When Donald Trump mocked Sen. Bob Corker a couple of weeks
ago, tweeting disparagingly about “liddle’ Bob Corker,” it said a lot more
about Trump’s own diminutive moral stature than it did about Corker. Corker, a
Republican from Tennessee who recently announced plans to retire, is said to be
five feet seven inches tall. He was under consideration about a year ago to be
Trump’s secretary of state, but Trump reportedly deemed him too short for that
job. For Donald Trump, in everything from inaugural crowds to TV ratings to
cabinet officers, size matters.
The irony, of course, is that Trump’s
obsession with size reflects just how small-minded he is. Trump embodies the
opposite of Teddy Roosevelt’s adage about speaking softly and carrying a big
stick. Or the opposite of half of it, anyhow. He carries a big enough stick in
the form of history’s most powerful military, but he’s not exactly soft-spoken about
it. Now that he’s actually in Korea, he’s toned down his childish rhetoric
about visiting “fire and fury” on that peninsula. But in his backyard shouting
match a month or so ago with his North Korean psycho counterpart Kim Jong Un,
a.k.a. “Little Rocket Man,” the stick Trump brandished with such typically
crude carnival barkeresque bravado was one you would hope even he knew he
couldn’t really use. He threatened a war he couldn’t realistically fight—not without
putting millions of lives at risk, a risk the professionals who run the
military he ostensibly commands would probably refuse to run. He vowed to
repeal and replace—with something “great”—his predecessor’s signature health
care law and failed to repeal it at all or replace it with anything. He vowed to
build a border wall he will probably never build more than a fraction of, and
to build it with funds from Mexico he could obviously never get.
Trump,
as his fellow Republican Mitt Romney observed back before Romney, along with so
much of the rest of the Republican old guard, lined up to kiss Trump’s fat ass,
is a con man. He’s a great entertainer, but he’s all show and braggadocio.
Someone so intent on making America great again and so enamored of all things
huge should be big in spirit. Trump is petty and vindictive. Insults and
mockery are his stock in trade. Jeb Bush told him during one of the Republican
primary debates that he couldn’t insult his way to the presidency. Bush was
wrong, but as intensely appealing as Trump’s childish petulance may be to his base,
it is not conducive to legislative achievement. It may have helped get him
elected, but it won’t help him get laws passed.
Trump tweeted insults about “liddle’
Bob Corker” on October 24, hours before he was scheduled to meet with lawmakers
on Capitol Hill to push for tax reform. Insulting a widely respected member of
your own party is not generally an effective way to win votes in Congress. If
Trump were not in fact the moron Rex Tillerson (the man, five feet ten inches
tall, he did choose to be secretary of state) reportedly called him a few
months ago, he would know that. It would seem obvious. Maybe, if Trump’s attempt
at tax reform fails as ignominiously as his health care plan did (if in fact he
or the Republicans ever had a health care plan), that fact will dawn on him. But
no one should hold his or her breath in anticipation of Trump’s growing in
stature in any desirable way, intellectual, emotional or otherwise, to match
the size of his head. Trump is big and tall, famous, powerful and rich, but by
the metrics that matter, compared to Bob Corker, Trump is the liddle’ man.
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