–Donald Trump is interviewed by Fox News’ Chris Wallace and it becomes a historic fiasco, with Trump interrupting the interview to try to find data that doesn’t exist, Trump referring to World Wars I and II as “beautiful,” Trump accusing the interviewer of being unable to do as well as Trump in a cognitive test, and much more
The Vainglorious Eternals Go Golfing
There is always a photograph, and so naturally there is a photograph. This one was taken during the summer of 2008, on a golf course owned by President Donald Trump in New York’s Westchester County. Despite whatever accidental prescience the image might since seem to have acquired, the photo itself was and remains just what it is: artless proof that some wealthy and powerful men—in this case Rudolph Giuliani, Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Clinton—had at some point posed together on a golf course with their respective Big Bertha drivers out.
It’s the sort of photo that the principal figures have had taken thousands of times over the course of their public lives and equally public retirements. For people of this stature, taking pictures like this with other members of their micro-caste of puffy swells—variously seared pink or golden brown, buzzcut and triangular or pillowy and spheroid, foreign or domestic—is something like their job. There’s no aesthetic merit to these photos, which invariably involve three or four or more pairs of golf shoes and varying shades of incipient sunburn—and sometimes, as this one does, multiple pairs of centimillionaire knees. Aesthetic merit of course plays no role in the staging of such photos; rather, they serve to document a convergence of egos and interests. In functional terms, they mark a random historical moment in roughly the same way and for roughly the same reasons that hostage-takers photograph their captives holding up the front page of a given day’s newspaper. Everyone in the shot can point to it as proof of themselves being in the proper company and the correct milieu. Images like this do not exist to be looked at so much as they exist to be seen, or noticed.
And that’s what we have here. Giuliani, far left, looks as ever as if he has somehow been spilled into his clothes; he is turned such that he is grimacing towards a camera that no one else is facing. Trump is halfway into or out of a grin, and sagging to leeward like a butter sculpture left out in the sun. A head shorter and directly to Trump’s left, Bloomberg is trim, mirthless, and more deeply tan than any public official has a right to be. Bill Clinton had not at this point embarked on his vegan glow-up, and so looks jocular and fluffy in shorts and a pastel golf shirt with implausibly girthsome sleeves. Most versions of this photo that have circulated over the days since Bloomberg announced his interest in joining the field of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination crop former Yankees Manager Joe Torre and professional Yankees fan Billy Crystal out of the photo entirely, even though the picture was taken at Torre’s own charity golf event.
That is rude, but it fits. Characters like Torre and Crystal are incidental to photos like this, or anyway useful mostly as local color, or a spritz of local flavor atop the expensive lobes of foie gras at the center of the image. The photos are proof that various powerful people once stood next to each other, more or less as peers, and they are to be hung up like a diploma—something for guests to see on the wall of a long corridor in some cold and fancified house, or notice in an office in which, as a matter of course, no actual work gets done. A bunch of rich old men, together, their respective pendulous drivers arrayed before them such that their identical heads are nearly touching, but not quite. Well, doesn’t that beat all?
In a better world, such photos might still exist. The people in them would not have become nearly as rich or unaccountable or powerful as they are in this one, but there’s no reason to think that they would not have found each other in some refrigerated clubhouse or hotel dining room or breakout session or cigar bar. In that world, these men would not be any better than they are in this one, because they are what they are by nature—mutants of appetite and ego, and outliers from the rest of humanity in terms of both the depth and the breadth of their need. But in that other world, in which they are merely rich and terrible, they would threaten only the good times of the other people sharing those spaces with them.
In this one, though, these vainglorious eternals somehow shamble on atop the culture even in their curdling dotage. From that commanding position they do what they do—pursue their endless blowsy feuds, scheme and carp, watch television and go on television and, where the opportunity presents itself, blithely commit various high crimes and misdemeanors. Far above the struggle and insecurity of everyday life, these brittle titans squabble and gossip and go through acrimonious and highly public divorces; for all the ways in which the toxic runoff of inequality can currently be felt in the culture, the fact that the cheesy churn of rich and petty men drifting into and pissily out of each other’s good graces now so distorts our politics is among the most enervating. It is one thing to see so much of our popular culture narrowing and flattening to suit various billionaires’ crude and idle whims, but it’s something else to realize that the political life of the richest and most powerful country on earth is in large part determined by the spats and obsessions of a super-class of aged and lazy lords, all of whom consider themselves peers of each other and virtually no one else.
It’s not a constitutionally enumerated power of the office, but presidents invariably shape the culture in ways that reflect their own values or anti-values, politics, and vibe. Clinton’s America applauded itself from the apex of boomer self-assurance; Bush’s was gilded and blustering and fragile, both strident and utterly bereft of ideas; Obama’s was cosmopolitan and smart from afar and naively inclined to assume facts not in evidence about the trajectories of various important things. It makes sense that Donald Trump’s America would be just the country for these old men—that the machinations and endless feuds of the tabloid undead would crowd and then devour everything else.
If Trump has values beyond the protection and promotion of his hideous and hungry self, they are these tabloid-driven rules of engagement. If Trump has peers—if there are people that matter to him beyond those who might be instrumentalized to advance his pursuit of more of everything—these are those people. Bloomberg will not be the next president of the United States, because virtually no one alive wants him to serve in that role. And yet he and his untouchable peers, who have been allowed through various long-standing failures to have so much more than any person ever should, will spend millions of dollars not in pursuit of any particular set of policies or even the office itself, but out of habit. Look at that photo again, and it is clear that none of the people in it are really friends—but just as important, they’re not enemies in any meaningful way, either. If you know the roles they play in our politics, the people in the photo seem like an unlikely foursome—the lumpy blowhards who backed into fascism for lack of any conviction deeper than a distaste for those with less than them, grinning alongside the savviest and most state-of-the-art ur-moderates. Someone who didn’t understand how weak everything around them had become, or how high these duffers had been allowed to rise as a result, might just look at the photo and see some old guys heading out to play some golf, and maybe bet a little something on the outcome to make things interesting.
Joe Rogan & Michael Malice on Trump’s Trolling
Transcript
00:00
that’ss eyes that are for people who are
00:01
actually suffering minorities be like no
00:02
no this is not cool so she’s not saying
00:05
this from small blogs I’m not seeing
00:07
this from anything main strike yep
00:09
correct because mainstream they’re
00:10
always gonna cover for this that right
00:11
100% of the time yeah they’re gonna
00:13
cover their the thing about those blogs
00:15
is like a lot of them are basically like
00:16
Ari Shaffir refers to them as like
00:18
college papers yeah it’s like a lot of
00:21
these blogs so a college student written
00:23
yeah but they’re often speaking truth oh
00:25
yeah well I would hope I would hope more
00:28
would come out and say hey you can’t say
00:31
you’re Native American just like like
00:33
you imagine the outrage if I just
00:36
started call myself African American
00:37
well do you know what did you see what
00:39
Trump said he said well I can’t call her
00:41
Pocahontas anymore because she’s not an
00:43
Indian and I’m just like oh my god we’re
00:48
not worthy he says some hilarious shit
00:51
oh yeah he really does he really does
00:54
he’s fucking funny off-the-cuff oh yeah
00:57
really is you know and the way he goes
00:59
after people like even though he’s the
01:01
president like he still calls people
01:04
fucking losers I mean he’s still he
01:06
still caused him losers on Twitter and
01:09
goes after them horse face horse face he
01:11
called star McDaniels horse face just
01:14
think of how repulsive he is physically
01:17
he’s fat his faces all fuckin hanging
01:20
off of his bones he’s got white raccoon
01:23
eyes and orange skin and yet he still
01:26
will mock stormy Daniels and call her
01:29
horse face someone tweeted out I forget
01:32
who and I apologized the thing he said
01:34
they go imagine what happens that he
01:36
Trump’s the first person who fucked a
01:38
porn star and she had to brag about it
01:40
and then she paid him yeah yeah well he
01:44
did pay her right but what he paid her
01:48
what she’s gonna have to pay him is
01:50
probably like a factor of three or fours
01:53
I mean how much more she’s gonna wanna
01:55
pain yes for 350k that’s all he asked
01:58
for you uh that’s proved very reasonable
02:01
yeah that doesn’t even cover her book
02:02
yes that’s probably like he just wants
02:04
just be done like that yet it just yet
02:06
give me that paper yeah just give me a
02:07
little something I need a little
02:09
something from you
02:10
with this let this slide I want 300,000
02:14
yeah yeah it’s probably her book that’s
02:16
really all the money no she got more
02:17
than 350 I’m positive
02:19
how much you think she got for that book
02:20
750 I’d guess yeah but she’s got to pay
02:23
taxes sure
02:24
and her agents getting 15 yeah she’s
02:26
probably not even bringing three home so
02:29
it’s all that’s money’s gone oh yeah
02:31
that’s all gone all gone 100% gone and
02:33
no one’s buying that book it stiffed
02:36
yeah yeah nobody gives a shit
02:37
she said it already like I fucked the
02:40
president that’s your book your book as
02:42
I fucked the president well you know
02:43
here’s the funny part with her remember
02:44
this people she was making fun of his
02:46
dick like she’d hit a mushroom deck
02:48
whatever and people are like that’s what
02:50
she said
02:50
and then people were like that you know
02:52
as fucked up as he is that’s body
02:54
shaming he really shouldn’t make fun of
02:55
someone and she’s like you know what
02:56
you’re right I’m sorry
02:57
and then he goes hey horse face she lost
03:01
his fucking mushroom dick at like the
03:02
next day she’s back on it it was amazing
03:05
[Laughter]
The fact that he can call her horse face
and he’s the president on twitter..
But she doesn’t even have a horse face.
It doesn’t matter. I know but it’s just
so weak I mean Ted Cruz really isn’t the
Unabomber or whatever the fuck you said
he was say that that’s the name they
cease is that Jeff gay fucking it’s also
crazy that was the best part so ted
cruz’s was known as like the best
debater in the senate he had this
Harvard or Yale whatever debating team
great debater everyone we recognized him
for this how did the fuck do you prep
for a debate be like oh yeah well your
dad shot JFK it’s like what the fuck
wait what well It didn’t have to make
sense right people the people that hurt
Trump supporters don’t want to make
sense they just want him to win right
right exactly and it works yes yeah well
he’s just had to get zingers in oh yeah
yeah I mean it’s like roast battle more
than right and they don’t get that there
04:01
was this my favorite tweet of his my
04:03
favorite where he goes whenever I speak
04:06
of the losers and the haters I do so
04:08
with great affection it’s not their
04:10
fault they were born fucked up at
04:12
exclamation point that’s a real tweet
04:14
tweet it’s the best one
04:16
and it’s true yeah you know one of my
04:20
favorite things was him at a speech
04:21
where he was talking it was 2015 before
04:25
he even talked about running for
04:26
president or it was even I don’t think
04:29
he was a hundred percent open about
04:31
running for president and he said
04:34
there’s two ways to talk to China you
04:36
could you know could prose things you
04:38
could propose things and he says it like
04:39
you know normally and then he says or
04:41
you could say listen motherfucker yeah
04:44
you heard that no oh my god it’s great
04:46
fucking pull it it’s it’s fucking great
04:49
because everybody starts cheering yeah
04:51
because it’s so forbidden in this
04:53
environment wearing an expensive suit
04:55
standing in front of a podium he says or
04:58
you could say listen motherfuckers like
05:00
this is what we’re gonna do and
05:02
everybody started yeah it’s so exciting
05:05
it’s so much more exciting then Marco
05:08
Rubio or you know someone boom Jeb is a
05:12
waste jam is a big fat mistake I watched
05:19
those videos which speech he wasted June
05:22
of 25th now when he said mother when
05:24
he’s just just not speech when he’s
05:26
talking about China and he said listen I
05:28
the fuckers China China China yeah that
05:32
was a thing Puerto Rican when he ordered
05:36
I’m announcing a ban on all Muslim
05:39
immigration Muslim here this is a great
05:43
one do this because it’s leadership this
05:48
time instead of with his name in gold
05:49
it’s with his words this is discussing
05:52
Iraq we build a school we build a road
05:55
they blow up the road they blow up the
05:57
school we build another school we build
06:00
another road they blow them up we build
06:02
again in the meantime we can’t get a
06:04
school built in Brooklyn do the
06:06
audience’s approval talking oil we have
06:09
nobody in Washington that sits back and
06:12
said you’re not going to raise that
06:14
price you understand me
06:17
this is a long time ago sing Chinese
06:20
goods here’s your mother we’re gonna tax
06:23
you 25% while poles 2011 is that what it
06:28
says over there yeah but here’s what’s
06:30
interesting notice the person who posted
06:31
their name is say no to racists yeah
06:40
they probably put it up as a negative
06:41
thing
06:42
well no 2011 he would have been
06:43
considered a Democrat right oh no he’s
06:46
endorsed Romney he endorsed Romney
06:47
Republican race he was a Democrat until
06:50
what 2010 probably around then because
06:52
he was gonna run independent at some
06:53
point Trump 2012 look at that this is
06:55
the guy we’ve been looking for ha ha ha
06:57
seven years ago but it’s just deplorable
06:59
what changed it they probably damaged it
07:03
in the future because it says seven
07:05
years yeah fuck that’s the time travel
07:09
that hack join read uh yeah someone did
07:12
it someone definitely hacked it yeah
07:15
just hilarious they didn’t give the good
07:17
version of that either because they
07:19
believed in it well not just that
07:21
because you also see if you can find the
07:22
better version because he basically
07:24
practices it like you know people been
07:26
saying it like this right you can say it
07:28
like this or you can say listen you
07:31
motherfuckers and that’s when everybody
07:33
starts cheering he actually gave an
07:34
example yeah he actually guys what can
07:39
you do yeah so easy I drop a twenty five
07:43
percent tax on China
07:47
and you know I said to somebody that is
07:49
really the messenger the messenger is
important I could have one man saying
way to tax you 25% and I could say
another listen you motherfuckers brooder
Here’s how the Press lies on the campaign
trail he set a point I remember it was
the sense of it goes you better shut
your mouth so he didn’t say the word
mm-hmm they bleeped it and they bleeped
it to make it look like he was cursing
and he’s like you guys are fucking shady
as hell
that’s very Shady yeah that’s Shady you
can’t just bleep a pause and pretend
that there’s some sort of an offensive
word in there right so that’s really
that’s just deceptive right and it’s
pervasive they do it all the fucking
time
08:40
well who’s good out there to challenge
08:43
him they’re fucked all right fuck you
08:46
know why they’re fucked why because
08:47
we’ve never had this happen before the
08:49
whole time all those Democrats are
08:51
fighting each other for the primary for
08:52
the nomination he’s gonna be tweeting
08:53
the shit out of those debates he’s gonna
08:55
be live tweeting the debates right and
08:56
they’re not gonna they have to worry
08:58
about the tax from their colleagues but
09:00
also from the sitting president I was
09:02
like look at this dope and he’s gonna
09:05
come up with nicknames right now this
09:07
stick Danang dick he already did I’m
09:09
like it’s amazing to demand dick
09:11
Blumenthal senator from Connecticut lied
09:13
about his Vietnam service oh no I
09:15
started calling him Danang dick he lied
09:17
about his Vietnam service so got elected
09:19
yeah Wow
09:22
shameless yeah how did he lie what did
09:25
he say he said he served and he didn’t
09:27
look it up yeah I mean it’s it’s it is
09:30
brazen it wasn’t some ambiguous area I
09:32
think he’s like he never left America is
09:33
my understanding oh yeah