Among the daily horrors and dangers of the Trump administration , a Politico report on the president’s “truly bizarre” (in the words of a tour guide) visit to Mount Vernon last year obviously provides some broad comic relief, and an opportunity to be staggered once again at the president’s narcissism. Donald and Melania Trump, along with Emmanuel Macron and his wife, visited the first president’s Virginia estate, during which tour president Trump critiqued Washington’s failure to properly brand his estate by naming it after himself:
“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”
As many, many people have pointed out by now, Washington was not a complete branding failure, as evidenced by the name of the nation’s capital and his often-crumpled, yet nearly ubiquitous $1 presence in our nations’ wallets, cash registers, and strip clubs. But Trump’s belief that everything is about himself, and that this is the way that all other people should naturally operate, stands in grotesque contrast to the sensibility of both George Washington and arguably nearly all our preceding presidents. Washington knew that how he comported himself as president would reverberate through the America political tradition he was helping to establish: and so he notably declined the trappings of a monarch, as well as a third term. Those who followed him had a sense of being presidents among other presidents. But not, apparently, Donald Trump, who does not care about what other presidents thought, struggled with, or did.
Trump may or may not be a stupid man, and he may or may not suffer from an undiagnosed mental affliction, but it is inescapably sad, even tragic, that he refuses to take responsibility for, to any degree, the most basic continuity with tradition that his predecessors have. To lack the most basic respect for American history so that you wouldn’t simply fake interest in Washington’s life - beyond just getting excited when you learn how rich he is, as Trump apparently did during the Mount Vernon tour - is an affront to all Americans. He may not give a shit - and he clearly doesn’t - but this is our history he’s disregarding, that he couldn’t care less about. I felt something akin to this when I read early on about Trump’s apparent contempt for the actual White House.
But the most telling reverberant comment in the Politico article comes not from the president, but from an unnamed source “close to the White House,” who according to Politico indicated that Trump’s supporters don’t care if he isn’t into history, and that “if anything they enjoy the fact that the liberal snobs are upset” about his lack of knowledge. This feels like a crude summation of the political earthquake we are all experiencing. Conservatives, definitionally those who are interested in retaining some connection to what has come before, now see remembering our history as irrelevant, the realm of snooty liberals. Liberals are those silly patriots who care about George Washington, tradition, freedom, equality, solidarity; real, conservative Americans know better, and care for nothing but money and power in the here and now.
Though, on further consideration, this may be a little too stark: because history is not entirely dismissed by Donald Trump, but strip-mined to suit present purposes. George Washington is interesting to Trump because he had lots of money, and this becomes his use to Trump and his supporters in a grotesque syllogism: George Washington was rich; George Washington was president; therefore it is OK for Donald Trump to profit off the presidency, because obviously George Washington did, too (because he was president and was rich and the two are obviously connected).
At any rate, whether or not you voted for the man, we are all degraded by Donald Trump’s non-performance of basic presidential duties, and by his contempt for what common ground we have left to us. It is the triumph of a fantasy vision of human life, reduced to wealth, power, and self-aggrandizement. It lessens us all.