Two scoops
I’ve seen a lot of references to the interview Trump did with TIME magazine as startling evidence of how…what to call it…under-equipped he is.
Here’s a sample on his first use of force:
I’ve been doing this, in all fairness, when I first came into the office, the first night. You weren’t here.
But they say sir, we’re ready to go. I said where? They had some people in a certain country, Yemen, where they had them [surveilled] and they needed the go ahead to kill, to kill them.
But in other words they wanted the right to go. So they’re telling me this. And this happened for two or three weeks, four weeks. And they keep coming to me, at weird times too. I don’t care about that.
And they’re in parts of the world that most people have never even heard about. They were in cities that nobody every heard about or towns. And in some cases they’re ISIS or al-Qaeda. And so they say sir, we have a situation we’d like to be able to go and they tell me what.
Then after about four or five weeks I said wait a minute. By the time they get to me, and I get back to them, usually it’s over anyway, it’s gone, they’re gone. They couldn’t fire. You know under the Obama Administration they get back to them three or four weeks later and say it’s okay to go. They say okay to go, they left three weeks ago.
Here’s some wisdom on China (or Chy-nah as he pronounces it):
You know I have a lot of respect for President Xi [Jinping]. I have great respect for him. I think we have a very good mutual liking of each other. And I told you we had tremendous dialogue at Mar-a-Lago.
And Mar-a-Lago is a great place for the dialogue because there’s a warmth to Mar-a-Lago that you just don’t find anywhere else. You can sit down in a chair and just talk for hours. Where in some places you don’t have that.
And this is great. I mean it’s very different. But you don’t have that here. It’s not the same. It’s great in a different way.
We’ve never had the relationship that we have now. Now, in all fairness to President Xi, he loves China, he loves his people, and he is representing the people of China. He’s not representing the people of the United States. So we’ll see how that all turns out.
On his genius at debt-collection:
You know we’ve gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than hat we’re getting. All because of me. I mean it’s not like a bragging thing, I’m just saying. If Hillary Clinton would have gotten in, she wouldn’t even know that we’re getting screwed by everybody.
But we have gotten billions of dollars more coming in. and coming in. I asked one simple question, I says is everybody paid up? An they bring their chart, and these countries haven’t paid for years. Haven’t paid a fair amount for years. Billions, and billions, and billions and billions of dollars. And we’re paying. We’re paying for it.
And they pay 2% and we pay close to 4%. And in all fairness it’s better for them than it is for us. It’s wonderful. But its better for them. And I get along great with Merkel. I got along great with all of them. I said folks, you gotta pay. You gotta pay.
In their story on Trump after hours, there’s a touching little item about joining him for dinner.
the Blue Room has been lit with nearly a dozen votive candles, the table is set with yellow roses, and the Washington Monument is neatly framed in the South window.
The waiters know well Trump’s personal preferences. As he settles down, they bring him a Diet Coke, while the rest of us are served water, with the Vice President sitting at one end of the table. With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests. When the chicken arrives, he is the only one given an extra dish of sauce. At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else.
What elegant manners.
When I read the part about how his dinner was slightly different, just a little bit obviously better than everyone else’s it just truck me as such odd behavior. Who does that to guests? I guess it’s all a power game, because everything is to someone like him. But it’s bloody peculiar, nonetheless.
The question I keep circling back around to is, how does this end? I’ve been amazed by some of the things people have done, marching, organizing, putting pressure on their local representatives and senators. My local Indivisible group has been incredible, not easy in a red state. I’m not a citizen, won’t be for a few more years and I just feel so goddamn powerless. I don’t see a single one of the GOP having the spine to stand up to Trump. I used to think there would be a line that even they wouldn’t tolerate being crossed. I was wrong. This week has proved it. McConnell and Ryan proved even more pathetically complicit than I could have imagined possible.
But I’m afraid. OK, I’m not the target demographic of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant stance (nobody’s worried about British immigrants) but that doesn’t mean I can’t get caught up in the bullshit anyway. I’m too scared to march because I can’t afford to get deported. One of my friends asked me why I don’t just give up and go home, but I moved to the US for a reason and frankly I barely recognize my home country anymore. I don’t want to give up on the US. I love my adopted city and have made amazing friends here.
And so I hide my head and try not to overdose on politics. I don’t watch as much TV news as I used to, read the newspapers less, talk politics less with friends and my husband. It keeps me sane to limit my exposure. And I feel like a fucking coward and I hate it. But I don’t know what else to do but to keep my head down.
“You can sit down in a chair and just talk for hours. Where in some places you don’t have that.”
Wow. Sitting in chairs. Talking for hours. Who knew?
I can’t imagine (or, rather, can imagine all too well) talking for hours with Trump. I’d be trying to rip off my own head after the first ten minutes.
Indeed. You’d think the President of the USA could arrange chairs on demand, or at least have someone who could arrange chairs. maybe an aspidistra or two to soften the environment and put people at ease…
Translation: they’re in parts of the world Trump has never heard of. I mean, has he seriously not heard of Yemen? Sad.
He is heading off on his first trip overseas as president no.45.
His goons and buffoons are spinning that his tremendous powers of persuasion and winning personality are going to knock every one he meets for six.
I am can’t decide if I need a Valium or popcorn.
So far with Trump all we’ve had is openers: nibbles, hors’d’oevres; stuff like that.
What I want to know is this: when do we get to the main course?
I think I’ve mentioned that a moneyed person I know told me a story about a moneyed couple she knows who were at a moneyed-person dinner years ago at which the wife sat next to Donnie. After it was all over she told her husband, “If you ever make me sit next to that man again I’ll divorce you.”
You have to realize that his “getting the two scoops” is why his supporters like him. Someday, they hope to be the ONE getting the two scoops.
I don’t think so, actually. The whole point is that Donnie ALONE gets two scoops. For some reason his fans like that, while knowing full well they’ll never be on that throne. I guess it’s some kind of displaced aggression? Revenge satisfied?
Yeah but the underlying motivation is that they wanna be him. He’s their silverback and they love him and wish they were him and while they can’t be him they want him to get the 2 scoops because, in a way, vicariously, they get the 2 scoops. chapter 6 of the book, “Willful Blindness” by Margaret Heffernan, addresses this behavior really well. There’s certainly something in what you’re saying but I think this is what’s beneath it.
I wonder if it’s more like ‘haha, he made everyone else envy him for getting two scoops! That’ll show those stuck-up people who think they’re better than me.’
There’s a fine distinction between wanting to be him and hoping to be him. I think he’s a fantasy more than a hope, if you see what I mean. I agree that they wish they were, while doubting that they hope to be. So yeah I think it’s all of these – identifying with him and his revenge and his making everyone else envy him so ha!
In reality of course what he did is make everyone at the table sharply aware of his childish greedy bad manners.
(Who wants ice cream at all with chocolate cream pie? Not a good combination.)
I agree with you but I think that fantasy in this case is a more powerful motivator than hope. There is nothing in their daily lives to warrant such hope but fantasy never has to touch reality to increase the heart rate and reduce the view of reality.
Definitely.
I think what I was getting at, though I wasn’t clear, is that I get the strong impression that the people who ‘admire’ Trump’s behaviour don’t want better things, or be rich, or whatever, nearly as much as they want to see other people be taken down a peg. Their attitude is not anything like ‘aspirational’, in either a good or bad way; it’s just spite and vindictiveness. I wish I could find that cartoon someone did a while back about losing health insurance, with the Trump supporter in the last panel saying to the appalled liberal, ‘oh you’ll be so sad when your friend [himself] dies, boo hoo hoo!’
At every level, even the tiniest personal habit of his that we see, all we see is further narcissism.
guest – yes, that seems to be true, sadly.
It is how a guy like Trump sees being in charge. He isn’t the one who provides the bounty, he’s the one that reaps it.
It kind of reminds me of when President Jacob Zuma said that he had more rights because he won the election. Trump I think sees it the same way – he has more rights because he is rich, because he is the president, because he is in charge.
He isn’t the public’s servant, he is the boss, and he gets two scoops.
The two scoops of ice cream isn’t a goal beyond the reach of the proletariat. Hey, next family dinner just take more than your mooching relatives because MY HOUSE MY RULES MY ICE CREAM. Ice cream’s cheap. Rubbing people’s faces in it? Priceless.
If it’s not literal, then it’s a metaphor for gazing out the McDonald’s window at those lazy homeless bums — without guilt or apology.
I bet his chair is taller than everyone else’s, too.
Little Donnie in his highchair, holding his sippy cup, cries if he doesn’t get more ice cream than anyone else.
Little thought rebellion: give him two scoops, but make sure the two are the same amount as everyone else’s single. If you scoop it the right way it comes up in a big curl that looks voluminous but is empty inside (much like Trump himself). If you keep him talking long enough about the history of North Korea, or something or somewhere else that “nobody’s ever heard of,” it might melt enough that he doesn’t notice.
The question I keep circling back around to is Claire’s opening question:
Trump’s new castle is no tower with gold-plated everything. It’s a pile of medieval bullshit designed to bluff and awe friend and foe alike.
In its dining hall the king sits at high table, with one crown on his head and 2 scoops of ice cream in front of him. The only man who could trump him would be wearing really fancy clothes and MORE THAN ONE crown on his head: say a stacked pile of three, like a pope might sport..
In other words, if I was invited to one of Trump’s dinner parties, I would come along with some meringues in my pocket, made to look like scoops of ice cream. At the best moment, a short time before I was predictably chucked out, I would slip them into my dish and proclaim loudly “Oh looky here! Look at all my ice cream! It just appeared out of nowhere! It’s a miracle!
GOD MUST WANT ME TO BE PRESIDENT.!!!”
Footnote: ‘Trump’ is the name the man chose for himself. He was originally ‘Drumpf”. He did not simply shift it to Drum, Rumpf, Dumpf, Dump, or Rump. Rather he preferred a move to the move that takes the trick in the card game: Trump.
He is a hollow pile of bullshit, trying to hide the fact that he knows nothing. Where Kennedy was fond of quoting the likes of Sun Tzu, Trump would be flat out to quote Donald Duck.
And even then, he would probably get it wrong.
That is not correct; the shift from Drumpf to Trump took place before he was born.
I stand corrected.