money, make health decisions for other people that could potentially kill them, or arbitrarily decide to rewrite the social norms of a population larger than 350 million people.
I’m generally a fan of your blog for the exercises in logic and rationality. This post contains neither. You’re losing me.
Fascinating. Please explain how a former President and aspiring one’s behaving like this can be excused, justified or tolerated.
There seem to be some (not I) who believe that, in a presidential election, one must make a choice between one of the two major-party candidates. For those people, the excuse, justification, and toleration, confirmed by a vote for that horrible candidate, is that the other candidate would be even worse for the country. They then might say that the behavior is not really being excused, justified, or tolerated, but that a decision must be made, a vote must be cast. But, there’s gotta be some serious cognitive dissonance in voting for a horrible candidate, and doing so does sound a bit like rationalization to me.
My view is that a vote for neither is the better choice when neither of the major candidates should be tolerated. If there is a decent 3rd-party candidate, even one who is perceived to have no chance of winning, then vote for that person, or else write someone in.
If that idea were widespread, a diminished total vote, or a greater-than-expected vote for a decent candidate, would send a message. Record turn-out, which both parties like when it’s in their favor, enhances the concept of a mandate which lousy candidates do not deserve.
[Trying to post again; my effort a few hours ago has not shown up, as has happened several times before.]
There seem to be some (not I) who believe that, in a presidential election, one must make a choice between one of the two major-party candidates. For those, the excuse, justification, and toleration of a horrible candidate, confirmed by a vote, is that the other person would be worse for the country. They then might say that the behavior of the horrible candidate is not really being excused, justified, or tolerated, but that a decision must be made, a vote must be cast. That has a hint at least of rationalization.
My view is that a vote for neither is the better choice when neither choice should be tolerated. If there is a decent 3rd-party candidate, even one who is perceived to have no chance of winning, then vote for that person, or write someone in, or don’t vote that part of the ballot.
If that idea were widespread, the magnified vote for a decent candidate, or a severely diminished total vote, would send a message. Record turn-out, which both parties like when it’s in their favor, enhances the concept of a mandate.
Just rescued the comment from spam, so I presume it will now be here twice. Do remember that I do the blog in my spare time, and have other responsibilities, like making the meager money my foolishly chosen profession as an ethicist provides my family. I am not on Ethics Alarms around the clock, though it might appear that way…sometimes I can’t check in for hours. Don’t take it personally.
I don’t take it personally. I just don’t understand why some go into spam and some don’t. It’s frustrating sometimes.
His imitation was pretty accurate, not even an exaggeration of the apparent feebleness of our president. He could have played a video montage of the actual behavior to make the point, but his approach was appropriate given the purpose of his presentation and his audience. And his language was more appropriate than the profanity in your title. So if your ‘stay classy’ admonition is appropriate for him, it’s appropriate for you in this instance as well.
I don’t mean this to be a personal attack on you, just an observation of the contrast of some ideas you’ve posted that are really ethics-based and interesting for conversation, vs unfair/unfounded bashing of people you personally dislike. That’s where you’re losing me as a reader.
Let’s see…wrong, wrong, and offensively wrong.
His imitation was pretty accurate, not even an exaggeration of the apparent feebleness of our president. He could have played a video montage of the actual behavior to make the point, but his approach was appropriate given the purpose of his presentation and his audience.
Oh, so if a former President or national leader does a skilled nasty impression of the current President, that makes it appropriately dignified and civil? The national stage is not a nightclub. You know how many Presiential candidates or former Presidents have ever behaved like that/ None. That’s because it’s beneath the office, and degrades national politics. That must be the worst rationalization for Trump’s boorishness I’ve heard yet. “He’s good at it.”
And his language was more appropriate than the profanity in your title. So if your ‘stay classy’ admonition is appropriate for him, it’s appropriate for you in this instance as well.
If you really have read here for very long, you should know that I have explained the blog’s use of “asshole” (which is not profanity but calculated vulgarity) more than once, and that is that or some conduct, like Trump’s, no other word is as accurate….and no other word is. Trump is always a jerk, but when he escalates his proclivities, he hits asshole. That’s a big problem, as I explained here.
I don’t mean this to be a personal attack on you, just an observation of the contrast of some ideas you’ve posted that are really ethics-based and interesting for conversation, vs unfair/unfounded bashing of people you personally dislike. That’s where you’re losing me as a reader.
I really don’t believe you could be a reader here and write that. I have lost many, many readers by defending Trump when he has been unfairly treated. Trump is the anathema of ethical conduct: I don’t see how anyone, including him, could or would try to argue otherwise. If anyone’s conduct is ethically flawed, I’ll criticize iT; Hell, I’ve written posts criticizing the Boston Red Sox, and posts gavorable to Bill Clinton, Bill Maher, and other objectively awful people.
“Oh, so if a former President or national leader does a skilled nasty impression of the current President, that makes it appropriately dignified and civil?”
No one said it was dignified or civil. Those words are rarely used in the context of American politics. Perhaps I’m not smart enough to understand your point, or perhaps this topic triggered you such that you’re unable to apply a logical (vs emotional) assessment that is missing in both your post and your comments here. Your rationalization of your vulgarity ends up positioning you as a boorish writer criticizing the boorishness of another, which weakens any of your positions that might otherwise be valid.
Best of luck with your blog!
1. You do not, apparently, understand or know much about the American Presidency, its traditions or standards. (I do.)
2. My responses was not only logical but accurate. And you haven’t attempted to rebut them at all.
3. You are clearly lying about reading here regularly, but I figured that out early on.
4. I don’t need luck with EA. I also don’t need disingenuous commenters like you. You have self-banned. Good choice.
If you had one hundred people each make a list of words they considered profane or offensive then it would be unlikely that any of the lists would match. In 1972 George Carlin listed his “Seven words you can never say on television”. They were “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker” and “tits”. My list would be any words I would not say in front of my mother. No way would “tits” make the list but “asshole” or it’s British and New Zealand equivalent “arsehole” would make the list.
For me, the Democrat party and Democrat voters are unforgiveable for having foisted this doddering, corrupt old fool (and his controlling cabal) upon our country. Just when you thought it couldn’t (or at least wouldn’t) get worse than Obama, we get Joe. Biden’s incompetence needs to be called out at every turn.
I am no fan of Trump’s manner or method. When he announced his first run for the Presidency, I sagely predicted he would never win the nomination. I knew people center and right were pissed at both parties, but I didn’t realize that they were pissed enough to nominate Trump. Of course, voting for Killary in the general election was out of the question. Now, Trump seems to feel entitled to the 2024 nomination and another term in office. I can wish for Trump to change, but it would be the triumph of hope over experience if it were to happen.
Turning the nation into the clown show we witness daily has a lot of people considering the “by any means necessary” school of action. We are already deeply into a cold war to save this republic, and it will take a really hard and determined effort by all sides to prevent it from going hot. I don’t foresee the Democrats even making the effort. They seem content to let it all burn, when they aren’t actually pouring on fuel and striking matches. The Neocons aren’t doing much either, other than mau-mauing the Left, pearl-clutching over Trump, and voting with the Dems to spend more and more money we don’t have. The Republicans should have impeached Alejandro Mayorkas by now and be started on a couple of others. To me, people seem at least as pissed as they were in 2016. Whether DeSantis (really the only other viable Republican) will run and whether he can prevail over Trump is still an open question, but Trump is presently in the catbird seat, and not just with his often-derided “base.” Conservatives want to win, not lose with their manners intact but with our nation continuing to go down in flames.
“When he announced his first run for the Presidency, I sagely predicted he would never win the nomination.”
At the same time, I boldly opined that the only way Trump would see the inside of the Oval Office would be on a White House tour.
Jack, I hadn’t yet discovered your blog when the 2016 election was underway and Trump mocked/imitated a journalist with a physical disability, so I just now read the post you linked to for the first time. I think I found Ethics Alarms some time during the lockdown circa the Great Barrington Declaration. I’ve read everything you’ve posted since (excluding baseball and Gilbert & Sullivan).
What stuck out to me was your statement that Trump was a crypto fascist. I have never lived in a fascist state, but I don’t think fascism – in hindsight – was Trump’s brand. The media certainly called Trump a fascist on a frequent enough basis to make it stick.
I voted for him as a vote against Clinton. If I had thought Trump was an actual fascist, I would not have voted for him. I didn’t expect him to win, but if I thought he was a fascist, I would have voted for someone else; whoever was the Libertarian.
I would accept that you may have changed your opinion about Trump being a fascist at some point in the last eight years, but I literally do not know what a crypto fascist is; I only use the word crypto when referring to digital assets like BitCoin.
What’s the difference is between fascism and crypto fascism?
Fascism is openly displayed and unquestionable. Crypto-fascism is hidden or thinly disguised.
That post was written 2015; I no longer believe that Trump is a secret fascist or, as the Axis of Unethical Conduct claimed, a real one. He didn’t behave like a fascist in 4 years as President, and he could have: Biden has been much more fascistic already. No, Trump is just a typical CEO leader type.
Who weirdly acts at times like a seventh-grade class clown.
who, where am i, what
funnier than SNL
only in one take.
What really made the impersonation effective was the diminish mobility bow at the end. Attention to detail A+.
I want to see him do a 4hr standup routine with impersonations of all of his political and media enemies.
I’ll pass. I’ll wait for your review.
Jack, please change your headline! If you say this, it is practically guaranteed that the competition for this coveted award will increase and NO ONE needs that.
Seriously though, there is plenty of year left for people to get worse. Just as the Great Stupid is continually getting worse, Asshole of the Year contenders have plenty of time to prove that this is a hole with no bottom. I feel like you are tempting fate to say that this action clinches the award when the political bullshit is really going to hit near the end of the year. This certainly puts Trump in place as a strong contender, but you are forgetting that we are only through four months yet of the year.
How else are we supposed to get to the president depicted in Idiocracy?
I the Republican party would find some courage and tell Trump that they will not allow him to be their nominee, he would run as a third party candidate and lose. We need an anti-Trump, anti-Biden candidate, and if the Republican party would think beyond the moment, decide to really serve the nation, they could provide it. Trump is constitutionally unfit for the Presidency, and Biden is a befuddled woke robot. I won’t choose between them, and unfortunately must rely on existing political machines to give us a real choice. Time is too short for a third party to emerge, so get with it, Republicans! Get rid of Trump ! Grow some !!