The Week That Was

Susan Estrich on Oct 26, 2024

It was a week that would doom most candidates for high office. It began with Donald Trump going on a riff about Arnold Palmer's penis size, that the late golfer's daughter understandably found offensive. Did his supporters? Apparently not.

It got worse from there. If you don't mind a president who is focused on penis size, what about one who is considered a "fascist" by military officials who know him best?

In a front-page interview on Tuesday, Gen. John Kelly, who lasted as Trump's chief of staff longer than anyone else, equated his former boss with a "fascist." According to the four-star general, "Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators -- he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure." In an audio portion of the interview published by The New York Times, Kelly said that Trump "prefers the dictator approach to government" and believes he should have "an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted."

Gen. Mark A. Milley, Trump's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the same thing: Milley is quoted in Bob Woodward's just released book "War" as saying Trump is "fascist to the core."

And add his former Defense Secretary James Mattis to the list of military leaders sounding the alarm against Trump: Woodward told the Bulwark Podcast this past week that Mattis had privately told him that he agrees with the book's analysis that Trump is a threat to the country.

Then there was new reporting by The Atlantic this week of Trump's admiration for Adolf Hitler. "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had," Trump reportedly said, with The Atlantic citing two people who heard him. "People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders."

Like orders to murder all Jews? Who talks like this? Coming from a man who held the office of president of the United States, and might do so again. From a man who openly admires dictators and has promised to be one on day one.

If it were a screenplay, the suits would say it just wasn't realistic, that surely it would sink the candidate. But it's real, and it hasn't sunk the candidate. How can that be?

If fascism doesn't sink Trump, then inappropriate sexual advances (again) are unlikely to. The week ended with new revelations from a previous Sports Illustrated swimsuit model that back in the 1990s, Trump had inappropriately groped her. Stacey Williams told CNN, "The second he was in front of me, he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn't come off. And then the hands started moving, and they were on the, you know, on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt, back up, sort of then, you know -- they were just on me the whole time. And I froze. ... It was an out of body experience."

Not long afterward, Williams said she received a postcard from Trump,?delivered to her modeling agency via courier, with a?picture of Mar-a-Lago on the front.

"Stacey, Your home away from home. Love, Donald," the message read. The Trump campaign denied the encounter, which Williams had previously told at least three friends about.

Trump's opponents point to stories like this week's and argue that he is clearly not fit to be president. What befuddles so many Kamala Harris supporters is how so many tens of millions of Americans can continue to support a Hitler-loving, woman-hating fascist philanderer. Is he really the best and brightest that the Republican Party has to offer?

We turn ourselves into pretzels coming up with explanations. Maybe they like his policies better than his personality. What policies? His concept of a health care plan? His solution for the wars in the world -- that they wouldn't have happened if he were president because everyone knows he's crazy? His punitive tariffs, which will fall most heavily on the purchasing power of average Americans? Their fond memories of the Trump years -- notwithstanding the million people who died from COVID?

As this long road comes to an end, I've landed on a far simpler explanation. They like him. They like that he says whatever he thinks -- as off-color, inappropriate and insulting as it may be. And that's not something they excuse; it is something they embrace. They even understand why he'd be a little jealous of Hitler. He wants absolute power, and he makes no bones about it. It's the scariest explanation of all.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.