Donald Trump, Bad Loser
I think often of the moment late in Donald Trump’s presidency, well after he had been defeated in the 2020 presidential election by Joe Biden, when press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked if the then-president was committed to an orderly presidential transition.
McEnany replied that of course Donald Trump was committed to an orderly transition between his first and second terms. If I were the reporter, I would have countered, “No, I’m talking about Donald Trump fucking losing and Joe Biden winning. Is Trump ready to finally concede that he fucking lost and Joe Biden fucking won or is he going to continue living in a fucking fantasy world?”
Like so much of what that horrible woman said in her capacity as the mouthpiece for the most powerful man on earth, McEnany’s blatant falsehood was not a statement meant for the press, the opposition or Trump’s own party.
No, the former press secretary’s confident assertion that despite pretty much the whole ass media reporting, correctly, that Donald Trump had been defeated, Trump had, in fact, won and would be smoothly transitioning from his first triumphant, historic, record-breaking, best-ever term in office to his second was designed for one person and one person only: Donald Trump.
I can only imagine how deliriously happy it must have made Trump to see his spokesperson treating as incontrovertible fact the widely, even universally debunked conspiracy theory that the disgraced soon to be ex-president was the victim of widespread fraud so blatant and undeniable that Trump would be staying in office until the whole election mess was straightened out.
Trump did, in fact, leave the White House without needing to be escorted out by the police but the sour, arrogant delusion of the former press secretary remains defiantly in place as Trump’s official response to being defeated in the 2020 presidential race.
We all knew that Trump was going to be the very worst of losers. We all knew that he was never going to accept any presidential results other than “Trump wins devastating, undeniable landslide victory. Communist Democrats disband in despair.”
If Trump had won a tight race he would have insisted that electoral fraud robbed him of a historic landslide. If Biden had won by a huge amount Trump would have angrily insisted that the preposterous notion that an addled, singularly unpopular man hiding out in his basement like Biden could defeat a man who performed before vast arenas full of adoring fans and inspired politically-themed boat parades the likes of which the world has never known before by such a margin incontrovertibly proved that the election was rigged in Biden’s favor.
It was inevitable that Trump would refuse to accept the results of any election where he didn’t win by a historic amount. Yet Trump has nevertheless managed to shimmy under the incredibly low bar I have set for him and been an infinitely worse loser than I could have imagined.
Trump has allowed his unwillingness to accept defeat to define him as a person, politician and cultural figure. He has no message beyond “Trump won” and no patience for allies who do not share his obsession with proving that he was the victim of the worst crime in the history of presidential politics in 2020 and will soon return to office once unprecedented malfeasance is proven.
As far as I know, Donald Trump and the MyPillow Guy are the only cultural figures of note who believe this to be true. They’re also CONVINCED that this will be the year that the Great Pumpkin will finally show up and vindicate their undying, child-like faith.
Trump will never concede. Even in his own feverish, deluded mind he’s incapable of admitting that the other guy won and he lost with the world watching.
I would not be surprised if Trump’s dying words are, “I won and everyone knew it” or “Biden stole the election.” I suspect those are also the first words he will tell Satan, who will them inform him, on our behalf as well as his own, they he most assuredly DID lose the election, and also is going to spend eternity enduring the most awful torments imaginable.
Bob Dole recently made headlines by still being alive, somehow, at 98, and somewhat confusingly insisting that he was also still a “Trumper” except that he was tired of Trump’s bullshit, thinks Biden is a great guy and is of the mindset that Trump definitely lost and was making a fool of himself by pretending otherwise.
It was a little like a guy proclaiming himself a big Christian, then saying Jesus definitely got laid and also most of the Bible is bullshit.
That’s because Trumpism isn’t ultimately a political movement so much as it is a cult and a religion. One of the core beliefs of this cult/sect is that the great and wonderful and all-powerful Trump won a sacred landslide victory in 2020 but it was stolen from him by the evil Communist Democrats in collaboration with Satan, the bought and paid for Fake News media and the big tech.
Trump doesn’t seem to understand that refusing to accept defeat makes him weak, not strong. A strong Republican Party would use this as an excuse to break away from Trump and Trumpism as boldly as possible.
But the Republican Party is so weak and pathetic that even in Secret Honor falling-apart-after-midnight-mode Trump continues to rule it with an iron fist.
The Republicans have become the party of “Trump Won”, a message I suspect even some of the ex-president’s own supporters find depressingly narrow and short-sighted for a political party that’s supposed to serve the whole country rather than a broken man’s brittle ego but that seems to have given up on that bigger, slightly more important mission roughly four years ago.
Trump has consequently been able to convince a distressingly vast percentage of the Gullible Old Party that his wild lies about Biden stealing the presidency from him are true. In Trump’s warped world, getting your worshippers to believe an obvious falsehood is infinitely better than having them acknowledge a depressing truth like the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency.
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