# Trump - best literate descriptors? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 22, 2020, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193 "2020-11-22T15:09:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/1 "2020-11-22T15:09:32Z")
This one came to my inbox again. I think it originally came out in the Spring. Maybe we can create a centralized repository for the people who took very deep breaths, had a few swigs of whatever gets the juices flowing best, and put pen to paper or keys to keyboard, and … spelled out … the CFSG. I’ll start. Nate White: > **[British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read - London Daily](https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-i-ve-read)** > > “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: I would excerpt it but it _doesn’t_ ebb and flow. The whole is definitely more than the sum of its parts. What else have you read that really captures the (fetid, necrotic, odious) _essence_ of the man ? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/2 "2020-11-22T15:21:10Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > I would excerpt it but it _doesn’t_ ebb and flow. The whole is definitely more than the sum of its parts. - That is every bit as vicious as Trump is. Except for being literate and savagely _accurate._ ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/3 "2020-11-22T15:28:53Z")
Good letter. It’s been around for a couple of years - I’ve seen it quoted here before. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/4 "2020-11-22T15:29:40Z")
Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times has written some excellent polemics on Trump: > **[Fintan O’Toole: Donald Trump has destroyed the country he promised to make...](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928)** > > The world has loved, hated and envied the US. Now, for the first time, we pity it ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/5 "2020-11-22T16:00:42Z")
The last line might be my favourite: > If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set. ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/6 "2020-11-22T16:10:03Z")
Frankie Boyle, a Scottish comedian, wrote this piece about Trump in 2017: > **[Donald Trump: a man so obnoxious that karma may see him reincarnated as...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/08/donald-trump-obnoxious-karma-reincarnated-as-himself-frankie-boyle)** > > All presidents come into office with something to prove, it’s just rarely their sanity. Comedian Frankie Boyle asks if the answer to stopping him rests in our hands One of the best lines isn’t actually about Trump but about Melania: > Melania Trump has a look that I’ve never seen before, the eyes of someone waiting with increasing impatience for Stockholm syndrome to set in. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/7 "2020-11-22T16:38:00Z")
My gerd, that’s hilarious. Boyle definitely has the written cadence of a stand-up comic. There was little that would pass for composition, but that meant nothing. Just a staccato barrage of side-splitting, incisive, invective, that – just like the OP article – **still** can’t quite capture just how awful this fucker is. I’ll have to sign up for the Irish Times later. I want to see what O’Toole had to say… ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/8 "2020-11-22T16:42:05Z")
I’m amused by the thread title. It isn’t often that “Trump” and “Literate” appear in the same sentence. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2020, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/9 "2020-11-23T23:54:26Z")
Just saw this one on my FB feed: > In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.” I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. > These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless. > And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House. > The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt. > Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too. Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now. –Charles Pierce ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2020, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/10 "2020-11-23T23:54:52Z")
I afforded myself a little poetic license 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2020, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/11 "2020-11-24T00:01:28Z")
I’d say the best literate description of Trump is “il-”. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2020, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-best-literate-descriptors/926193/12 "2020-11-24T01:47:09Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > Boyle definitely has the written cadence of a stand-up comic. Boyle IS a standup comic. His routines on youtube are hilarious, and rarely safe for work. One of my favourites is when there were two young teen lads in the front row (brought by their mum and dad.) Oh. My. God. Funny. I won’t spoil it.