Forget Trumpsplaining — Stop ’Splaining Trump
Trumpsplain verb
\truhmp-splayn\
· 1. To string together incoherent phrases in a hopeless attempt to convince people that you know what you’re talking about.
· 2. To describe in unnecessary detail what is already common knowledge to everyone except for Trump.
Those attuned to the American cultural zeitgeist know that the whole “splaining” thing has become a political meme, like the “-gate” suffix did in the wake of Watergate. With “-gate” we got Billygate, Nannygate, Troopergate, Bridgegate, ad nauseam. (Whitewatergate was a particularly clever self-referential iteration.) Now, what started as mansplaining, with patronizing men “explaining” to women what they already knew, has morphed into whitesplaining, rightsplaining and, of course, Trumpsplaining. The latter was a natural: Our Condescender-in-Chief trying to tell anyone anything — as if, right?— with his “stable genius” mind and his garbled syntax of “best words.”
Ever since Trump’s misbegotten election, however, there’s been a cottage industry in ’splaining Trump, which has reached a publishing industry crescendo in the last month, first with John Bolton’s craven and self-serving tell-all book, The Room Where it Happened, and now Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, with her family exposé, Too Much and Never Enough. To which I say, enough with the ’splaining of Trump.
Anyone with any sense knew exactly who Trump was — and more importantly, the existential threat he represented — before the 2016 election. Do we really need to be told, over and over, that’s he’s a pathological liar? A raving narcissist? A bully without a shred of human empathy? An idiotic buffoon made only dangerous because he’s been given the keys to the kingdom? I’m sorry, all you ’splainers of Trump — we knew all that. So please forgive us if we question your motivation now, on the eve of the November 2020 election, to clue us in about the patently obvious.
Look, I don’t know much about Mary Trump and it sounds like she had a rough go of it, growing up in the Trump family as the daughter of Fred, Jr., the disfavored offspring of Fred Trump, Sr. Her motivations may be pure as the driven snow, despite the presumably sizable advance that Simon & Schuster is paying her to spill the Trump beans. But just like with John Bolton, she really isn’t telling us anything new, and one can’t help but question why it’s taken her so long to step forth. I mean, if she isn’t worried now about the NDA that she and her brother, Fred III, signed in the wake of the Fred Trump, Sr., estate litigation settlement, why was she concerned before? Residual familial loyalty? Please excuse me if I roll my eyes.
For the professionals like Bolton and James Mattis, who recently (finally) spoke up in the wake of Trump’s deplorable D.C. church photo opp that involved National Guard troops firing tear gas to clear peaceful protesters, the motivation to ’splain Trump is more obvious. Really, General Mattis, you’re telling us that Donald Trump is an actual threat to the Constitution? When did that astonishing notion occur to you? Bolton, Mattis and their fellow enablers either thought they could tame Trump and make him more “presidential” or they were just using him to advance their own conservative agenda — or both. Yes, I know that some might view the military folks like Generals Mattis and McMaster as having had a noble intent to “save” our Republic from Trump, but that’s just substituting hubris for cowardice. Robert Redford might have been believable as The Horse Whisperer, but even Hollywood couldn’t sell someone as being able to fix Trump or bring him to heel. The Donald could subject himself to Freudian analysis for the rest of his life— not that he would, of course — and what you see now is what you’d get. You don’t need to be a Jesuit to believe the ship probably sailed on Trump’s soul before his 7th birthday. And we certainly don’t need Mary Trump to tell us now.
With the Mitch McConnell types, of course, the motivation was more plain. When he would ’splain Trump as merely a “different kind of president,” what he really meant was he was willing to throw America under the bus in order to get Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh seated on the Supreme Court, not to mention a full slate of ultra-conservative Circuit Court judges. The list of Trump enablers is sadly so long, it would require a team of New York Times reporters months to compile, just like the list of bald-faced lies Trump (and his minions) have dissembled during his administration. For starters: William Barr, Kellyanne Conway, Susan Collins, Reince Priebus, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham, Sean Spicer, Ted Cruz, Anthony Scaramucci, Ben Carson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Paul Ryan, Rudy Giuliani, Laura Ingraham, Mike Pompeo, Tucker Carlson, Devin Nunes, Sean Hannity, Kayleigh McEnany. Whew, my goodness! — and that’s just without taking another breath. As the title of Anne Applebaum’s recent and excellent piece in The Atlantic notes, “History Will Judge the Complicit.” But that doesn’t mean we need to listen to them explain to us why they did it or what Trump is really about. Maybe there should be an underworld version of the Vietnam War Memorial on which all the names of Trump enablers are chiseled for future generations to see. However, given the number of smart, wealthy Americans who voted for Trump for “economic” reasons (read: getting an undeserved and ill-advised tax cut), that Trump Enabler Hall of Shame would have to handle an order of magnitude more than the entries on Maya Lin’s somber, poignant and ultimately magnificent Washington, D.C., memorial.
This all started innocently enough before the 2016 election, with a Northwestern psychology professor explaining how Trump was a perfect storm of personality disorders. But really, that was already so obvious to even the lay observer. What else could explain someone denying that John McCain was a bona fide war hero? Especially when the guy hurling the insults sat out the Vietnam War as 4-F with a not-so-terminal case of bone spurs. What else did we need to see after Trump openly mocked a disabled journalist or ridiculed a Gold Star family who just happened to be Pakistani American? Maybe I was fortunate to get clued in to Trump earlier than most — and I use the word “fortunate” advisedly — because I had a friend and classmate in law school (during the 80s) who loved to read the New York Post. As a Californian I wasn’t familiar with the Post, but I got a crash course in Big Apple tabloid celebrity coverage because Trump was then a regular fixture on the front page. I soon learned what any savvy New Yorker already knew— for example (now-Associate Justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg — that Donald Trump was a complete fake. And that he was not even close to being of presidential timber, as the old expression goes, as if there was any shred of doubt given his preening vanity and nonexistent personal morality. But really — you had to be in a coma in 2015 or 2016 to not see what he really was. Namely, monumentally unfit for elective office, high or otherwise. So to now have this cavalcade of people all helpfully ’splaining Trump? Dorothy Parker, as Constant Reader in The New Yorker, would have upchucked long ago.
Urban myth has it that I Love Lucy is the source of the “-splain” meme, from how Ricky Ricardo would tell Lucy that she “had some ‘splainin’ to do.” What we really need ’splained to us is how we can make sure Trump’s currently low poll numbers remain in the basement and he loses in November. That way, we’ll never have to listen to his Trumpsplaining again. And for all those who want to obsess over what happens if Trump refuses to leave office? Please don’t explain what to do about that. Just describe — in great detail — how to get out the vote enough so Joe Biden wins. Bill Maher, in particular, has been harping on this issue for over a year, and flaming any guest on his show who takes the bait and suggests that Biden needs to “win big” in the Electoral College to avoid a constitutional crisis. Sure, you can do all the war gaming you like. And yeah, a decisive win would be better, all things considered, to avoid a Bush v. Gore II, with Chief Justice John Roberts forced to perform a stress test on his conscience. Beyond all that, though, let’s keep our eyes on the prize: the election itself. To me, if Trump loses and refuses to leave the White House, that’s one of those proverbial good problems to have.
Do I think it could happen? Of course! Again, we’ve known about Trump since the get-go. He’s a sore loser who never plays by the rules because he was born with a tarnished silver spoon in his mouth. But I have no doubt that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will have endured four years of Trump’s royal bollocking of the military (especially the Navy), would be only too happy to march into the Oval Office on January 20, 2021, and personally escort former President Trump back into civilian life. “Thank you for your service, Sir,” General Mark Milley can say. “Now let me explain what happens under the Constitution when you lose the presidential election.” That’s some serious ’splaining for the ages, to retire an autocrat — and a meme. Then maybe Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball can stop spinning in their graves.
Can our souls rest in peace, post-Trump? Sadly no. Because we’ve got to do some explaining to each other, as Americans, how we saddled ourselves with the moronic demagogue in the first place. And how we can avoid that ever happening again. We’ve already heard plenty of punditsplaining from the chattering class, mostly about desperate swing state MAGA supporters, but none of it has quite added up. Why did so many others vote for the guy, like an otherwise decent McCain voter in Arizona or a devout Romney voter in Utah? Why did so many GOP Senators check their patriotism at the door and enable Trump — especially when the impeachment teed it all up for them to remove him? And more importantly, how can we fix the partisan divide so we aren’t stacking the federal judiciary with extremist, ideological judges and electing to Congress dogma-driven zealots who aren’t willing to compromise on anything that doesn’t fit within their far left or far right political agendas?
Repairing and safeguarding the whole process of democracy might be a place to start, including campaign finance reform, outlawing gerrymandering and enabling improved voter registration and mail-in voting. Overhauling the criminal justice and law enforcement systems, certainly, to make them truly colorblind and to enhance the ability of all Americans to meaningfully participate in the American Dream, economically and otherwise. Please explain to me, you (mostly) paleo-white male Americans, why this has taken so long and how Black Lives don’t Matter? Or how a strip of cloth covering your face during a pandemic is a political statement? And while you’re at it, you can explain once again how well-intended you were, putting someone like Donald Trump in the White House. Or why you missed all the warning signs and only now understand how he’s really something other than you believed him to be.
Or better yet, don’t ’splain — just vote. And please, this time don’t screw it up.
