Trump’s tweet about Mika Brzezinski’s ‘face-lift’ proves he’s an unshakeable lout

A handshake, even among adversaries, is a sign that at some level, even if only a formal one, there exists a mutual respect. There is not a single thing about Trump I respect or admire. Not one.

Wealth per se is not admirable. Nor is “success” if it is built on a combination of inheritance, of the ability to fleece people and of the sale through popular media of a reality TV persona that hastens the degradation of our culture.

Trump, from the Oval Office, pollutes our politics and degrades our culture.

(Don’t throw out the straw man argument that “at least he’s not as bad as Hillary Clinton.” Of course, for policy reasons, I “prefer” Trump as president to Clinton, but I would also “prefer” the shingles to the plague.)

The latest degradation – or, rather, crass loutishness, or maybe loutish crassness – came Thursday morning when Trump tweeted (of course, it had to be a tweet!) about MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

At least this time, unlike with Megyn Kelly, Trump identified the “wherever” from which Brzezinski allegedly was bleeding.

Small solace.

This is the president of the United States, the head of state of the most admirable nation in world history, acting like a nine-year-old brat while besmirching not just the dignity, but the very decency of his office.

Please excuse my insistence on chivalry (or what leftist-feminists might call “sexism”), but a lady’s looks should be thoroughly off-limits for public discussion and certainly insult (unless perhaps she’s a comedienne who belittles her own looks for humor, like Phyllis Diller). Trump’s long history of verbal viciousness towards women – including, infamously, not just Megyn Kelly but Carly Fiorina and Heidi Cruz, among many others – isn’t funny and isn’t just some near-negligible breach of manners important only to those with pathetically tender sensitivities. It’s an absolute affront to civil society, especially coming from a president.

(Again, don’t throw out the example of President Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment or President Lyndon Johnson’s private crassness: Transgressions are not excusable on the basis that others also transgressed.)

Now, for those who dismiss chivalry (or even basic courtesy) as outmoded – which common culture may hold it to be, but in this case the “common” is dead wrong – the problems with Trump barely begin with his insults to women. His deep character flaws aren’t just, as columnist Matt Lewis correctly said on CNN Thursday, “a reflection of… cultural degradation,” but a leading contributor to that degradation, especially when emanating from the revered platform of the White House.

Trump is a man who recognizes no apparent limits, no behavioral constraints, no fealty even to the ideals (much less the practice) of honesty and truth. For years, even after convincing proof otherwise, he insisted that President Barack Obama was likely born in Kenya. He spread the calumnious accusation that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was complicit in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He encouraged his supporters to send protesters to the hospital (while he promised to pay their legal bills). And… well, the litany of outrages is all too familiar to keep listing here.

What’s not familiar is such a large portion of the public being willing to excuse it all: the insult to our Vietnam POWs, the incontinence of his lies, the multiple and rampant hypocrisies, the record of cheating (or otherwise leaving unpaid) vendors and workers and clients.

As president, his lack of self-control is deadly to policymaking and perhaps dangerous. It’s hard to pass healthcare reform when the bill the president praises as terrific one day is the same one that he calls “mean, mean, mean” the next. It’s damaging to the public when a president’s Twitter trolling of an FBI director he just fired fuels the flames of an attention-sapping investigation. And it’s destabilizing diplomatically to undercut one’s own top trio of foreign and defense advisers on matters big and small, from North Korea to NATO to who-knows-where next.

Trump is a decidedly nasty human being, and a grenade liable at any moment to explode in all our faces. He undermines civic culture, and perhaps our republic, at every turn. The only shake he merits – personally, if not necessarily legally – is to be shaken loose from public office.

Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner.

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