Michael D'Antonio is an American author, journalist and commentator. He shared the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting with a team of Newsday reporters for their coverage of the Baby Jane Doe Case.
In a few moments, his accomplishment in that coverage will ring a particularly ironic, even darkly comic, bell.
First, though, an online essay from D'Antonio recently published.
Time magazine has connected the dots of Donald Trump's intensely personal presidency. The magazine's cover features Trump in his business suit, staring into a mirror that reflects him in regal splendor, complete with crown. "King Me," declares the cover line, but the good stuff is announced in the headlines below: "Visions of Absolute Power," "Trump vs the Constitution" and "Why Mueller Won't Indict."
In those pieces, Molly Ball,
Tessa Berenson, Neal Katyal and Jack Goldsmith define the style and
practices of a man who leads in the brutal and imperious fashion of a
cartoon monarch. The roots of this ignoble attitude run all the way back
to the President's childhood as the scion of one of America's
wealthiest men in a family where he was groomed to royal ways.
"You are a killer, you are a king," was the mantra intoned by President Trump's father Fred
as he taught his boys to believe in their right to rule. This detail,
reported in Harry Hurt III's biography "Lost Tycoon, The Many Lives of
Donald J. Trump," is a chilling marker for anyone trying to understand
the degraded condition of politics under our current president.
In
biographies of Trump, including my own, "The Truth About Trump," one is
introduced to a man raised by an imperious father and a mother besotted
by the British royals. Ask Trump about his mom, as I did, and the most
acute memory he relates finds her gaping at the television as Queen
Elizabeth was coronated.
In every
telling, Fred Trump comes across as a stern, absent father devoted to
his real estate empire. He was so insistent that he be obeyed that a
13-year-old, troublesome Donald was forced to enroll at a military
academy. And yet it was one of these men, young Donald's role model
Theodore Dobias, who told me that he regarded Fred Trump as overly tough
-- or as he put it "a real German."
I touch on Trump's childhood because his
behavior, bullying and heedless, challenges everything we have come to
expect from a president. Seemingly incapable of recognizing his
responsibilities to institutions that make the country a more just and
peaceable nation, Trump acts more like a boy tyrant than a mature
political figure.
He can perform like a facsimile of a president under extreme circumstances; remember the notecard that
coached him on empathy when he met with school shooting survivors? But
when he is on his own, he reverts consistently to childlike displays of
cruelty and gloating.
The
infantile, all-about-me aspect of Trump can be seen in the way he abuses
his pardoning power to score points against his political foes and law
enforcement officials, and made nuclear diplomacy into a performance
piece featuring his own ego. Trump so personalized his approach to North
Korea that he made Kim Jong Un his equal -- just another child in the
sandbox -- and failed to establish a position that seems likely to allow
for real negotiations at the upcoming summit.
Trump's
personalization of the presidency has crippled him in his dealings with
Kim, inspired him to degrade institutions like the free press and
judiciary, and attempted to make a mockery of special counsel Robert
Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Unable to see outside himself and value the system that transcends one
presidency or one moment, Trump sacrifices the future for the sake of
himself.
All that makes Trump regard himself as
Time's "King Me" has been evident since he became a public figure in the
1970s. His father's intonation -- killer, king -- was so powerful
that, combined with the son's talents, it produced the ongoing crisis
that is his White House rule.
The
founders of our republic fashioned a government in a way that was
supposed to constrain a kingly executive like Trump. Now that we have
one, we will see if what they built will stand the test.
To D'Antonio's assessment, I'll only offer a few brief, assorted thoughts.
First...yeah, what he said.
Second, not to pile on or even to call on a common Trump quirk and find a way to step into somebody/everybody else's limelight, but, I offered pretty much the same conclusion almost two years ago in that week after the election of 2016 when there was no waking up from the surreal dream that America had suddenly decided that the answers to all of their hopes and dreams and fears and schemes had been delivered to them in the form of an obviously spoiled rotten little rich kid who had grown up to be a crude and obnoxious little rich man who would, bet any bucks you got, go about "leading" in the brutal and imperious fashion of a
cartoon monarch.
That conclusion, of course, being that this "presidency" was very likely going to be one of the most, if not the most, powerful, stressful and, in many ways, dangerous tests ever conducted on the system the Founders designed. Proving, or, God forbid, disproving the perfection of the design of that system to prevent a king, or dictator, from getting their hands on the wheel of the ship of state or, in the worse case scenario, if they did, in fact, get hold of that wheel, they wouldn't have control of it for very long.
Five hundred and five days, at this writing.
By the way, the ironic, even darkly comic bell I mentioned would ring regarding Michael D'Antonio's back story, chimes in as follows:
What better credibility could a writer/journalist have to offer insight on the personality, and potential danger, of the, for now, infantile, spoiled, tantrum throwing resident at 1600 Pennsylvania than a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on...wait for it....Baby Jane Doe.
To that, I'll just add a point to ponder for all those who continue to support, endorse, encourage and, by doing so, enable brutish and imperious cartoon wannabe monarch.. And, just so we're clear, I don't delude myself for a second or harbor any illusions that you'll give this ponderable point a second's thought. Five hundred and five days into this wanna be monarchy and it's time to paraphrase the great 70's band, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes.
"If you don't know him by now / you will never, never know him"
But, back to the point. And it's one of those kinds of points that parents will appreciate. One of those "well, I can't prove this to you now, the only way to prove it to you is to let it happen and then wait for you to see what the consequences will be" kind of points.
Trust me, kid. You don't want a king.
Because.... and I fully acknowledge that I can't prove this to you now, the only way to prove it to you is to let it happen and then wait for you to see what the consequences will be"......
If and when America ever gets a king....especially this "king", it ain't gonna be Harry and Meghan and William and Kate time.
Think....Longshanks.
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