Cecil addressed this issue years ago, in a question about presidential mourning traditions, with regard to the then-still-alive Richard Nixon. This column does not appear to be available at this site, but was reprinted on pages 150-151 of the original 1984 The Straight Dope compilation.
At that time Mr. Adams noted that would be up to the sitting president, and suggested that “Conceivably, whoever’s in charge could declare a national 30-day period of embarrassed throat clearing, or choose to ignore the whole thing.”
As noted above, everyone (in the media and the political establishment) pretended Nixon was a hero when he died and the same will be true of Trump. Expect hushed descriptions of Ivanka, “tears on her cheeks, glistening like jewels, as she mourns the passing of a complicated man, but one she simply called daddy.”
Is this true? Surely there was plenty of acknowledgement of his… dark side.
Although IMHO Nixon comes a lot closer than Trump to fitting the mold of the tragic hero, with some heroic qualities but with a fatal flaw that caused his downfall.
I don’t want Trump committing suicide. At least not while he has control of nuclear weapons. Because I worry that he would choose to take the rest of the world down with him.
There will be many people either saying “He made America great again”, or “He would have made America great again if it weren’t for those meddling libs.”
Personally I just hope that when he dies, it’s in prison, after his tax returns back to 1987 are printed in the Washington Post.
I am going to get one of those ships: the Nina, the Pinta or the Santa Maria and ship his Orange ass back to Europe. I will pay for his transport with my own dinars! Isn’t that a nice gesture?
When Nixon died, what I remember most is a lot of bringing up his bad stuff. Maybe there was some attempt to show his good side, too, but it was mostly about how crap he had been.
Since Trump has no good stuff, and has attacked the very press who would be eulogizing him, I would expect basically the bad stuff, though I also expect a sort of passive aggressive respect. You know, taking his bad qualities and using more polite words with a knowing wink. A lot of the so-called “good” stuff about Nixon was said in that way.
Of course, those who liked him will spin good stuff, and politicians who aren’t worried about being associated with him will praise him. But I do not expect the whole “even though we were opponents, I still respected him” stuff that we see when more respectable people die.
And because others will bring it up: I will actually forgo my usual moral trepidation and just celebrate. I’ll try not to step on people who are mourning, but I will celebrate that the bastard is in hell. Sure, even there he’ll never figure out it was his fault, but seeing raw evil suffer makes me happy.
Is that nice or good or whatever? I don’t give a fuck. And, from me, that’s a big deal.