Donald Trump: Difference between revisions

He is the oldest first-term president and the ''only'' US president who has never held prior political office or military rank.<ref>He joins [[William Howard Taft]] and [[Herbert Hoover]] on the list of never holding ''elected'' office or military rank, but Donald Trump was never appointed to any office either.</ref> and his wife Melania Trump is the second foreign-born First Lady<ref>English-born Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, First Lady to John Quincy Adams (6th President of the United States), was the first.</ref>

 

 

Some editors would probably have some triumphant line of argument to add here in support or opposition of any of those, but [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|they should know better]].

* [[Ad Hominem]]: Has been on the giving and receiving end of this often. Trump has been known to attack the person in debates alongside - or often instead of - addressing the point raised in an argument. For example, his reason for disliking the retired Admiral McCraven was because [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAZ7jyr3kSs he is a "Hillary Clinton fan."]

* [[Adam Westing]]: At one time, he seemed to revel in parodies of himself, even appearing in a series of OREO commercials with Darrell Hammond impersonating him. Hammond was the longest-running white male cast member of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', and one of the show's best and most frequently-used celebrity impersonators.

* [[All Women Are Lustful]]: Trump's view of women, especially according to the Pussygate tape. After implying that Nancy O'Dell, who once rebuffed his advances, became sluttier with "big phony tits", he went on to explain that all women all want it with a star:

{{quote|And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. [[Beat|*beat*]] Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.}}

* [[Admiring the Abomination]]: Trump has notoriously given praise to several world leaders viewed as controversial at best or outright despots at worst. These include [[Vladimir Putin]] of Russia, [[Rodrigo Duterte]] of the Philippines, Xi Jinping of China, and [[Kim Jong Un]] of North Korea (despite Trump previously throwing some shade at Kim and even threatened "fire and fury" against North Korea on Twitter). He once claimed he admired [[Saddam Hussein]] for executing terrorists, and if [[Michael Wolfe]] is truthful in his book ''[[Landslide]]'', he had to be kept by aides from publicly saying positive things about [[Adolf Hitler]] himself.

* [[And Stay Out!]]: According to the [https://www.thedailybeast.com/lin-wood-and-michael-flynns-qanon-civil-war-keeps-getting-nuttier-and-sleazier December 1, 2021 "Fever Dreams" column/pocast] on ''[[The Daily Beast]]'' news website, Trump -- who was banned by his successor [[Joe Biden]] from receiving traditional post-Presidency intelligence briefings after the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt -- has begun claiming that he ''wasn't'' banned, he instead actively ''refused'' to accept those briefings:

{{quote|“When we reached out to Donald Trump’s office early this week about the reporting we had, and also the details in this newly revised CIA book,” [Fever Dreams co-host Asawin Suebsaeng] relates, “he tried to convince us that his current lack of post-presidency briefings is all his own decision. It was all by his own design…

** As of March 30, 2021, [https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/trump-campaign-non-disclosure-agreement-478648 a federal judge has ruled that the Non-Disclosure Agreements Trump had his campaign workers sign were so broad as to be unenforceable], suggesting that Trump's desire to control his employees' speech exceeds his understanding of the laws regarding the legal ways of doing so.

** Similarly, in [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-loses-case-against-omarosa-who-wrote-tell-all-white-n1280277 late September 2021], a New York arbitrator ruled that the NDA ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman was required to sign did not adhere to typical legal standards and was "vague, indefinite, and therefore void and unenforceable". The arbitrator summarized the agreement as imposing on her "an obligation to never say anything remotely critical of Mr. Trump, his family or his or his family members' businesses for the rest of her life", and ruled that the document did not qualify as a binding contract under New York law.

* [[Artistic License Medicine]]: His [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216 notorious speech] where he suggested drinking bleach or using an "injection" of disinfectant to clear a Covid patient's lungs is often regarded as one of his costliest mistakes.

* [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]]: Trump rarely if ever backs down. No matter the potential foolishness or folly, he will almost inevitably double down when called on it, usually citing [[Appeal to Popularity|unspecified anonymous "people" who agree with him or certify him as being correct]].

|Chris Cillizza, [http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_74bd112ff36facd1f8e9c922fc99eaec CNN.com, September 8, 2021]}}

:* Political commentator Kurt Bardella used the Trope Name directly in September 2022:

* [[Author Vocabulary Calendar]]: Trump's frequent use of "failing" as a pejorative for any news outlet which reported anything negative about him, as though impugning the profit margins of organizations such as ''The New York Times'' was relevant to their journalistic integrity. His insistence that any television program which covered him negatively was always losing or low in ratings also testifies to Trump's obsession with winning as the only meaningful metric in life.

* [[Awesome McCoolname]]: Trump, as the words has several meanings, including "surpass (something) by saying or doing something better". His ancestral name was Drumpf, which was changed to Trump [[w:Donald_Trump (Last Week Tonight)|sometime in the 17th century]], and has picked up steam as a pejorative (often one that falls into [[Godwin's Law]]) among his many liberal critics and detractors.

* [[Badass]]: He got a very credible threat to his life at least two weeks before his presidential election, to the point the Secret Service evacuated him from the speech he was giving, but instead of letting it stick, he simply went right back to the podium a few minutes later and continued speaking. Throughout his entire presidential campaign and into his presidency, Trump has been the target of more than one confirmed assassination attempt and refused to quit appearing in public or be cowed into doing so.

** [[Badass Grandpa]]: Trump was in his late sixties when the aforementioned threat happened, and he's now an actual grandfather.

* [[Gannon Banned|Bannon Banned]]: Quite a bit of strife in the political fandom was caused by Steve Bannon's appointment as a quasi-Chief of Staff.

* [[Believing Their Own Lies]]: It's unclear, but Trump does at least give the appearance of believing his lies ''du jour''.

* [[Big Bulky Bomb]]: He became the first president to deploy a MOAB, the so-called "Mother of All Bombs" (which itself is a [[Shout-Out]] to Saddam Hussein's "mother of all wars" boast) in 2017. This bomb is so big it has to be launched out the back of a cargo plane, but it's only a conventional explosive.

** Attempts to "prove" that organized voter fraud "stole" the election continued through the summer of 2021, with recounts and audits in states with sympathetic Republican governors or legislatures -- as many as four in some states. As of this writing, all have failed to show ''anything'' close to what Trump's increasingly strident supporters demand that they should -- and one in fact revealed that Biden had actually won with ''more'' votes than initially counted.

* [[Blatant Lies]]: Has been [https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ accused of doing this frequently], though not without reason or proof. The ''Washington Post'' began keeping a record false or misleading claims (lies), [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.8c818bcde19a totaling 492 in his first 100 days in office], [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/ 3001 in his first 466 days], [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/08/01/president-trump-has-made-4229-false-or-misleading-claims-in-558-days/ 4,229 in his first 558 days] and [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.b83bfa941966 6420 in his first 649 days]. His lie count varies, but in the first 466 days of his Presidency, he averaged 6.5 'false or misleading claims' a day, whereas in June and July of 2018, [https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-escalating-war-on-the-truth-is-on-purpose he averaged 16 lies per day]. This dramatic uptick seemingly [[Nothing to See Here|coincided with]] increased pressure from the Mueller investigation. The exponential lie count continued under the aforementioned pressure, coupled with the run up to the Mid-Term elections on November 6, 2018. According to [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.b83bfa941966 the graph in the ''Washington Post''], Trump has lied/ made false claims over 1000 times in October 2018].

** As of November 1st, 2018, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/when-i-can-i-tell-the-truth-trump-pushes-back-against-his-peddling-of-falsehoods/2018/11/01/e8278d68-ddbe-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html?utm_term=.d0db42789b88 Trump claims to tell the truth "when [he<nowiki>]</nowiki> can"]

** [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/19/george-conway-what-i-really-believe/ George Conway] has described him as "the most prodigiously documented liar in American history, if not the history of the world."

** As of the end of his presidency, the ''Washington Post'' credited him with [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/ over 30,500 false or misleading claims] during the four years he was in office.

* [[Broke Episode]]: Trump's businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times.

* [[Brooklyn Rage]]: Trump's persona, at least in the media, is that of a [[Nouveau Riche|straight-talking]], tough New Yorker - an image he's made efforts to cultivate over the years.

** Trump received his [[The Cameo|cameo]] in ''[[Home Alone 2]]'' because he demanded it in exchange for permission to film in the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. In a [https://www.insider.com/home-alone-30-an...eo-2020-11 December 2020 interview with ''Insider''], director [[Chris Columbus]] explicitly described it as "bully[ing] his way into the movie".

** In early January 2021, Trump attempted to bully his vice president Mike Pence into illegally calling the election for him by browbeating him: [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mike-pence-trump.html "You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy."] (Pence chose [[You Keep Using That Word|"patriot"]], enraging Trump with his "betrayal".)

* [[Calvin Ball]]: Trump would ignore many unwritten "rules" for running a successful campaign and win anyway.

** He completely ignored the "rule" that a campaign should "never put a candidate in a hat if you can avoid it" <ref>One notable violation leading to failure was Dukakis wearing a tank commander helmet and looking horrible in it, providing Bush Sr. with material for successful ads against him.</ref> and not only made his "Make America Great Again" hat iconic, but successfully wore a hard hat when accepting an endorsement from West Virginia Coal Association <ref>An endorsement he admitted right there isn't hard when running against Hillary, who said she wants their employers "out of business"</ref>.

** The potential side-effect of the storm of pardons he issued in his final weeks in office. Accepting a pardon by American law is an admission of guilt by the pardoned party, but worse, doing so removes the recipient's protection against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment (because they can't be prosecuted they can't incriminate themselves); consequently they can be compelled to testify -- in this case, against Trump. It took several weeks after the first pardon for this to occur to ''anyone'' in Trump's White House (at which point it was too late); Federal investigators, of course, were aware of this and more than happy to trade a few underlings for Trump himself.

*** Averted when Trump was reportedly dissuaded from pardoning his children in his last hours in office by aides who raised the spectre of them being forced to testify against him.

* [[Dodgy Toupee]]: Often when someone wants to make a sketch or joke about Donald Trump they may take the easy angle and mock the obvious toupee. ''[[Meet the Spartans]]'' did this where [[Catch Phrase|he fires]] Spiderman and cuts his web but he sticks it back onto his head and pulls the wig off.

** Lisa Lampanelli did this funnier than anyone: "What do you say to a barber to get him to cut your hair like that? I fucked your daughter?"

* [[Egopolis]]: Trump 'brands' his buildings with the '''''Trump''''' name displayed prominently, often placing large gold [[Calling Card|"T"]] symbols throughout the interior rooms.

* [[Empty Promise]]: Usually played straight just like almost every other politician of the early 21st century, but Inverted with his promise to "accept no salary". Federal law forbids anyone from working for the government for no salary, but [https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1341/take-no-salary/ Trump donated all of his salary to various government departments during his tenure as President].

* [[Ensemble Darkhorse]]: In the 2016 Presidential campaign, especially since he won.

* [[Epic Fail]]:

* [[Exaggerated]]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/06/17/how-donald-trump-plays-the-press-in-his-own-words/ He calls it "truthful hyperbole" (an oxymoron) in "The Art of The Deal".] Otherwise known as [[Blatant Lies|stretching the truth]].

** He has, according to himself, the best words, the best brain, is ''like'' a smart person, has the best temperament, and knows the "system" better than anyone.

* [[Favoritism Flip Flop]]: it has been pointed out that Trump has a tendency to express agreement with the last person with whom he's spoken. A good example was after the 2018 Parkland shooting in Florida, when he seemed to favor gun control on the Wednesday (28/2/18), [https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-flips-on-gun-control-after-nra-sits-him-down-in-oval-office only to backtrack on the Thursday (1/3/18) after a meeting with the NRA].

* [[Fountain of Memes]]: Became a gigantic wellspring of these during his 2016 Presidential campaign and his Presidency, some of which he even encouraged.

:* Post Presidency it has gotten worse with his endorsements, who are mostly extremist celebrities with no experience in politics, for no reason other then gratitude for ''them'' endorsing ''him''. These include [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mehmet_Oz Dr. Mehmet Oz] in Pennsylvania, [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/J._D._Vance J.D. Vance] in Ohio, and [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Herschel_Walker Hershel Walker] in Georgia.

* [[Lack of Empathy]]: Is apparently completely incapable of understanding or sympathizing with the feelings of anyone other than himself, as noted by many outside observers and reporters.

* [[Large and In Charge]]: 6'3" and 243 pounds as of the end of 2020, with a body mass index over 30, which qualifies him as "obese", although not morbidly so as some have claimed.

* [[Last-Name Basis]]: Due to using his family name as a brand name and the meaning of the word "trump", Donald Trump is referred to as Trump the majority of the time (or occasionally President Trump).

 

== M-O ==

* [[Madness Mantra]]: White House insiders reported that after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, a disbelieving Trump would wander the White House muttering, "I won. I won. I won."

* [[Medal of Dishonor]]:

** He famously declared in front of video cameras that [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/mar/13/donald-trump-coronavirus-joe-biden-bernie-sanders-live-updates-news?page=with:block-5e6bfb108f088d75755931fa he took "no responsibility" for failures of his administration to address the COVID-19 outbreak.]

** In the wake of the January 6, 2021 mob attack on the Capitol, [https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/politics/donald-trump-riot-impeachment/index.html Trump repeatedly refused to take any responsibility] for the violence and deaths inflicted by the crowd he had whipped into a frenzy, and in fact claimed unnamed and unidentified "people" had examined "every word" of his speech and certified it harmless.

* [[Never Accepted in His Hometown]]: Trump joins [[James K. Polk]] as the only Presidential candidate to lose both his home state and state of residence while still winning the election. Unlike Polk these are the same state (New York).

* [[New Media Are Evil]]: Whether he believes this or not is debatable, but he clearly wants everyone to think so. His war with the press is well-known, having coined the term "fake news" (a moniker he places on any media company who expresses any negativity towards him) and claiming the press is the "enemy of the people".

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: To the point that it becomes a deliberate use of the [[Big Lie|"Big Lie" technique]].

* [[The Remnant]]: Even before the inauguration of President Biden, Trump was planning and raising money for a 2024 presidential bid, with millions of loyal followers expected to support him. While the fallout from the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol may have damaged this plan, it hasn't crippled it, and as of late January 2021 he was reported to be considering founding a new political party entirely.

 

== S-U ==

* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: Pretty much the mantra defining most of Trump's adult life.

* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Connections]]: Subverted. He may have ''thought'' his Supreme Court appointees would side with him, but three unanimous rulings refusing to hear his voter fraud claims and another refusal to hear Texas' challenge to state voting laws show otherwise. Two of his appointees also ruled against the third challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the 7-2 ruling even having one less dissenter than the second time.

* [[Screw the Rules, I Make Them]]: Trump as President was described as "norm-breaking" and as willfully ignoring the limits, both written and unwritten, to a President's power and behavior.

** According to his White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, this was a constant in Trump's White House. "He would roll his eyes at the rules, so we did, too," Grisham is quoted as saying in [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/12/trump-15-boxes/ a February 2022 interview] with ''The Washington Post''. "We weren't going to get in trouble because he's the president of the United States." She also described an occasion where she expressed concern about violations of the [[w:Hatch Act|Hatch Act]], only for Trump to respond, "Who’s the boss of the Hatch Act? It’s me. So say whatever you want."

** Inverted when he became President and skipped both White House Correspondence Dinners (2017 and 2018). Comedians [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDmSZX_zVuQ Hasan Minhaj] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeEiq_C6j3c Michelle Wolf]'s roasts were particularly brutal affairs. After the backlash following Wolf's roast it was announced that a presidential biographer (Ron Chernow) would give a talk in 2019 that [https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/2019-white-house-correspondents-no-comedian.html prohibited comedians from attending Presidential dinners].

* [[Self-Made Man]]: In the sense that he [[Half Truth|inherited his business]], went broke (bankrupting a ''casino'' is, as many have noted, no mean feat), and then rebuilt himself. He did receive a "small loan of million dollars", the [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/opinion/donald-trump-tax-fraud-fred.html highest estimates putting it at $413 million], but Trump has succeeded at multiplying his wealth to several times the amount he was loaned as his current{{when}} net worth is around 2 billion dollars (and [https://www.investopedia.com/updates/donald-trump-net-worth/ going from a millionaire to a ''billionaire''] is no mean feat).

* [[Shut UP, Hannibal]]: Received one from Joe Biden in the first 2020 Presidential debate.

* [[Springtime for Hitler]]: Many of his detractors say he ran for President as a PR stunt and never expected to win. If so, it certainly didn't help his PR.

** In mid-December 2020, infamous GOP strategist/dirty trickster Karl Rove noted that Trump was [[Understatement|"on the edge" of looking like a Sore Loser]].

* [[Spanner in the Works]]:

* [[Spoiled Brat]]: So characterized by both sides of the aisle in the aftermath of the 2020 elections. "We're watching a petulant child not getting his way throw a tantrum," a senior Republican was [https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/23/politics/donald-trump-pardons-stimulus/index.html quoted as saying by CNN] in late December 2020, in regards to Trump's refusal to let the election result go unchallenged.

* [[Start My Own]]: After being banned from pretty much every major social media outlet in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt, Trump tried several times with mixed success to start his own social media platform.

* [[Streisand Effect]]: Trump's reaction to ''[[w:Fire and Fury|Fire and Fury]]'', a derogatory tell-all written by [[w:Michael Wolff (journalist)|Michael Wolff]], could well serve as a critic's lesson on how ''not'' to dissuade someone from reading a book. After passages of the book were leaked, Trump launched an explosive rant on Twitter condemning the book, while his wife, daughter, and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders condemned it publicly. Trump even sent a cease and desist letter to the publisher threatening a lawsuit if it was released, even as pre-sales on Amazon were reaching record numbers. As a result, the publisher actually released it four days early to meet demands, and it shot to the heights of the bestseller lists in a matter of hours. Many major booksellers reported lines outside their stores not seen since they had new ''[[Harry Potter]]'' releases, selling out stock in two minutes.

** Then he did it again two years later, threatening to sue his own niece for writing (not publishing, simply writing) ''[[w:Too Much and Never Enough|Too Much and Never Enough]]''. The threatened lawsuit resulted in the book gaining not just national media coverage but also media coverage in Canada, including an in-depth interview with the author on ''[[As It Happens]]''. As a result of this publicity, the book was released twenty-eight days early and set a record at the book's publisher for the number of preorders received.

** When President he would go out of his way to avoid touching people or even going into crowds. Some believed it was at least part of the reason he refused to address the COVID-19 pandemic for months.

* [[Third-Person Person]]: Reported as speaking that way on occasion, such as the meeting with Bill Barr cited under ''It's All About Me'', above.

* [[Too Soon]]: Defied; he waited all of 24 hours after [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell Colin Powel's] death to [https://www.rawstory.com/there-really-is-no-bottom-trump-buried-for-spiteful-statement-about-colin-powell-s/ criticize and insult him.]

* [[Trash Talk]]: A favored tactic -- some would say his ''only'' tactic -- in any kind of debate or presentation; Trump never dealt in facts or reasoned argument when he could insult his opponent, their family, or even an idea.

** In the final weeks of his presidency, Trump was hailed as the worst president ever by commentators from all points on the political spectrum. Even fellow Republican politician and actor [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]] wasted no time to call Trump [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAWvl-g_6rg the worst] as well as a racist following the Capitol raid in January 2021. Arnie even drew parallels to the infamous ''Kristallnacht'' putsch where he compared the pro-Trump Proud Boys extremist group to the Nazis, something which hit too close to home for the Austrian (it should be noted that Arnold's father Gustav was a former Nazi Party member; Arnold attributed his father's abusive behaviour to the guilt he had over what Gustav and other Nazis and collaborators had perpetrated or enabled during the war.)

** C-Span, however, is slightly nicer to him, their [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngsZuhZMM0 2021 Presidential Historians Survey] rating him second-to-last, beating [[William Henry Harrison]]. Even then, the reason [[Damned By Faint Praise|Harrison is usually considered the worst]] is because he died after only 30 days in office and thus had no accomplishments to speak of (thus he is omitted from many surveys).

* [[Other Stock Phrases|"You Can't Fire Me, I Quit!"]]: Trump [https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2021/02/04/donald-trump-resigns-sag-read-his-resignation-letter-union-response/4392136001/ resigned from the Screen Actors Guild] in early February 2021 after learning he was about to be expelled from the union for his actions on January 6, 2021.