Trump is a Coward
OPINION - Joy Loungé
PARIS - It is high time that someone spoke truth to power, called a spade a spade, told the world that the Emperor has no clothes. Very well, I’ll say it: Donald J. Trump is a coward.
Not just any coward, mind you. Trump is a coward to the core—from his famously thin skin and soft little hands down to his supplicant spine of the most delicate creme patissiere. From his inability to summon the strength of any discernible character, display any semblance of honor, or betray even a hint of compassion for those who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths, to his palpable fear of women and his transparent self-loathing stemming from his abject failure to mimic American manhood.
It is common knowledge that Trump’s capacity for facing his own inadequacy has never risen above a two-year-old’s screaming fits of entitled rage. But what is evidently under-appreciated by everyone but the many alleged victims of his narcissistic-misogynist rampages—like the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom a jury found Trump had sexually assaulted in a public dressing room—are the vertiginous depth and yawning breadth of Trump’s cowardice, which is arguably unparalleled among world leaders throughout recorded history.
Example: Instead of joining millions of his fellow Americans who served in the Vietnam War—like the late Navy pilot, POW, and Republican Senator John McCain—Trump allegedly whined to a sympathetic physician for a letter excusing him from having to risk life and limb in the service of his country, and would later call veterans who give the ultimate sacrifice “losers” and “suckers.”
So much for the glory of battle, the pinnacle of patriotism that Trump pretends to admire from a safe distance while siphoning diet coke through a straw.
Example: Incapable of admitting that his first term as president and 2019 campaign were dismal failures resulting in a devastating loss to Joe Biden by some 7 million votes, Trump leaned once again into his most enduring quality: unalloyed cowardice.
Leaping to his dainty little feet and howling like an infant deprived of her favorite doll, Trump The Coward lied extravagantly to rank-and-file Republican voters and congressional GOP sycophants in order to cover up his obvious shortcomings—which, in another more penetrating and personal context, had been revealed in humiliating fashion by former porn star Stormy Daniels, who effectively labeled him Two-minute Trump, adding, “I’m being generous.”
Example: Facing extended incarceration in a federal penitentiary for absconding with classified documents and inciting a violent mob to attack the nation’s Capitol, gravely injuring dozens of law enforcement officers and causing several deaths, Trump The Coward harvested the malignant fruit of his four-year campaign of lies and pathetic patrón pastiche.
Trump’s genuflecting Supreme Court nominees Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett made sure their famously mendacious benefactor went free to sally forth in his crusade against the Constitution and federal laws that he—and they—had sworn to uphold and protect.
Example: Instead of standing toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin and demanding that the murderous kelptocrat immediately reverse his illegal invasion of Ukraine, the 6’ 3” Trump The Coward curtsied and fawned in front of the 5’ 7” Russian dictator, paralyzed with fear at the prospect of displeasing his diminutive mentor-in-the-making.
It might be the image of a shirtless Putin astride a miniature charger which reduced Trump The Coward to jelly, as horses are known to sense fear in a rider, and Trump exudes the emotion from every pore. But ultimately the reason does not matter: the mere thought of Putin plainly reduces Trump The Coward to a quivering bowl of orange jello, despite the fact that his Russian counterpart is fully 4” shorter than Trump’s next once-and-future subterranean golf handicap, Melania.
That’s right: Donald J. Trump is a coward—and at age 78, Trump The Coward will clearly never summon the strength to rise from his wobbling knees to look his fellow Americans in the eye and tell them the truth about his seething cowardice, about the fear and self-loathing that keep him up every night, ranting and tweeting at imaginary enemies, plotting and scheming the downfall of anyone who might expose his smarmy, gelatinous core.
Trump The Coward allegedly sexually assaulted dozens of women because he could not bear the knowledge that they did not want him. But unlike generations of boys who labor to become worthy of the objects of their affection and grow into fine examples of American manhood, Trump The Coward has never been able to rise above the pain and humiliation of a woman’s rejection.
Trump The Coward knows that he failed rank-and-file Republican voters in his first term as president and deserved to badly lose the 2019 election—and he knows that while wallowing in a bottomless well of self-loathing, he wickedly incited gullible Americans to abandon the very values they hold dear and that he cynically pretends to cherish and embody.
Yet Donald J. Trump will never summon the courage to look himself in the mirror, to beg God for forgiveness and the strength to overcome the fear that drives his every impulse, for those are the actions of a brave American man. And Trump The Coward is neither brave nor a man, and he never will be.