Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan said President Trump’s biggest flaw undermining his own power is that he lacks traditionally masculine characteristics.
“He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying,” she wrote Thursday night in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. “He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen.”
The White House has spent the last two weeks on defense as a shake up in the West Wing communications department stirred reports of more infighting. Trump has also criticized his own attorney general but refused to fire him, and Republicans early Friday morning failed to advance a major Trump objective when they couldn’t pass a bill to partially repeal Obamacare.
All the while, Trump has complained that he’s being persecuted by an unfair media and that his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be investigated for “crimes.”
“Trump must remind people of their first wife,” wrote Noonan. “Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity. … His inability — not his refusal, but his inability — to embrace the public and rhetorical role of the presidency consistently and constructively is weak.”
