I’ll begin by saying that I have always borne a dislike for the Clinton clan, especially for Hillary. It wasn’t so much what she did - though that was plenty - but her demeanor has always struck me as utterly false. Whenever I saw her on screen, I almost had to turn away. I sensed she was a woman of intellect but of very low emotional IQ. Someone quite out of touch with her own emotions and therefore unable to connect emotionally with her audience - a catastrophic flaw for a politician. Bill had no such problems. He was charisma personified. I just didn’t care for the sleaze vibe he emitted - prior, but especially post Monica. In 2008, I thought Hillary really had a shot, despite her professorial aloofness and humorless delivery. Looking back, it’s obvious no one could have stymied the Obama phenomenon: the toothy smile, the wave, the slick suits, his savvy, his easy understanding of the emerging giants: the social media. But if she had a shot in 2008, eight years later she seemed like a shoo-in.
When Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, I was a fan - initially. I liked his brash speech following the now famous escalator descent. But as the weeks and months went by, I took a strong dislike to him, which I did not completely shake until the 2018 mid-terms. Let me give you a bit of background.
I come from a Central European intellectual tradition. My father had two PhD’s (philosophy and economics - though he ended up working in neither field) My mother had a Master’s degree in biology. I grew up surrounded by books and by cheap cigarette smoking, coffee guzzling, world-weary Prague Jewish writers, artists and university professors. My parents hated all ostentatiousness, airs and bragging. They were both Holocaust survivors. They considered eating out once a month at our local “Eden Restaurant” almost an extravagance. The food was terrible but the white table cloths and black-clad waiters were a true highlight of the month. On most days, breakfast was dark rye bread with butter, jam and black coffee, lunch was either a sandwich from home or a meal at the office cafeteria (three dumplings swimming in non-descript brown sauce and a two inch piece of gristle). For dinner, mother cooked whatever the butcher had sold her on the way back from work, most often a pork chop. Many nights she didn’t make it to the butcher on time - stores closed at 5 o’clock. We loved eating her Hungarian “letcho” (egg scrambled over chopped onion, tomato and green pepper), sometimes we just wolfed down a can of sardines, accompanied by green pepper and bread. We were not poor. This was what most people ate. There was very little variety to be had in 1960’s Prague. I was never hungry and till this day love nothing better than a thick slice of dark rye with butter. No cheese or lunch meat needed. Education, books, the ability to speak well and write well - those were the things that were valued. People who had money and connections and dressed a little more fancy were suspect. Of course, anyone with connections was suspect for political reasons - but the suspicion I’m talking about was one of value judgement. My father thought that renting a one bedroom apartment in a nice part of town, having enough to eat and be rid of Hitler was all that was needed for a man’s happiness. Now and then, my mother was able to get hold of some goose fat. She’d put it outside the window in the winter, salted it and sprinkled a dusting of Hungarian paprika on top. In the morning, my father would reach for the frozen fat, cut a thick slice, then rub a slice of toast with garlic, put the fat on top and eat it very slowly, relishing every bite. He thought goose fat was truly the height of culinary delight. No one knew what cholesterol was. Add two packs of cigarettes and a gallon of black coffee and you can understand why heart disease was endemic.
This introduction is my way of illustrating my growing dislike of Trump back in 2016. He was everything my father would have hated: a show-off, a braggart, someone who valued toilet bowls made of gold but had no time for books. He didn’t seem to have a sense of humor (although he wasn’t humorless like Hillary) If he did joke, it came across as crass. He was pushy and obnoxious - in short, not someone my parents would have given a second of their time to. And despite having spent all my adult life in the West, a lot of my parents’ values had rubbed off on me. I couldn’t see how this loudmouth, this carnival barker, this salesman who seemed cheap and tacky, despite his riches, how this man could possibly be President. And so, like millions of others, I was not exactly thrilled when he won the election in an epic upset. I wasn’t unhappy Hillary had lost - but I wasn’t happy Trump had won. For the next year, I listened to CNN on my satellite radio (the very thought now makes me nauseous!) and was secretly happy when this or another scheme of Trump’s didn’t pan out. Then came December 2017 and Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Every president before him had promised - and Trump delivered. That was the first turning point for me. Then, in the lead-up to the 2018 mid-terms came Trump’s face to face meeting with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jung-un in Singapore. I was skeptical at first but realized that perhaps there was something after all to Trump’s approach to politics, to business, to life…that might actually work better than all the pussy-footing diplomacy which had been tried for decades and had utterly failed. Meet the man, shake his hand, smile, and sit down to conduct business. And Trump was used to conducting business with all manner of odious characters in the New York real estate world - why not add an odious tyrant to the list? Finally, after the 2018 mid-terms, I had come a full circle. The more TV I watched, the more radio I listened to, the more social media I read, the more Trump Derangement Syndrome bugged me. The man was no saint. His tweets were vulgar, his manner was crude but…there was something about him. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally did. You could say anything you wanted about the man - but he was genuine. He was the real deal. What you saw was what he was, who he was, for better or worse, always. His stumbles, his uncouth manner, his mangled syntax - no pretense there at all. THAT was what was so refreshing. I understood the appeal. And I understood the hostility. Trump had seen through all the lies and called out all the liars. And after the impeachments and all that irrational, insane hate - he helped me see through all the lies too.
I had always known that the media were corrupt. I had always known that politicians were bought and sold. I had always known journalists were - for the most part - sympathetic to left-wing ideas. But until Trump, the extent of the lies, the extent of the grift, the depth of the swamp was not obvious to me. Trump knew who were America’s friends and who were our enemies and he was not shy about telling the world about it. Despite his wealth, he was the most folksy president in a couple of generations, a man who truly loved America and the American people and who had a genuine desire and a tremendous drive to make our lives better. He made no bones about the fact that if it took making a lot of enemies to improve the lives of Americans, he would go ahead and do it. Donald Trump didn’t care about what his enemies thought, as long as he fulfilled his duty to the people who had elected him. Yes, he was thin-skinned on Twitter and he struck back with double force at anyone mocking or belittling him. But that was something that served us all well.
Then came Covid. For the first time in his career, Trump blinked - in April 2020. Faced with wild overestimates of illness and death, he lost his bearings for just a moment - and in that moment the ultimate swamp bureaucrats, the Fauci/Birx duo, saw an opening and struck. By the time the President had brought in Scott Atlas it was too late. I am convinced till this day that if not for that moment’s hesitation, Donald Trump would be in the White House today and America would be in a much better place, on much more solid footing. Not only better off economically - of that I have no doubt. But America’s standing in the world would be unshaken and we would still be setting the tone on how to deal with this pandemic and everything else that matters. As it is, China is ascendant. Like it or not, President Donald J. Trump, with all his crudeness and rudeness, his unapologetic language, his undiplomatic demeanor, the aggressive stance he had perfected as a New York real estate developer, was the last solid bulwark against all-encompassing tyranny.