Asked last Friday by a reporter how, when, and whether he intended to concede to Joe Biden, President Trump said, “I’m the president of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the president that way.”
In a way, it’s nice that Trump should come to have this sudden concern about manners, but it’s spoiled a bit by the fact he could only manage it on his way out the door. In fact, bad manners, along with contempt and disrespect for all others, had been Trump’s stock in trade from when he stepped off the escalator in Trump Tower in June 2015. It carried over into the first debate of that season, when Trump managed to turn the event into a cross between the Hunger Games and mud wrestling. There was no concern for such things as restraint or good manners.
Trump invented his own seven dwarfs — Jeb Bush was “Sleepy,” Marco Rubio was “Little,” Ted Cruz was “Lyin’,” and it all went downhill from there.
One of Trump’s favorite targets had been John McCain, an admiral’s son who became a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War and then a prisoner of war, mistreated, and tortured. Offered early release because of his father, he refused to leave unless his fellow prisoners were released along with him.
At that same time, Trump, by his own admission, was getting rich and seducing (or trying to seduce) women married to other men.
Perhaps this is why Trump’s relationship with military families has been somewhat fraught. He had conflicts not just with McCain, but also with the parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Khan’s parents spoke out against Trump at the Democratic convention in 2016, his father holding up a copy of the Constitution and asking Trump if he ever had read it. In reply, Trump suggested that Kahn was oppressing his wife, who had stood silent beside him.
Another experience with the relations of our honored dead told a similar story: The widow of a soldier who died in Iraq in 2017 said that Trump had forgotten the name of her husband when he called to console her and that his call “made me cry even worse.”
It seems no wonder that the Presidents Club (as described in the 2012 book of that name by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy as the informal association of ex-presidents that meets now and then) is unlikely to welcome a new member on Jan. 20, when the current holder of office turns over the White House keys.
After most presidential elections, when power shifts hands, the presidents club changes and gets a new member. What we know now is that Trump was not reelected and also will not be the club’s next new member. Manners will be the reason why.
