On Four Straight Years Of Never Calling That Hot Garbage 'President Trump'
Last night, Joy Reid said something on her MSNBC show that got our attention. She said she had never used the words "President Trump," never used that honorific to refer to him. "Neither did we," we thought to ourselves. (Royal "we," obviously, dunno what other Wonkette writers did, it wasn't like an editorial rule or anything.) Reid said she did that with intention, and by design. "Same," we thought to ourselves.
We didn't hear much of the rest of the segment, so we'll probably inadvertently copy some of what Reid said, because we likely had some of the same reasons for making this decision.
Oh sure, we probably used it once or twice in quote marks, or with a "LOL" afterward. More likely, if we used the word "president" we followed it with "Russian agent" or "WordStupid" or "ClownPiss McOrange." You know, something classy like that. Otherwise, his last name was fine.
It wasn't because we didn't respect the office of the presidency. In fact, we can confidently say we have respected the office of the presidency more than Donald Trump has every single day since January of 2017, when he technically assumed that title.
At no point in our lives have we lived through a presidency where we wouldn't say those words, even scornfully. Trump was different. From the moment he took the oath of office, lying through his teeth, and spoke of "American carnage" — which reportedly led George W. Bush to lean over to Secretary Clinton and say "that was some weird shit" — there was something fundamentally un-American about this man.
It wasn't just the Russia stuff, though that was an enormous part of it at the beginning. This is a man who pulled the unlikeliest inside straight in American presidential electoral history to "win" the 2016 election by mere thousands in three demographically and geographically similar states. Meanwhile, the "losing" candidate beat him by almost three million votes for the "People's Choice Award." What can one say about our fucked up electoral system, besides how sometimes the Academy gives the Oscar to Crash? (You can say lots of other things, but this post isn't about that.)
News quickly started to trickle out, and we learned more and more about Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for free, who was "fired" when his Russian ties came to light, but apparently never really went away. The Mueller Report confirmed that Manafort had been giving internal Trump campaign Rust Belt polling models to his Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik, with whom he worked for Oleg Deripaska, AKA Vladimir Putin's very favorite oligarch. It assessed Kilimnik as someone with "ties" to Russian intelligence. The GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee went for it and called a Russian spy a Russian fucking spy.
No collusion? Yeah, you know, except for all this fuckin' collusion.
And we watched as Trump burrowed inside the asses of Putin and any other anti-American dictator he could find, but really, it was the grossest with Putin. Trump somehow found a way to take the Kremlin's side on foreign policy arguments he couldn't possibly have known anything about, because he's an absolute fucking moron. Donald Trump does not have personal opinions on Montenegro's bid to join NATO, y'all. He just doesn't. He sure figured out how to take Putin's side on that one, though.
Same with Ukraine. Good God. Our longtime ally, whom Russia attacked in 2014 in retaliation for Ukrainians trying to stand up against their corrupt, Russia-facing government. Oh, Trump would sell Ukraine the weapons they needed, but he needed them to do him a favor, though. And he'd hold up that military assistance, for our ally under daily attack from Putin, until he got what he wanted or he got caught.
"President Trump."
He stood next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and so many other times, and openly declared that he took the word of that shitmouthed tyrant over that of American intelligence agencies, which unanimously assessed that Russia had attacked the 2016 election to help Trump.
"President Trump."
He defended literal actual Nazis marching in Charlottesville, who chanted "Jews will not replace us." He said there were very fine people on both sides, playing the same cutesy game he played when he said during the 2016 campaign that Mexicans were rapists, but some, he was sure, are very nice people.
"President Trump."
A pandemic hit. Trump lied to the American people and stuck both thumbs up his ass while hawking snake oil cures and casually suggesting maybe people could bleach the virus out of their lungs.
"President Trump."
Yet another Black man was viciously murdered by police, and this time, Americans paid attention and took to the streets. And even though every credible source said the people protesting for their rights to not be murdered by the police were not violent, though it was obviously outside agitators and chaos agents causing violence, Trump nonetheless attacked the peaceful protesters in the streets, first with Bill Barr's unidentified secret police in cities around America, then right in front of the White House, where he gassed a priest so he could go stand in front of a church and hold a Bible.
"President Trump."
And after telling us in one million ways that he wouldn't accept the results of a free and fair election we all knew he was going to lose, he followed through, like the un-American wannabe tyrant he is. He created a fascist Big Lie that said the election had been stolen through "fraud," all of which obviously occurred in cities where Black people live, because Trump is a white supremacist who's never been real subtle about that. He doesn't believe those Black people's votes should matter, at least not if they outnumber the racists he considers true American patriots.
And he pushed it, and he pushed it, and he tried to steal the election, even as it became clear that Joe Biden had beat the absolute SHIT out of him, both in the vote of the people and in the Electoral College. And he pushed it some more. And he raised up an army devoted to that Big Lie, and once he had them congregated in one place, he ordered them to attack the US Capitol. It doesn't matter that some elements of that group were clearly planning the attack beforehand, because Trump was ordering the attack beforehand, every time his disgusting tiny fingers tweeted out fascist Big Lies about the election being stolen.
"President Trump."
Fuck him.
We could go on and on. We could talk about how he's absolutely inverted and soiled the presidential pardon power, doling it out to cronies who helped him commit crimes, or cronies who could testify against him. (We'll have a post on that today, in fact!)
He's the worst president in American history, by a fucking mile, and when his earthly life is over, no one will say "May his memory be a blessing." You know, unless they add "LOL" afterward.
Today, President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama will bear witness to President Joe Biden taking the oath of office. (Yes, we are purposely giving them those honorifics, even "President Bush," and even though Miss Manners says there is only one president at a time. We're making a point here!) Trump? He'll be on the golf course by then, probably, don't know, don't give a fuck what that POS human being does the rest of this day or any other day in the rest of his sad life.
Besides, we don't think you have to call somebody a former "president" when there's an asterisk by their name because Russia boosted him into office, whereupon he got a second and third asterisk by his name each time he was impeached. He may yet end up with a fourth asterisk, as the first US president in history to be convicted by the Senate and barred from every showing his fucking face in a run for public office ever again.
(At least not in the US. He may be able to run for mayor of Moscow or something.)
Welcome, President Biden. And farewell to old garbage.
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