At The Baffler, David Roth pulls no punches in his assessment of Donald Trump for anyone still confused by his core beliefs and his approach to politics: he’s an asshole, and the self-centeredness that defines him mean that he’ll never change, and he’ll never care.
There is no room for other people in the world that Trump has made for himself, and this is fundamental to the anxiety of watching him impose his claustrophobic and airless interior world on our own. Is Trump a racist? Yes, because that’s a default setting for stupid people; also, he transparently has no regard for other people at all. Does Trump care about the cheap-looking statue of Stonewall Jackson that some forgotten Dixiecrat placed in a shithole park somewhere he will never visit? Not really, but he so resents the fact that other people expect him to care that he develops a passionate contrary opinion out of spite. Does he even know about . . . Let me stop you there. The answer is no.
The answer is always no, and it will always be no because he does not care.
Is this a screed? Yes, but sometimes reading a well-written screed does a body good. I give Roth bonus points for the piece’s excellent dog-focused introduction, tempered by a demerit for in any way likening the gift to humanity that is the dog to Donald Trump.
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