Counter-Currents
Donald Trump, the “Don Rickles” of American Politics
Stephen Paul Foster2,017 words 
For the last ten years a man named Donald John Trump has driven a sizeable portion of the American people crazy – literally. I am wondering if Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) should be included in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). TDS even has its own Wikipedia page. But, in case you have ever trusted Wikipedia as an independent, objective opinion-information source, the TDS entry gives away the game. It reads as if it were written by some blue-haired intern at The Atlantic with a Peace and Conflict Studies major from Oberlin College. “Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a pejorative term, used to describe criticism of or negative reactions to President Donald Trump that are perceived to be irrational and to have little regard for Trump’s actual policy positions.”
Take out “pejorative,” and, so far so good. What follows, however, displays the oblivious, condescending mindset typical of left-wing know-it-alls who talk and write like they are dealing with children.
Despite the usage of the term syndrome suggesting a medical condition, TDS is not an official medical diagnosis. [What a relief!] A 2021 research study [published by Societies, a left-wing sociology journal devoted to DEI topics] found no evidence to support the existence of TDS among Trump detractors on the left, but instead [to everyone’s surprise] found bias among his supporters.
Not to worry “Trump detractor.” Your “virtue” remains unsullied, and the “deplorables,” as Hillary called his supporters, are indisputably, “irredeemably,” deplorable. If you can’t trust a sociologist, who can you trust?
Since his entry into politics in 2015, the way Trump has provoked the kind of hysterics you see with Rachael Maddow and Whoopi Goldberg reminds me of the Looney Tunes “Road Runner” cartoon series featuring Wile E. Coyote in hot pursuit of the Road Runner. All the efforts of the half-crazed TDS Wiles – scattered throughout cable-TV and commentary-land – to catch and devour the Orange Road Runner inevitably backfired leaving them feeling crushed as he eluded the elaborate traps they envisioned him to fall into. Trump’s “deplorables” contemplated with euphoric glee the 2016/2024 election-night, media coverage, and the grief-stricken MSM talking heads comprehending that the Road Runner was White House bound.
Donald Trump’s pre-political career was as an impresario, an organizer and promoter of entertainment extravaganzas. His instincts and experience taught him how to play to audiences, and success in modern American politics comes from knowing your audience and knowing how to play to them. His ability to drive his detractors into paroxysms of rage and continually frustrate their efforts to put him permanently out of commission is in part due to the showman talents and publicity seeking skills he developed over the decades. When he first announced his dubious, quixotic quest for the Presidency, absolutely nobody took him seriously. Trump, then came on like a raging bull in the Republican party China shop. He brought a unique, burlesque, comedic style totally verboten by the “polite” stuffed shirts and empty suits who have long “managed” the Overton Window while barely dissimulating their contempt for the people who vote them into office. Trump’s irreverence completely disarmed his political opponents and created a huge audience, enthused to watch his wrecking ball clear out the Republican contenders for the nomination in complete defiance of predictions of the professional pundits.
As far as “knowing your audience,” in 2015 Trump knew that the rank-and-file of the Republican party were disgusted with betrayal of the party bosses.
It’s worthwhile here to note that in his 2021 published memoirs, A Promise Land, Barack Obama shares this little gem about his Senate colleague, John McCain who despised “the crazies” in his party – the dirty little secret of his contempt for the people he used to promote himself.
Once, as the two of us stood in the well of the Senate waiting for a vote, John [McCain] had confided to me that he couldn’t stand a lot of the “crazies” in his own party. I knew this was part of his shtick—privately playing to Democrats’ sensibilities while voting with his caucus about 90 percent of the time. But the disdain he expressed for the far-right wing of his party wasn’t an act. And in an increasingly polarized climate, the political equivalent of a holy war, McCain’s modest heresies, his unwillingness to profess the true faith, carried a real cost. The “crazies” in his party mistrusted him, they considered him a RINO—Republican in Name Only—and he was regularly attacked by the Rush Limbaugh crowd. (Obama, Barack. A Promised Land, p. 153. Kindle Edition.)
Trump crashed the invitation-only Primary party and was greeted by the entire political establishment and the MSM with contempt. Trump must have channeled H. L. Mencken: “The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.” Playing to the base of the party who were themselves feeling that contempt, Trump campaigned against the party establishment as Don Rickles, the Merchant of Venom, the featured headliner, taunting his primary opponents with insults. This was not the way the primary was usually conducted, and they could not begin to comprehend what was happening to them.
This was “Don Rickles” on the entire Bush family, as brutal as it was funny:
I mean, this guy [Jeb Bush]. I don’t think he has a clue… I really liked the father — really like him as a person. But I hated his ‘read my lips, no more taxes,’ and then he raised taxes monstrously…[George W. Bush] didn’t seem smart. I’d watch him in interviews and I’d look at people and ask, ‘Do you think he understands the question?’ … Jeb is not up to snuff… is never going to bring us to the promised land. He can’t.
The comedic, low-brow put-downs outraged the establishment, but the sheer brazenness of it drew massive amounts of cost-free attention to himself – as none of the other candidates could do. But more importantly, by holding up the party bosses for ridicule, he turned the frustrated party base against its perfidious elites and singlehandedly captured its leadership. The “counter-contempt” “cure” against Republican Inc. had worked. He pulled off a counter-revolution within the party. Republican voters finally had a candidate who didn’t care if the mainstream media called him a “racist,” who wasn’t desperate to earn its approval and play nice with the blow-dried talking heads from cable news.
“Don Rickles” was his own, uncensored script writer.
Donald Trump is, perhaps, our first president-comedian. He is in stark contrast to a largely humorless political establishment. Joe Biden attempted to be funny but only succeeded in being a buffoon. Hillary, Mike Pence, Liz Warren and John Kerry are an utterly humorless, colorless and robotic collection of mediocrities, their snouts long plunged into the public trough. Obama, on the other hand, was “colorful,” but not much, however, has ever been said about his sense of humor because there is little in the man to detect. In this regard he bears resemblance to Jimmy Carter, the grim, parson-scold who lectured the nation about “malaise” in the 1970s. Obama lectured us about “racism in our DNA,” what cars we should drive, how much to eat and where to set our thermostats. “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”
From the countless speeches Obama gave over the years with the constant, self-righteous posturing, almost nothing insightful, witty or poignant can be extracted. Nothing he has said was particularly quotable, enduring, or funny. His teleprompter deliveries with their unintended Bobble Head doll effect accentuated his geekiness – nothing coming out of his shallow mind and busy mouth was memorable or important. Black Jesus turned out to be a scolding “mom,” whom most everyone ignored.
In the quest for his second term Trump got even more creative with his burlesque style of humor.
After President Biden referred to Trump supporters in the 2024 Presidential campaign as “garbage,” the impresario Trump donned a sanitation worker’s vest over his suit, perched himself in the passenger’s seat of a large garbage truck with his arm slung out of the window, just like a regular guy. It was a brilliant, comedic stunt, the kind you get from the World Wrestle Entertainment host of Wrestle Mania.
Trump humanized himself as a very funny man, turning an insult against its originator by staging a theatrical mock-embrace of it. He energized his supporters by identifying with the “little guy” and made Biden look desperate, mean-spirited, and even more out-of-touch. It put Biden’s handlers into damage-control mode, obviously lying, denying that he had said what everyone knew he had said.
Similarly with Trump’s McDonald worker skit, holding up Harris’s McDonald-worker boast for ridicule. No one could imagine her behind a fast-food counter, and here was the Orange Man, suitably accoutered, actually handing our French fries from behind the drive-through window, a symbolic embrace of America’s low-wage workers. It was hilarious and deadly. Trump showed himself to be spontaneous, genuine and connected to real people. He was enjoying himself in contrast to the completely scripted Harris whose only appearances were before audiences packed with her sycophants, where, even so, she always looked dazed and dumb founded. Harris was as deadly-dull, uninspiring and disconnected from her supporters as Trump was an energized force always on the move, just like the Road Runner, leaving the Vice President looking perpetually confused and headed for the cliff.
Trump II continues as Don Rickles with copious doses of “counter-contempt” for his detractors. In his March 5th address before a joint session of Congress during which the Democrats mounted an unprecedented display of open contempt for the President, Trump referred to the Democrats as “these people” and “radical left lunatics.” Best, however, was his mocking gesture toward Senator Elizabeth Warren, using her derisive, completely deserved moniker, “Pocahontas.” Such a stinging insult aimed at a sitting senator from the President of the United States in such a formal, august setting as a joint session of Congress is unprecedented in recent times. The helpless Warren looked like she was about to explode. Trump turned the House Congressional Chamber into a nightclub.
It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this. President Trump has smashed the rules of engagement for the uniparty and flung open the Overton Window. The MAGA Republican party does not play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules that bound the Republican Inc suits while the Democrats’ playbook is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
So, whatever gives you pause about Trump – his bombast, his vanity, the contradictions – his return to the White House has achieved something extraordinary. His ascendancy has peeled away the mask of America as a “democracy” where political parties that represent the will of the demos compete to represent their interest, according to constitutional limits.
The coming off of the mask reveals that the constitutionally limited competition for power is a mirage. The reality is that American politics is a kind of warfare. As Carl Schmitt succinctly put it the Concept of the Political: “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”[1]
It should be clear now that American politics is best understood as a no-holds-barred struggle of friend and enemies. White, European heritage Americans have been regarded as “the enemy” by the left for decades, but with great acceleration by the Obama and Biden regimes, both of which have been open about evils of “whiteness,” “white privilege,” and “white supremacy” as the “greatest threat to democracy.” Trump knows that he is in the cross-hairs of the left and that they are intent on destroying him and his supporters. That knowledge we can only hope will encourage him to treat the left as an existential threat to an American future that retains its European roots and serves the interests and aspirations of white Americans. Otherwise, the future will be a descent into some kind of multicultural slum.
Notes
[1] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, translation, introduction and notes by George Schwab, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1996, 2007, p. 26.
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12 comments
I like this author, and the pieces he writes excoriating our politicians. That said, has he paid attention this past year? We are so far beyond this Trump-the-wrecking-ball-of-the-left. The story has continued, and he has been revealed to be a complete Jewish shill. Whether he always was, or just sold out this second time, is up for debate. But his little insults are not cute anymore. The guy is demolishing our country and won’t even say ‘white’.
Beep Beep. Reality Check.
LINK
Trump is far from ideal, but he is far less Judaized than the Left in general and the Democraps in particular.
That is why a supermajority of Joos vote Democrat and always have.
Trump has pushed, and continues to push, the right buttons ─ and that causes the mask of the Left to fall off. They can’t help their insane rage. And this is good for us. It gives us some potential opportunities that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
We are far, far, far from deliverance from our plight ─ and things will likely get worse before they get better. But at least we are pointed in the right direction.
The reelection of “vinegar diapers” Joe or the election of Kamalamala was a bullet to the brain that ─ like Trump at Butler, PA ─ we actually dodged.
As I said, DJT is hardly ideal. Who of us does not already know this?
Seriously, anybody?
Yes, newsflash: the Trumpenführer he is not.
But this nonsense of Trump being the Zion Don is B.S., and I am increasingly skeptical of the motives for the claim ─ other than perhaps to sell subscriptions for edgy podcasts.
Everything has to be compared to a reference point in Physics. And our reference point is the other side of the two-party system, which is almost irredeemably loathsome.
As George Lincoln Rockwell once described the election of 1964, “it’s like going to the garbage dump and taking your pick.” (The two candidates were Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson for you Millennials.)
My point is that 2024 could have been much worse by a country mile.
🙂
I am now half through “The art of the deal”. Despite being of pure White origin, Trump from his childhood was immersed in Jewishness. His whole adult life was spent in dealing with Jews. He loves Jews, he admires them. Each Jew in the book is “a wonderful person” with all imaginable positive qualities. In Trump’s case the obsequious attitude toward Jews is not simple conformism but a real thing. It is why he married his daughter to a Jew. Trump’s modus operandi in business was of entirely Jewish nature. In essence, Trump himself is an ultimate converted Jew. Such whites are even more ardent in their service to the Jewish cause. Trump has genuine feeling of affinity to Jews. If he ever risks to plunge the United States into WW3, it will be for the sake of Israel. His last remarks about Iran fully confirm his mindset.
Trump’s attempts to restore some normality in the ever more dysfunctional American society is a pure common sense. I am sure many Jews are not happy about the chaos that engulfs American society. The substantial part of American Jews support Trump.
In his first term in office the most significant political achievements of Trump were to acknowledge Golan Heights to be a part of Israel, Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital and killing of an Iranian general. Now Trump has proclaimed an open-ended commitment to any Israel’s military adventure. Trump has nothing against sending any amount of weapons to Israel.
Trump wants to make a deal with Russia for the simple reason that many American and European Jews want to make this deal. Because their Russian brethren wants to continue their unrestricted economic activity as before. Trump loves Russian Jews as well; he knows many of them since 1980es.
Maybe, Trump is a better option than Kamala Harris. Maybe, he will be able to restore a semblance of social order in USA (for a few years). But, let’s not dupe ourselves: Trump is a committed Zionist; he will do everything in order to advance Jewish cause. Trump doesn’t care about White identity. Trump isn’t “our savior”, to put it mildly.
Nobody thinks that Trump is our Savior. And nobody is arguing that.
He’s not even “our guy” except maybe for MAGAs who do not consider either Race or the Jewish Question and are fundamentally lacking in leadership overall.
Thanks to Trump, who brought the matter to the fore, some do secretly understand the racial aspect of (at least) illegal immigration, which is some progress.
The fact is that Jews despise Trump and MAGA. Furthemore, he has shown far less propensity for Interventionism than almost any Democrat or Republican has in the past 85 years, and he has befuddled the Neocons, compared to the last two or three decades of “making the world safe for Democracy.”
Yes, Trump has done some bluster against Iran. So what? I could care less about them and the same with Israel and Palestine. My concern is that the USA does not get involved in financing or fighting any more Brush Wars, especially in the Middle East or Ukraine.
Trump has a greater chance of brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine than anybody else. And it is about time that the Europeans pull their weight with NATO. Ideally, the U.S. would get out of the pact entirely since the Soviet Union is no more ─ or at least rethink that “entangling alliance.”
The GOP has filthy Neocons like the Cheneys and the Bushes, but the Democrats are far worse in nearly all categories and they remain the Jewish preference. The Democrats have not championed the working man over Globalism for at least four decades. I don’t see anything that they can offer or any redemption from there at all.
All you have to do is go to a Democrat vs. a Republican rally and the later will be mostly White attendees in spite of some Token speakers.
A Democrat rally might as well be a meeting of the Comintern ─ full of Liberal Catholics, surly Blacks, and Woke University Professors who think that (((Dennis Praeger))) is a White Nationalist.
My cousin (Grandmother’s generation) was the DNC chair in 1972 and actually wrote in her memoirs how the Jews sabotaged the McGovern campaign from within. She and her husband respected George Wallace, and he reciprocated by giving them his delegates after he was shot.
The Lesbo Joos that sabotaged McGovern certainly did not mean to aid Nixon or the GOP with their agitation; they just overplayed their hand. As Joos do. And when it was all over by a landslide, they then directed all their venom against Nixon until his resignation. Nixon really did not understand the stakes, but neither does anyone else.
The point is that we have had over a hundred years of failure ─ failure after failure ─ and we need to learn how to seize opportunities, however inelegant they may be. I’d rather see some steps in the right direction than nothing, or worse.
🙂
EDIT: Reply to Kim below.
I didn’t mean that Nixon was necessarily naïve to Jewish machinations, but that he didn’t understand all the pieces on the board. Otherwise he would not have done the maladroit thing with the Plumbers, which was a solution looking for a problem.
My sister’s late father-in-law, the future Utah Senator Bob Bennett was on Nixon’s WH team and could not understand the purpose of the cloak and dagger B.S. and got out when he could.
In fact, until the “Deep Throat” Washington Post source was revealed in 2005 to be (((Mark Felt))) from the FBI, Bennett was believed to be him, although Bennett always denied this.
Nixon wasn’t dumb but he just wasn’t listening to the right advisors. And Kissinger wasn’t as smart as everybody thought he was.
“Nixon really did not understand the stakes, but neither does anyone else.”
Actually Nixon was fairly America-First, & JQ’d. I’ve seen this in interviews he’s done & in the recorded discussions he’d have with his staff.
Nixon mentions the pressure of the Jewish Lobby on America/POTUS, & Jews disliking the U.S. being on friendly terms with Egypt:
(2 min video clip from bc) https://www.bitchute.com/video/6i2gWMDgypag
“The Jews Are Born Spies; You Can’t Trust The Bastards,” Richard Nixon:
(2 min audio w/text) https://www.bitchute.com/video/aEeVjnRWRcxR
Do you really believe that it is possible to make any deal with Kremlin neo-Bolshevik gang? Please, listen this talk with one of those creatures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGqAknD3vyc
Wolf Stoner: March 18, 2025 I am now half through “The art of the deal”. Despite being of pure White origin, Trump from his childhood was immersed in Jewishness. His whole adult life was spent in dealing with Jews. He loves Jews, he admires them. Each Jew in the book is “a wonderful person” with all imaginable positive qualities. In Trump’s case the obsequious attitude toward Jews is not simple conformism but a real thing. It is why he married his daughter to a Jew. Trump’s modus operandi in business was of entirely Jewish nature. In essence, Trump himself is an ultimate converted Jew. Such whites are even more ardent in their service to the Jewish cause. Trump has genuine feeling of affinity to Jews. If he ever risks to plunge the United States into WW3, it will be for the sake of Israel… let’s not dupe ourselves: Trump is a committed Zionist; he will do everything in order to advance Jewish cause.
—
Wolf, your opinion of Trump’s devotion to Jews will not change after you read the rest of his The Art of the Deal (1984). I had the same impression from reading it 10 years ago.
Re “Trump is a committed Zionist; he will do everything in order to advance Jewish cause.”
In his Paula White House video, Blackpilled recently exposed Trump’s highly influential TV MegaChurch [sometimes speaking-in-tongues] Christian Evangelist pastor Paula White. (Yep, Trump picked a female as his spiritual & religious advisor. It’s likely from viewing their interviews together that they also know each other in a ‘biblical sense’.)
In 1984, while in Maryland, the teen-aged Paula claimed she was “having direct conversations with God.” She was heavily promoted by Evangelical Christians. Paula now on her third marriage to Journey musician Jonathan Cain, is such a con-artist/gold-digger, the band had to sue her after she attempted to gain access to the rock band’s earnings. Paula has an influential position in Trump’s cabinet, sitting in on foreign policy mtgs, & is currently working overtime to advance Israeli Zionism both here & in the ME.
As usual you hit the nail right on the head. Trump is a natural comedian. He knows exactly how to get under their skin. His timing is perfect.
I loved the Oberlin College reference. Oberlin needs to be seen first hand, otherwise people wouldn’t believe it exists.
Don Rickles jokes/flexes: “[Ronald Reagan] wouldn’t be Governor, if My People didn’t go ‘Okay”…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7hM8q4_XME
“I am wondering if Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) should be included in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).”
Stephen, you are in good company with your concern. Yesterday Fox News reported:
“A group of Minnesota Republican lawmakers plan to propose legislation requiring the state to include “Trump derangement syndrome” under its definition of mental illness.
Five GOP lawmakers are set to introduce the bill in the state’s Senate on Monday and refer it to the Health and Human Services committee, according to Fox 9. The bill aims to specifically add “Trump derangement syndrome” to the state’s definition of mental illness.”
Kim, quoting Wolf Stoner: March 18, 2025 “Trump is a committed Zionist; he will do everything in order to advance Jewish cause.”
—
In his Paula White House video, Blackpilled recently exposed Trump’s highly influential TV MegaChurch [sometimes speaking-in-tongues] Christian Evangelist pastor Paula White. (Yep, Trump picked a female as his spiritual & religious advisor. It’s likely from viewing their interviews together that they also know each other in a ‘biblical sense’.)
—
Jew funnyman Rickles aside for the moment — I wasn’t aware of Trump’s nutcase “spiritual & religious advisor” until now. Thanks, Kim.
WikiJews give background on her, but a source found there by (((Mark I. Pinsky))), author of A Jew Among the Evangelicals, informs us that Ms. White has had a condo in the Donald’s Trump Tower — “she had been given a cut rate on the property” — since 2002. You’re probably right that he has known his ‘bombshell’ spiritual advisor in the ‘biblical sense,’ since he has conveniently always had a residence there and has admitted being attracted to her: Where has Trump spiritual advisor Paula White gone?
BTW, White built her megachurch with mostly non-White congregants. her “advice” allegedly helped Trump to win increases with the “Colored” electorate.
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