It’s rich, as the English would say, that the Republican presidential nominee in the United States, Donald Trump, is trying to profit from Anthony Weiner’s latest mortification, because Trump is to his persevering supporters what Weiner was to his long-suffering wife: Undeserving of so many second chances; a head case incapable of the redemption that’s supposedly just a few extra measures of discipline away; someone selling himself as a servant of the public although he’s really a slave to his own raging ego and unquenchable needs.
When Trump looks in the mirror, there’s a whole lot of Weiner staring back at him.
The details are tawdrier in Weiner’s case and the stakes far smaller. But both men are creatures of potent want and pure compulsion who lucked into forgiving audiences. Weiner’s finally stopped forgiving: Earlier this week, Huma Abedin announced that she was formally separating from him after six years of marriage.
Trump still has legions by his side. But for how long?
On the home page of the Times’ website on Monday, coincident with the news story about Abedin’s break with Weiner, was a chart documenting when and why 110 GOP leaders gave up on Trump. The left side of the chart presented a timeline of his apostasies and indecencies, and it alone was transfixing: A reminder that any other candidate at any other time would have been undone by just one or two of these outrages; an illustration of the way they keep coming, no matter how ardently his inner circle pleads with him for calm, no matter how furiously the outside world reacts. He can’t help himself.
The right side of the chart presented another timeline, this one showing the points at which each of the 110 Republicans bolted. The surprise was how delayed their departures were. Hope is a stubborn thing.
And at some point, it’s too rosy a word for what’s really going on, which is denial, delusion.
There’s also brutal calculation: Does Trump’s function as a barrier against a Democratic president — against Hillary Clinton, in particular — outweigh his cruelty, his incivility, his bigotry, his utter fraudulence? Too many Republicans have convinced themselves of that, in part by minimising those vices, seeing them as ephemeral, or simply averting their gazes.
Some of these Republicans are living in the same fairy tale that some spouses are. They’re telling themselves the same lie: That fidelity matters more than dignity and common sense. But if a crucial part of wisdom is knowing when to invest, an equally crucial part is knowing when to let go. The Weiner-Abedin marriage had apparently devolved into a blunt parenting arrangement, with Weiner’s care of their four-year-old son making her heavy travel schedule with Hillary possible.
That’s an implication from recent comments that she made to Vogue magazine. It’s the clear takeaway from a Monday-night story in the New York Post, which quotes him telling his partner that he doubted he’d be relocating with his wife to Washington from New York if Hillary were elected president and Abedin made the move.
And it undercuts Trump’s complaint that national security might have been endangered by the “close proximity to highly classified information” that a “very sick guy” like Weiner had through conversations with Abedin. There probably wasn’t much pillow-talk there.
If Trump wants to make Abedin an issue, he’s on fairer, sturdier ground with the extra pay from outside sources that Hillary arranged for her when they worked together at the US State Department. He’s on dangerous turf when he goes after Weiner as a “sicko” and a “pervert”. He’s no paragon of rectitude, no pillar of restraint. This is someone who publicly drooled over his daughter Ivanka, saying that he might date her if he hadn’t sired her.
A scene in the documentary Weiner, about his ill-fated run for New York City mayor, depicts him at a computer, raptly watching and reliving one of his appearances on MSNBC. Trump is famous for marinating in all of the television time devoted to him. He tallies it. He crows about it. He’s Weiner with extra traction, Weiner with added gilt.
It forces an important question: Has America constructed a politics with such bright, invasive lights that those who find it more attractive than repulsive include an unhealthy number of insecure exhibitionists out for affirmation above all else?
— New York Times News Service
Frank Bruni is a writer and author of Born Round and Ambling into History.
