Once
upon a time there was a little boy named Donald John Trump.
He
lived with his mother, father, two brothers, and two sisters in a large house
in Jamaica Estates in the Borough of Queens in New York City, a house that was
graced with four white columns and twenty-three rooms. It was a status symbol
for elegant living with a housekeeper, a cook, a chauffeur,
and even an intercom system.
A
child who was four years younger than Donald was once left in a playpen in a
back yard adjoining that of the Trump family, and the younger boy’s mother
returned to find Donald throwing rocks at the little boy. Trump was using the
playpen for target practice. He showed no remorse.
Donald
was a child who never took “no” for an answer. When he was a second-grader he
gave his music teacher a black eye because Trump “didn’t think he knew
anything about music.” He was nearly expelled.
His
nicknames around the neighborhood were “Donny,” “The
Trumpet,” and “Flat Top” (for his hair). “In his neighborhood,
Donald and his friends were known to ride their bikes and ‘shout and curse very
loudly,’ said Steve Nachtigall, who lived nearby. Nachtigall said he once saw
them jump off their bikes and beat up another boy.”
One
of Trump’s schoolmates recalls that, “When that kid was 10, even then he was a
little s---.”
The
Child is Father to the Man. Many people would currently characterize big Donnie
as a big s---.
Young
Donald “commanded attention with his playground taunts, classroom disruptions
and distinctive countenance, [and] even then his lips pursed in a way that
would inspire future mimics.” Oh Donald, we hardly knew ye.
He
has said he hasn’t changed since the first grade. (That’s when he was age six.)
For
example, little Donnie refused to acknowledge mistakes, even one so trivial as
misidentifying a popular professional wrestler.
His
seventh-grade teacher remembers Trump as follows: “He was headstrong and
determined. He would sit with his arms folded with this look on his face—I use
the word surly—almost daring you to say one thing or another that wouldn’t
settle with him.”
When
he was sent off to military school at age thirteen—in effect banished from the
family home because he was nearly out of control—he tried to push a fellow
cadet out a second-floor window during a fight, but was stopped when two other
students intervened.
“To
his [military school] classmates, Trump was a blend of friendly and cocky. He
boasted that his father’s wealth doubled every time he completed a real estate
deal.”
Trump
is being ridiculed around the world, not just in the U.S. by Alex Baldwin on
Saturday Night Live (resulting in repeated Tweets by Trump to denigrate the
actor). And the ridicule went global some time ago, with a variety of comedians
in fright wigs pontificating in a number of other countries, one of whom is
hawking “Trump Finger Tampons.”
Political
cartoonists are having a field day.
Since
the election it has been revealed that Trump
paid nearly $12.5 million to his own businesses and family members during his
eighteen-month campaign for president, as indicated in mandatory campaign
spending reports. These payments, especially $8.7 million to Tag-Air Inc. to
operate his airlines, are apparently legal.
We flock to
Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City to protest, carry signs, and
remind Donald that he is Not Our President. I doubt Trump reads these signs.
He stays up
late devising new and surprising messages by using his Samsung cell phone on
that most presidential of media, Twitter. (He has failed to hold a news
conference for about six months and rarely sits for actual media interviews
that record his responses audibly and even visually, including his body
language.) This less than august mode of one-person communicating without
feedback by a president-elect also brashly and snidely attempts to upstage the
actual current occupant of the Oval Office, one President Barack Obama.
Trump was
named Person of the Year by Time Magazine, or “President of the Divided States
of America.” In the cover Trump poses in a raggedy upholstered chair with a sinister
glare over his shoulder (the once stylish chair, like the marble and gold of
Trump Tower, represents decadence morphing into disrepute). “For
reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as
powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate
by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing
tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s
2016 Person of the Year.” Nancy Gibbs, “The Choice.” Trump appeared to believe
this was an honor.
Trump has
spent his life concentrating on Himself,
and believes that the world will be enthralled with his comments on such topics
as:
— The Donald
J. Trump Foundation’s demise at the hands of New York State Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman (for making distributions for non-charitable reasons using
other people’s money);
— Trump’s
characterization of the United Nations as a “club for people to have a good
time” even as the U.N. has been considering the legality of new construction of
Israeli West Bank settlements and other countries have condemned this conduct;
— Trump’s
assessment of his impact on the mood and financial status of the global
economy: “The world was gloomy before I won—there was no hope. And now the
market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!”
— Trump’s
exaggerated excuse for his pitiful performance at the three televised debates
with Hillary Clinton: “Are we talking about the same cyber attack where it was
revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the
debate?”
— Trump’s
boasting whoppers about his November victory: “In addition to winning the
Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the
millions of people who voted illegally.”
The poet
James Whitcomb Riley once wrote:
“Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
“An’ wash the cups and saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
“An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
“An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
“An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done,
‘We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
“A-list’nin to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about,
“An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you
“Ef you
“Don’t
“Watch
“Out!
“Onc’t they was a little boy would n’t say his pray’rs—
“An’ when he went to bed at night, away up stairs,
“His mamy heerd him holler, an’ his daddy heerd him bawl,
“An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he was n’t there at all!
“An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
“An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ every’wheres, I guess;
“But all they ever found was thist his pants an’ roundabout!
“An’ the Gobble-uns ’ll git you
“Ef you
“Don’t
“Watch
“Out!”
A fitting end for Little Donnie?
