During the holiday season, even the most dense politician knows enough to send out a message to everyone containing the usual bromides about wishing for peace in the world and hoping that everyone enjoys time with their family and friends. The message from Joe and Jill Biden followed this template, saying simply, “Jill and I wish you a very Merry Christmas. We hope you and your loved ones are surrounded by love, happiness, and cheer this holiday season.”

But not Donald Trump. For him this is yet another time to whine and rant about how terrible things have become since he was kicked out of office and how mean everyone is to him. Here he is on one of his many Christmas messages .

“We had the most SECURE Border in our history, versus the ‘horror show’ that is happening now, with record setting numbers of people, many of them hardened Criminals (including Killers, Human Traffickers and Drug Dealers), POURING INTO OUR COUNTRY at a rate the likes of which we have never seen before. The USA is dying from within!!!”
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“Just two years ago we were Energy Independent, had almost Zero Inflation, there was no war with Russia and Ukraine (would NEVER have happened!), ISIS was defeated, our Military was rebuilt and respected (before the disaster of Afghanistan), our Border was Strong, the Economy was GREAT, the China Virus was in retreat (Operation Warp Speed was considered a modern day ‘miracle’), and we weren’t the laughing stock of the World,”

That should get everyone in the holiday mood, no?

These holiday greetings are usually inclusive and do not carve out exceptions to their good wishes. But Trump again took a different tack.

A few hours later, Trump re-shared a Truth Social post he wrote on December 24 in which he wished a merry Christmas to everyone except the “Radical Left Marxists that are trying to destroy our Country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is illegally coercing & paying Social and LameStream Media to push for a mentally disabled Democrat over the Brilliant, Clairvoyant, and USA LOVING Donald J. Trump.”

Does he know the meaning of the word ‘clairvoyant’? I suspect not. Maybe he used it because it is a big word that he thinks makes him sound clever. Also why qualify Marxists with ‘Radical Left? Are there such things as ‘Radical Right Marxists’? I suspect that such subtleties are too deep for Trump who seems to be perpetually playing a game of Mad Libs where he strings together lists of what he considers derogatory labels to pin on his political opponents.

Incidentally, what happened to the boogeyman of Antifa? Why were they also not excluded by Trump? The right wing media hardly ever talks about them now. It may be due to the fact that as the assault on the US Capitol on January 6th was unfolding to the horror of even Fox News and other right wing media outlets, they pushed the idea that it was the work of Antifa. But Trump undercut them by praising the rioters as being his supporters and doing his bidding, and so they had to make an embarrassing about-face. Now they seem reluctant to mention the group and even Trump did not do so, even to exclude them.

Incidentally, Olivia Nuzzi has a long and detailed article in New York magazine based on an extended recent interviews with Trump as well as those around him while he is cooped up at Mar-a-Lago. It has the title The Final Campaign Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection. (Which isn’t to say he can’t win.). It is interesting and worth reading for those who are curious about this weird, weird person. One anecdote that stuck with me is that Trump’s favorite film, that he watches over and over again, is the Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard (1950).

[Trump] had wanted to be in the movie business. It’s important to never forget this about him. He watches Sunset Boulevard, “one of the greatest of all time,” again and again and again. A silent-picture star sidelined by the talkies, driven to madness, in denial over her faded celebrity. When he was a businessman, he showed it to guests aboard his 727. When he was president, he held screenings of it for White House staff at Camp David.

He once showed it to his press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who later described how “the president, who could never sit still for anything without talking on the phone, sending a tweet, or flipping through TV channels, sat enthralled.” And he once showed it to Tim O’Brien, the biographer, who wrote that when Norma Desmond cried, “Those idiot producers. Those imbeciles! Haven’t they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them. I’ll be up there again, so help me!,” Trump leaned over O’Brien’s shoulder and whispered, “Is this an incredible scene or what? Just incredible.”

A washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed … Well, he does not like the way it sounds for Trump.
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Do you remember how Sunset Boulevard ends? Norma Desmond shoots and kills the writer, a fraudster who has fallen under the spell of her charisma, just as he summons the courage to walk away. Her sycophantic butler flips. There are no enablers left to protect her. A final fantasy, a fake movie set, is staged in the mansion’s entryway. The lights go on, and she is lured before the cameras, where the police are waiting to haul her away.

Needless to say, even though he loved the film, Trump did not like being compared to Norma Desmond and has lashed out at the reporter.

Rejecting a New York Magazine story which said his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 was all but moribund a little more than a month after he announced it, Donald Trump subjected the writer to misogynistic abuse.
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The former president also called Nuzzi’s story “fake news”, insisted “her ‘anonymous sources’ don’t exist (true with many writers)” and said: “I’m happily fighting hard for our GREAT USA!”
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Writing on his Truth Social platform, the former president said he agreed to an interview with “a once very good, but now on its ‘last legs’ and failing, New York Magazine.

“The reporter was a shaky and unattractive wack job, known as ‘tough’ but dumb as a rock, who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago. Her name, Olivia Nuzzi.”

This illustrates Trump’s biggest problem. He loves being in the news and so he agrees to interviews with the legacy media, even though he calls them ‘fake news’, because he thinks it is those outlets that show him to be still a significant person. He thinks that the journalists will be overawed by his brilliance (that those close to him keep telling him he has) and will write glowing pieces about him. And when they don’t, he whines.