BY MAX BURBANK | As I write this column, Donald Trump is in Full Bunker Mode. I imagine him alone, squatting on some gold-plated fixture, sweat cutting furrows through cracking, orange foundation, his pudgy thumbs hammering tweet after delusional, paranoid tweet: He’ll teach the “Disloyal R’s” “how to win” now that “the shackles have been taken off” him.
A week ago Trump had almost fully recovered from his miserable first debate performance. He was down to tweeting about Alicia Machado only, like, twice a day. How did things get so bad so fast? The answer to that question is brought to you by the appropriately German word “schadenfreude” — as in, “Boy, that Donald Trump is just a human fire hose of schadenfreude!”
Last Friday, The Washington Post broke the “hot mic” story, and I call it that because my kids read this column. Donald Trump, Republican nominee, caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault, which last I checked was a crime. There are only two options: Either it’s true and Trump’s a sex criminal, or he lied to impress Billy Bush. Let that sink in. To impress. Billy. Bush. Look in the dictionary under “neediest” and it says “the mental state in which one lies to impress Billy Bush.”
Side note: I only just learned Billy Bush is the cousin of W. and Jeb! Bush. Every day Donald Trump seems a little less like a human being and a little more like some mythological creature created to lay low House Bush for it’s hubris. Usually the word “delicious” applied to anything other than food makes me cringe, but come on!
Like a sulky teen not hip enough for Snapchat, Trump released an apology/hostage video on Facebook: “I regret it, the Clintons are worse, sorry not sorry.” Then on Sunday, hours before the debate, when a lesser man might have been, oh, I don’t know, prepping, Trump livestreamed a press conference with women who have accused Bill Clinton (not a candidate for president) of sexual assault. The event was so bizarre it would take another whole column to describe, let alone make fun of. To save space, I’ll just leave you with a 1998 Trump quote about [Bill] Clinton’s accusers: “His victims are terrible. He is really a victim himself. The whole group…it’s just a really unattractive group. I’m not just talking about physical.” Eugh.
So. Having set the debate bar for himself so low he could tunnel through the mud like some sort of repulsive human filth insect and still clear it, Trump dug deeper.
He answered the first audience question in slow, measured tones, a sort of half-assed Pence impression. Apparently he thought if he spoke quietly enough, the hogwash and bile tumbling out his chow hole would land so softly the audience wouldn’t realize he was insane; and he may have been right — but then, and who could have imagined or prepared for it, Anderson Cooper brought up the “hot mic” incident.
“You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women,” said Cooper. “Do you understand that?” I’m going to go with “No.” Trump denied doing any such thing, saying over and over again that it was “locker-room talk.” So, in Trumpsylvania, “locker-room talk” isn’t where you boast to your gym buddies about your prowess with the ladies, it’s where you peacock before the Billy Bushes in your life and assert authority over them because they are presumably impressed by, and envious of, the inherent masculinity you demonstrate when sexually assaulting women. In case that doesn’t sound awful enough, please note a male peacock’s favorite toy is a ball formed of its own dung, which it rolls around with its beak. That is a well-documented science fact you may feel free to look up.
Trump went on at length about how, as embarrassed as he might be by the exposure of his “locker-room talk,” ISIS was “drowning people in steel cages” and beheading them. I get that. Next to such atrocities, I guess bragging about sexual assault you maybe didn’t even do but just said to impress Billy Bush seems like small potatoes.
After that, Trump was fully unhinged. Any hold Kellyanne Conway had over Trump failed, be it traditional debate prep, drug-enhanced hypnosis, or remote control genital shock harness. Trump lumbered around stage like a per diem extra waiting for his scene on the set of “The Walking Dead.” He alternately caressed, groped, fondled, throttled and supported his girth on his chair. He reprised his Top Ten Sniffs and pointed repeatedly at the ceiling as if signaling the Mothership. He loomed behind Clinton like the muscle in a cheap-ass, direct-to-video mobster movie.
And then, this:
“If I win,” said Trump, “I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.” Clinton responded it was good a man with Trump’s temperament wasn’t in charge of the law. Trump responded, “Because you’d be in jail.”
All the investigations. All the committee hearings. You may not always approve of Clinton’s actions, but she has never been charged with a crime, let alone found guilty of one. If Trump wins, he’ll use the power of the presidency to open a new investigation, one where the verdict is predetermined, and he will put her in jail. Only a man with no knowledge of history, no clue as to how our government or laws actually function could say such a thing. That kind of talk is reserved for buffoons who dream of being crowned king, for slighted pre-teens nursing grudges in their mildewed basement bedrooms.
That’s not leadership, that’s perverse, twisted fantasy.
That’s locker-room talk.
