President Donald J Trump has been rampaging around the United States delivering campaign speeches that are all about himself as America’s “greatest president” when he is not smearing someone else employing his own unique brand of maniacal hatemongering. Recent sorties to the hinterland have including Trump in Michigan admiring the prominent asses of incumbent Senator candidate Jon Husted and celebrity rapper Nicki Minaj, to include expressing to the MAGA audience with a leering grin how much he admires those physical attributes. President Trump’s unexpected remark about Nicki Minaj’s appearance was made during a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday October 25th, briefly turning attention away from his midterm campaign messages such as they were, consisting mostly of lies about the economy.
Speaking on the previous Tuesday at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump had referred to Husted, saying: “I’m studying his body. I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. But I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs. I said, ‘His ass, shit, it’s like—it’s like a pile of muscle.’” After revisiting those recent remarks he had made about GOP Ohio Senate incumbent Jon Husted’s physique, Trump said in Port Huron: “I looked at his [Husted’s] ass. I’ve never done that with a man before. Off the record, women, yes. Men, no.” Trump then turned his attention to Minaj, an ally of the president who traveled on Air Force One to attend and speak at the rally. “By the way, I’ve looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before,” Trump said before pointing toward the rapper, “Nicki Minaj! That’s hard to miss! Stand up. That’s hard to miss.” As she stood to a roar from the crowd, the president pumped his fist.
Does anyone really think that kind of language and demeanor before a conservative public gathering always goes well? Evidently not. Given the rather mixed messages, to put it mildly, it is being claimed that some Republican candidates have actually asked Trump’s event organizers to make sure that he does not show up at their rallies because snap opinion polls taken after the events have shown that GOP aspirants for office actually lose voter support after the president makes an appearance.
For sure America’s sometimes president invariably flies into a rage whenever anyone disagrees with him or even seeks to express a mildly critical position regarding the constant flow of invective that streams out of the White House. As a result, those who have the misfortune to serve in senior official positions within the Administration have learned that “Trump is always right” and that to express a contrary opinion is the “kiss of death” for those who would like to stay on the receiving end of a substantial paycheck and benefits, not to mention the opportunities that come up to take advantage of something called “insider trading.”
Trump is also comfortable with disparaging entire nations whenever he believes he has been slighted. US President Donald Trump on Sunday escalated his invective against Norway, calling it a “shit house country” using a term that he has previously applied to Haiti, Libya, Somalia and Yemen and saying Norwegian immigrants were not welcome in the United States because the Nobel award committee, based in the capital Oslo, had not awarded him the annual Peace Prize. “Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shithouse country, actually,” he said during Sunday’s speech.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has frequently spoken of his desire to win the prestigious Nobel Peace prize, which was once won by President Barack Obama. Former UN rights chief Navi Pillay of South Africa was this year’s recipient, leading to Trump’s describing the committee’s choice as “a disgraceful and embarrassing decision” before again arguing that the award should have gone to him. So it should come as no surprise that Trump said Sunday he would welcome immigrants from certain countries but not from Norway “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize. So I don’t want anybody from Norway.”
Trump’s State Department has also recently been boasting of having revoked 300,000 already issued US visas while also enforcing tightened social media screening of all immigrants and visa applicants. The government has claimed national security reasons for targeting critics and also used isolated cases of fraud to broadly target immigrant communities like the Somali American community in Minnesota as well as Muslims elsewhere in the US. Criticism of Israel is now grounds for denying someone a US visa or for revoking a visa after it has been issued. Nevertheless, the whole procedure is a form of thought police.
There are also signs that the comfort level of America’s once-upon-a-time friends with the Trumpean constant invective and inability to say something relevant or take a unchanging position two days in a row is turning allies into skeptics. Larry Johnson explains how Washington’s apparent inability to serve as a genuine security option has global consequences. “On Monday, while Donald Trump was publicly pondering whether to ‘make a deal’ with Iran or ‘finish them off,’ something happened in Tehran that should have set off alarms in every office of the State Department, assuming anyone is still left there to hear them.”
According to Johnson:
Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, the brother of the Crown Prince, flew to Tehran. With him came Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin. They sat down with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and senior security official Rezaei, who hosted the talks, for about two hours. The agenda: the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the Strait of Hormuz, the American blockade of Iran’s ports and a regional non-aggression framework. Read that list again. Those are the four biggest security problems in the Persian Gulf. The countries that actually live there just met to discuss them. The United States, which has two carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group and a blockade in the neighborhood, was not in the room. Nobody seems to have missed it. [and] Here is the delicious part. The three visitors are the signatories of the Makkah Agreement, the mutual-defense treaty that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed on August 7. Article 2 says an attack on one is an attack on all. It was sold, at least in Washington’s imagination, as a Sunni shield for the Kingdom against Iran and its friends in Yemen. Eleven weeks later, the entire shield showed up in Tehran to talk about cooperation. Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan says Tehran will ‘study’ the agreement, ‘and if it is good, we will support it.’
The text of the Makkah treaty conveniently includes an accession clause allowing new members to join through consensus of the existing members. Johnson reports that the three current members formally invited Iran to join them once the US and Israeli attack on Iran ends, and that Tehran accepted accession to the group on that basis. The official published readouts of the meeting did agree to keep talking “among the four,” and Iran has a phrase for what it wants: “endogenous security.” Translation: security for the Gulf region managed by the Gulf, without the US 5th Fleet and military involved in any way shape or form.
It will definitely be a brave new world with people taking the initiative to defend themselves. Perhaps if Donald Trump had spent less time admiring people’s asses and both threatening and insulting people and even nations, not to mention listening to instructions coming from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the world would now be a more peaceful and better place. Rather, one must concede that without those Trumpean interjections it certainly would be so. David Smith of The Guardian asks “Has any president’s…message ever been so Islamophobic, misogynistic and racist, not to mention downright deranged and bizarre? It is like watching a man vomit up bigotry that has been poisoning his soul for decades. Just when you think Trump has hit rock bottom, he produces a jackhammer and starts tunnelling to a new nadir of nastiness.” Let us hope that Trump, who seems incapable learning anything, will finally see enough of the light to take a number of steps backwards. No more war and no more spewing hatred and dissent would certainly constitute a good way to go for the future!
Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.
