A PhD in Pettiness
Disparaging critics is the official policy of the Administration
168 is a newsletter emailed on an unscheduled basis in which I share my thoughts on various topics for discussion. Archived newsletters can be found at www.1hundredsixty8.substack.com. Please add your comments by clicking the REPLY button at the end of this piece.
If you thought the advent of social media would lead to the creation of online communities and to everyone having a voice in the public discourse, you would be partially correct. What you missed was that various online platforms would come to be dominated by propaganda, disinformation, and personal attacks. These are the places where disagreements descend into vicious name-calling: Progressives become ‘libtards”, Trump supporters are “ignorant”. These attitudes and behaviors have easily migrated from the online world into many of our public discussions. Ad hominem attacks have always been part of the debate, but the idea of courteous and thoughtful disagreement seems quaint in these polarized times.
So, it is only fitting that our President should lead the way in denigrating his critics, his perceived enemies, and those he deems disloyal. From bestowing childish nicknames on individuals or disparaging their appearance or intellect, there is no manhole cover he will not lift with his tiny hands to peer into the depths that fuel his adolescent sense of resentment. Being re-elected to the nation’s highest office has only emboldened him, as proven by his recent posts on his personal social media platform, Truth Social. He has unleashed his derision towards anyone who threatens his fragile ego by questioning his actions or holding him accountable. It was unimaginable not long ago that a US President would post the type of statements that Trump does on a near-daily basis. A few examples from the past month:
There is a sick rumor going around that fake News NBC extended the contract of one of the least talented Late Night television hosts out there, Seth Meyers. He has no Ratings, Talent, or Intelligence, and the Personality of an insecure child. So why would Fake News NBC extend this dope’s contract. I don’t know, but I’ll definitely be finding out!!! (August 27)
I just watched Sloppy Chris Christie on a ratings challenged “News” Show, “This week With George Slopadopolus,” on ABC Fake News (By the way, what the ‘hell’ happened to Johnathan Karl’s hair? He looks absolutely terrible! It’s amazing what bad ratings on a failed television show that was forced to pay me $16,000,000, can do to one’s appearance!) Can anyone believe anything that Sloppy Chris says? (August 24)
Big win today against the totally corrupt and incompetent New York State Attorney General. Leticia James, and equally incompetent, hand picked, New York State Judge… Leticia James is a criminal and should be forced to resign! (August 22)
Aside from playing golf and trolling people online, Trump has a day job that comes with a great deal of power and responsibility. Yet, he still finds time to indulge in the pettiness that is his métier. On August 1, he fired Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “after a report showed hiring slowed in July and was much weaker in May and June than previously reported”.1 Bearers of inconvenient facts should be wary. Last week, the Presidential Axe of Retribution fell on the neck of Susan Monorez, fired less than a month after being sworn in as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to her attorneys, her sin was refusing “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives”.2
Trump is particularly scornful of his predecessor, whom he calls “Sleepy Joe Biden”, who defeated him in the 2020 election. He told the right-wing website The Daily Caller that Biden “didn’t win the race. He lost badly. He was a horrible president…” In the same interview, he said that, in his garish remake of the White House Rose Garden, he plans to create a gallery of Presidential portraits and will hang a picture of an autopen in place of Biden’s.3
Teddy Roosevelt said that a U.S. president has a “bully pulpit”, but Donald Trump’s insults and personal attacks are “bullying” in the most pejorative sense. He is following through on his campaign promise to be “our retribution’. He lashes out at anyone who thwarts him: the judges who rule against him in cases where his Executive Orders are challenged; Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates; the Democratic governors who push back against his use of their states’ National Guard troops to support his mass deportation campaign. 4 He has instigated investigations of former officials from his first term by the Justice Department.5 He has ordered the revocation of the security clearances of 37 past and current national security officials.
He is truly the Sultan of Spite, the Mararajah of Mean, a small man in the world’s largest job. That he makes every issue about himself raises the question of whether he has any ability to govern for the good of the entire country.
One doesn’t need a college degree to learn the answer.
Suggested Reading
Christopher Hitchens’ 2008 Vanity Fair article, “America the Banana Republic”, is a prescient view of the country’s slide away from democracy. His thesis is “The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.“
The article is behind a paywall, but an annual subscription is worth the $12 for one year to read Hitchens.
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The Daily Caller (September 2, 2025). The autopen portrait is a sarcastic reference to reports that Biden authorized his staff to use it to sign many documents during his Presidency, which Trump hyperbolically called the “biggest political scandal in American history.
Trump’s real estate endeavors depended to a large degree on debt for financing, so he is all in on low interest rates. In managing the nation’s monetary policy, the Fed, an independent agency, has a dual mandate (low unemployment rates and inflation at 2 percent or less). Trump’s tariff policies, by driving up the costs of goods, are inherently inflationary. Trump wants to offset the effect of his tariffs by having the Fed lower the interest rates, an action that would exacerbate inflation.
Miles Taylor, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Department of Homeland Security, who authored an anonymous op ed in the New York Times and a book (“A Warning”, 2020), both critical of Trump. Christopher Krebs, the election security director whose sin was claiming the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history”, refuting Trump’s claim of massive fraud in Joe Biden’s victory; and, most recently, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, whose home was recently searched, reportedly for classified documents.
That Trump is clearly a bully is both a blessing and a curse. His combative aggression toward others, including his close staff, is just what MAGA wants for their president, an alter-ego, if you will, for ordinarily silent America. These are voters, and their fellow travellers, who take a position, right or wrong, and stick to it despite evidence to the contrary. One of my neighbors still stands on something she heard 20 years ago about the name of the model of the house she bought, never mind printed evidence of the correct name she refuses to recognize. She simply won't believe her neighbor.
The curse is of course that normal people, straight thinkers and talkers, are drowned out by the incessant noise of falsehoods, fantasy stories and distractions put out by Trump and supporters. Even when Trump is not re-elected president, he never loses his persona of lying and cheating. I fault reporters, many of them interviewers of the president, who can't and don't stop the firehose flood of lies, distractions and stories in person. In January 2017, my editorial letter to the New York Times advised that contacts with the president and sycophants 1. stop the speaker at the first lie, presenting the facts and truth of any matter being discussed; 2. prepare extensively for the issues that would be raised by ordinarily good questions that would be dodged, misrepresented and lied about so that #1 could be accomplished for the good of American listeners and viewers. These two things are not done which permits the president, vice president (recently on Meet the Press) and his various appointees in immigration, health and human services, justice, and more to spread lies before the truth gets started or repeated. Those who voice an alternative view like Powell at the FED are attacked, so maybe that's the excuse of reporters, but their job is to get and advance the truth.
That the president still attacks those charged with voting truth and accuracy is a symptom of the jeopardy the nation still faces in Trump's headlong rush toward making America into a Banana Republic. He's pals with Putin and Un of North Korea because they rule that kind of nation. He takes lessons from them because he thinks he's untouchable here with immunity from his Supreme Court. It remains to be seen if truth disappears from media under Trump attack, if national hegemony in business diminishes with government taking a share of large corporations and if truth-tellers like the Fed Chair and CDC head succumb by following Trump dictates or resigning. Courts are a bulwark like the Fed to Trump lies, but they are lagging actors. Will they prevail over time with so much nonsense believed by voters from 'Truth Social', Fox News and the president's mouth. It's a race to the bottom by MAGA.