But is the bizarre wrap-around really Trump’s only option? Couldn’t he get a toupee? Or some other kind of surgical procedure? We’ve gotten a fair number of looks at Trump’s scalp: Jimmy Fallon mussing it up on his show; various wind incidents. There’s not a lot of scarring visible.
It’s not that I really care about this. Yet I still wonder.
Maybe I just long for some element of the Trump presence in all our lives that is at least a teensy tad less freakish.
I’m betting that he was afraid of further painful surgery. He’s known for being a big baby when it comes to blood and pain. And he’s foolish enough to think that he looks good the way he styles it himself - The Best!!!
In 1990, Ivana Trump said under oath that her husband flew into a fit of rage due to the pain and displeasure with a scalp reduction surgery, performed in 1989. Also known as alopecia reduction, the surgery is intended to correct balding, and involves cutting the bald spot out and sewing the remaining skin back together. The tightened scalp can cause headaches and swelling. The man who allegedly performed the surgery was Ivana’s own doctor, Dr. Steven Hoefflin. He’s most famous for extending his services to Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Rivers, among other stars. Hoefflin also performed liposuction on the chin and waist of our now president, according to Ivana’s deposition.
The part of the book that caused the most controversy concerns Trump’s divorce from his first wife, Ivana. Hurt obtained a copy of her sworn divorce deposition, from 1990, in which she stated that, the previous year, her husband had raped her in a fit of rage. In Hurt’s account, Trump was furious that a “scalp reduction” operation he’d undergone to eliminate a bald spot had been unexpectedly painful. Ivana had recommended the plastic surgeon. In retaliation, Hurt wrote, Trump yanked out a handful of his wife’s hair, and then forced himself on her sexually. Afterward, according to the book, she spent the night locked in a bedroom, crying; in the morning, Trump asked her, “with menacing casualness, ‘Does it hurt?’ ” Trump has denied both the rape allegation and the suggestion that he had a scalp-reduction procedure. Hurt said that the incident, which is detailed in Ivana’s deposition, was confirmed by two of her friends.
Good to know; I’m not sure how much more I can take in without danger to my blood pressure (over the Defenders and Enablers who have no problem with any of it).
Just think of the amount of negative information we have about this person. More than about any one person in history, I bet (given that people in past eras had very little access to information, relatively speaking).
Yet, to some, none of it makes a bit of difference. So long as they’re getting their sweet White Supremacy and/or their stock market gains, they are FINE with it all.
Yeah. Well, if there’s anything remotely akin to ‘good’ coming out of this, it’s that no American will ever be tempted to wax superior to Germans about how their forebears let Hitler get into power. We know now that it can happen here.
What? I’ve personally met people who condemn Germans today for what Hitler and his scum did in the 1930s and 1940s while at the same time those uttering such condemnation demand a round-up and expulsion of their usual favorite targets of prejudice: Blacks (“Send them back to Africa”), Jews (“They have Israel now; send them all there”), and Muslims (“Send those c~ [you know] back to Arabia”). Did you the current president saying American-born members of congress should “go back to where they came from”. These are not isolated cases. The American government during World War II rounded up Americans based on nothing more than their ethnicity and put them in concentration camps. (Note: not all concentration camps are extermination camps.)
Nope. There will always, sadly, be Americans who are flat-out bigoted jackasses and will continue to “wax superior”.
Dang, Sherrerd. I’m a mighty fast typist, but you beat me on that posting speed!
Yes, I see what you mean by the Americans who are not cretins. Sadly, we have to face the fact that currently the occupant of the Oval Office is one such cretin. The good and decent people you stipulate never were those who “waxed superior”–they recognized the failures of our society and the bigots in our midst.
On the whole I agree. But in my own schooling I recall both textbooks and teachers who discussed the idea that there was ‘something in German culture’ that enabled the rise of the Nazis.
While not being openly hateful (let alone racist), there was something quite smug about the concept. Today we can see that the idea doesn’t necessarily hold up. Or at the very least, we can see that whatever ‘something’ there was in German culture that led to large numbers of people embracing institutional racism and authoritarianism, is evidently present in American culture, too.
As it happens, I’m watcing a documentary about the Great Depression. The episode I just finished talked about both anti-Black discrimination and anti-Semisim during that time in America. Oh, it also discussed “Hitlerism” in the United States. No, there wasn’t anything unique about German culture that brought about that embrace. It’s time-honored scapegoating of a minority, one which was forced by the majority’s prejudice into situations for which the majority condemns the minority or minorities.
Or it’s a small amount of scarring but it’s proof that he thought he wasn’t perfect when he had it done and he can’t let anybody think he wasn’t always perfect. I bet the doctor had to sign a NDA.
When we were learning about WWII in high school, like you in post 8542 I had the teacher try that “something inherent in German culture led them down that path” crap I remember thinking It could happen here, and this was before I’d learned much about the horrible race relations at the turn of the last century on to… well, the present, really.
I’ve not thought of Donny Two-scoops as America’s Hitler so much as America’s Mussolini – a strutting little poppinjay who amps up the fears of the populace and wants to restore the former glories they perceive have been lost. Look at this short clip of a Mussolini speech with the sound off (so the Italian doesn’t distract you). His expressions and gestures, and the crowd’s reactions, look disturbingly familiar for the past five years.
In the 1930s … there was a strong fascist element in America, but America didn’t become fascist, unlike so many countries in Europe. Why? Well, probably because Roosevelt was president.
History shows us once a major party endorses hate, and legitimizes hate, which has happened now in the Republican party, it’s very difficult to get it back under control.
Legitimizing hate is what $45 does every single damn day, every time he speaks, every time he tweets. I have no idea if it’s even possible to stuff that genie back into its bottle, especially now that people have realized it was never a sealed bottle to begin with and they’re happy about that.
Agreed. The authoritarian mind works the same way all over.
Interestingly, Italians rejected Mussolini rather forcefully (leading to an ignominious end for the man himself). Germany famously instituted strict laws to fend off worship of the defeated Hitler and his Nazis. It may be a deficiency in my search terms, but I’m not seeing anything equivalent in post-Mussolini Italy. (Anyone have better information?)
Interesting point about the influence an anti-Fascist President had on a 1930s USA that contained many citizens who were flirting with fascism.
We sometimes forget how large a fraction of a population pays very little attention to the news, and so are very easily manipulated. Today we have a quarter or so of Americans who are immune to all information not strained through the right-wing sieve of Fox News. And we have another substantial chunk of the population who don’t watch or read any news at all.
In those circumstance, the example set by the person at the top–the President–really is crucial.