| Slate Magazine | - |
This
is how he talks about the rest of America when he's with his buddies.
By William Saletan. President-elect Donald Trump and Vice
President-elect Mike Pence stand onstage together at President-elect
Donald Trump and Vice President–elect Mike Pence ...
Donald Trump’s Locker Room
This is how he talks about the rest of America when he’s with his buddies.
Ty Wright/Getty Images
On Thursday night, speaking to an arena full of supporters in Cincinnati, Donald Trump delivered a tirade
against his putative domestic enemies. The bitterness, gloating, and
contempt in his remarks eclipsed anything spoken by previous
presidents-elect. Cameras recorded Trump, but he spoke to the people in
the room as though they were his only audience. He mocked the rest of
America and celebrated its defeat.
William Saletan
We’ve seen this man before. He’s the man we saw and heard on the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape. He bonds with his fans, or with whoever’s around him, by demeaning you when you’re not there.
This wasn’t the speech Trump was supposed to give. Words about
national unity appeared on his teleprompter, and he duly mouthed them.
But the real Trump, as he has often said, isn’t in the script. It’s in
his digressions. The “we” in the prepared text was Americans as a whole.
But the “we” to whom Trump referred in his extended riffs were the
people who had voted for him. Opposite these people, in the rest of the
country, Trump described an array of villains, losers, and fools.
He began with the press. He pointed to the reporters in the room,
called them liars, and paused to let the crowd boo them. In an echo of
the Access Hollywood tape, he mocked a female journalist who,
he said, had cried about his election. He took shots at Republican
politicians who had failed to support him. But mostly, he reveled in his
“landslide” defeat of Hillary Clinton and her supporters. “We did have a
lot of fun fighting Hillary, didn’t we?” he asked. He broke into a
smile as the crowd chanted, “Lock her up!” He touted his win in Utah
over Clinton and Evan McMullin—“some guy I never even heard of”—who
together had garnered more votes in that state than Trump had. “We
trounced them! We trounced them!” Trump exulted. When protesters popped
up, Trump jeered: “They don’t know that Hillary lost a couple of weeks
ago!”
From the teleprompter, Trump read words of assurance to minorities.
But in his riffs, he spoke of them as though they were a trophy. “The
African American community was so great to me in this election,” he told
the audience. “And the Hispanic community—I did great with the Hispanic
community.” He claimed that the country was beset by a “crime wave” and
that he would “never back down” in fighting it. But he saved his
harshest words for Muslims and other Arabs, vowing to halt the
immigration of people who were “pouring in from regions of the Middle
East.”
Like politicians before him, Trump invoked patriotism to target
dissenters. “If people burn the American flag, there should be a
consequence,” he demanded. But he also suggested that what made America
great in the eyes of the world wasn’t the flag or even the Constitution.
What made America great was Trump himself:
Since our victory, I’ve spoken to many foreign leaders. … They all tell me how they sat in their magnificent rooms in different countries throughout the world—these are the leaders, the prime ministers, the presidents, all of them—how they sat in their magnificent rooms, watching in wonderment, and hearing how people came to vote that didn’t vote in 20 years … and they [the people] had Trump shirts on, and they had “Make America Great Again” hats on, and they had buttons pouring off. And they [the leaders] thought it was amazing. And honestly, one of them told me: “I truly respect the United States again because of what happened.”
What a remarkable statement. Trump had come to Cincinnati with a
prepared text about uniting America to compete against other countries.
Instead, he was telling his supporters that they—and he—had the partisan
sympathy of governments abroad. A man who had been aided by Russia in
gaining control of the United States government without winning even a
plurality of American votes—and who had explicitly encouraged Russia’s
help during his campaign—was holding a post-election rally to celebrate
the defeat of his domestic opposition and to claim foreign support for
his movement.
To anyone who has watched Trump’s post-election interview with 60 Minutes or read about his meeting with the New York Times,
the speech in Cincinnati might seem bizarre. How could he pander to a
room full of liberals and then, nine days later, pander to a room full
of people who hate them? The question answers itself: Trump plays to the
room. “I love this stuff,” he told the audience in Cincinnati as cheers
rained down on his gloating. “Should I go on with this just a little
bit longer? I love this.”
To Trump, politics is a game. It’s about ratings and building an audience, like The Apprentice. During his speech, he told this story about election night:
One of the announcers, I have to tell you, from ESPN—now, they cover football and boxing and everything, right? And he went out and he said, “I gotta tell you, that event last night”—meaning the election results—“was better than any fight, any baseball game, any football game.” He said, “That was the most exciting event I’ve ever seen.” And it was politics! And then you look at the NFL. … Their ratings were so far down. And you know what the reason was? This! Because this business [politics] is tougher than the NFL. It’s crazy. The people liked it. Their ratings were down 20 or 21 percent. And it was because of us. So we had a lot of fun. The bottom line is: We won. We won. We won big.
If Trump had lost the election as expected, he would have taken his
audience with him on whatever venture suited him next. Instead, he won.
But that didn’t make him presidential. He’s still an entertainer with an
audience. He’s still a fragile little boy. Sometimes he’s obsequious or bitter or cruel. Sometimes he’s all three.
We heard it on the Access Hollywood tape, as Trump sucked up
to Billy Bush. He talked crudely about women—“bitch,” “phony tits”—and
bragged about molesting them. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,”
Trump joked. “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
When the tape came out, Trump dismissed it as “locker-room talk.” But what you have to understand about Trump—what you see on that tape, in his meeting with the Times,
and in the arena in Cincinnati—is that he’s always in the locker room.
He’s always trying to endear himself to some people by insulting others.
If you’re in the room, he’s your buddy. If you’re not, you’re just
another pussy.
A man who thinks and lives this way can run a TV show. He can
schmooze columnists or charm entertainment reporters. He can thrill a
mob of adoring fans. But he can’t lead, govern, or even faithfully
represent the United States of America. He doesn’t understand what it
means to be united.
