There I was, recording my students’ end-of-semester grades and worrying about how many A-minuses I was handing out, when President Trump came to the rescue and showed me I was being not soft but stern. I was denying those students one of the many, many marks higher than that.
Like an A. Or an A-plus. Or an A-plus-plus. Or an A-plus-plus-plus, which is still inferior to the plus-a-palooza that Trump pulled off.
I refer of course to the evaluation that he gave himself in an interview last week with Dasha Burns of Politico.
She asked him to grade the economy under his stewardship.
“A-plus,” he said.
“A-plus?” she said back to him, as if maybe she hadn’t heard him right, as if such flamboyant boasting were still a shock, as if she were clinging idealistically to the idea that a president of the United States could not travel quite this many light-years away from reality, as if the past decade of American history hadn’t happened.
“Yeah,” Trump responded.
But then, upon further consideration, he realized that he’d been unduly self-effacing. So he rewrote his report card, just like the Alicia Silverstone character got her teachers to do for her in “Clueless.”
“A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” Trump said. That’s five pluses, for those of you too nonplused to pause and count. I assume he stopped there only because he was winded. He’s not the cyclone of energy he used to be. He’s more an erratic breeze.
And he has decided that the answer to one kind of inflation is another. You think 4.0 grade point averages are too common at the elite universities that he supposedly deplores? They wouldn’t even land you on the dean’s list in the Trump administration, where the windbags in the West Wing, the showboats in the cabinet and the blowhard in chief are constantly gilding their self-determined A’s with self-indulgent pluses atop pluses.
Trump and his team exuberantly violate just about every precept of character that I was ever taught, and so it goes with moderation and humility. They’ve normalized bragging. Scratch that: They’ve fetishized it. It’s a naughtiness they allow themselves, a perk they accord themselves, a rite by which they identify themselves to one another as birds of a feather — peacocks, in this case. It’s a competition: My superlatives are bigger than yours.
When Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, gave a status report on his agency’s work in mid-October in the Oval Office, he effused: “These are the best numbers for fighting crime in U.S. history.” He used “historic” less than a minute later, and another “historic” less than a minute after that. As Shakespeare might have written, methinks he doth “historic” too much.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, giving a status report of his own at a cabinet meeting two weeks ago, pronounced: “It has been a historic year at the Department of War.” He added that “the spirit in our ranks” was “unprecedented” and that recruitment and retention were “at the most historic levels our country has ever seen.” Not just historic — most historic. Take note, Director Patel. That’s how the game is properly played.
Hardly a day goes by without Trump’s telling us that no president has amassed a political movement like his or accomplished as much in such a short time or built such a rich economy or worked harder. Me, me, me. Best, best, best. He can’t find enough hours in the conventional workday to proclaim his glory adequately, so he has been known to spend the wee hours strutting on Truth Social, as he did from 9 p.m. to midnight on the first day of December, in a narcissistic meltdown of more than 150 posts.
About six hours later, as he reflected on what terrific fun that was, he awarded a superlative to the platform designed to accommodate his superlatives. “TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE BEST!” he wrote. “There is nothing even close!!!” Exclamation points are like pluses. You can’t have just one.
Alas, reality has a way of catching up with even the most fervent hucksters and audacious confidence men. Remember when Trump, eager to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, huddled with Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August and, upon the conclusion of their talks, said that he’d rate the meeting a 10 out of a possible 10? Well, it’s four months later and the war rages on. Perhaps there was a crucial tell in Trump’s remarks that everyone missed. He didn’t rate the meeting an 11 — or at least a 10-plus.
As for the economy, all the pluses in the world may not persuade voters of their good fortune. An AP-NORC poll released on Thursday showed that just 31 percent of Americans — a new low in that survey — approve of how Trump is handling economic issues.
That’s an F with minus upon minus in tow.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright cringed at the new headquarters of JPMorgan Chase in Manhattan: “Among the slender needles and elegant spires of the Manhattan skyline, a mountainous lump has reared into view. It galumphs its way up above the others, climbing in bulky steps with the look of several towers strapped together, forming a dark, looming mass.” (Thanks to Abigail Bromberger of Juneau, Alaska, and Ellen Wilson of Pittsburgh for nominating this.)
In The Wall Street Journal, Michael J. Lewis presented a more positive take, complimenting both that building and the Jackson Hole History Museum in Wyoming as being “superbly attuned” to their locations: “Their designers accomplished this not by a token gesture to the setting, as roving politicians tweak their standard speech with a local joke, but by respectful attention to the infinite variables that make up the mysterious sense of place. Their solutions are as specifically adapted to the architectural ecosystem as any specialized animal in the Galápagos Islands is to the natural one, which is to say that they would make sense nowhere else in the world.” (Mary Stagaman, Cincinnati)
On NJ.com, Jana Cholakovska explained the appeal of the “Upper West Side of suburbia,” Montclair, N.J.: “The community of nearly 40,000 is a haven for young families ready to flee New York City for a promised suburban utopia where the grandparents are woke, the parents are New York magazine reporters and the children dream of speaking fluent Mandarin.” (Evelyn Codd, Morristown, N.J.)
In The Times, Matthew Cullen punctured the pretension of Pantone: “Every December, the professed color experts at Pantone predict a shade that they believe will come to define the following year. Today, they announced that the color for 2026 is PANTONE 11-4201. They call it Cloud Dancer. Just about everyone else calls it white.” (David Moore, Sequim, Wash.)
Also in The Times, Tim Hornyak considered a higher caliber of commode: “Step into any public restroom stall in Japan and you’re likely to be enveloped in a soundscape. No, not that kind. It’s the babble of running water, perhaps peppered with cheerful tweets and birdsong, and it’s meant to transform the space into an auditory simulacrum of nature, perfect for responding to its call.” (Gail Reagan, Oakland, Calif.)
In The Boston Globe, Christopher Muther said humbug to Paul McCartney’s contribution to caroling: “The man who once penned ‘Penny Lane,’ ‘Get Back’ and ‘Band on the Run’ gave us ‘The party’s on / The feeling’s here / That only comes / This time of year.’ ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ is the fruitcake of Christmas songs. It shows up every holiday, and no one really wants it.” Those lyrics, he added, “sound as if they were composed by someone visited by the ghost of Christmas dull.” (Stan Martin, Andover, Mass., and Carl Cummings, Canton, Mass.)
In The Washington Post, Ron Charles made a wish: “If there comes a point when I have only 24 hours left to live, I want Donald Trump to be my timekeeper. The president’s repeated claim that he would ‘solve’ the Russo-Ukrainian war ‘in one day’ has now stretched out to 319 days. Amid his convulsions of belligerence and gullibility, Trump’s current solution to Russia’s ongoing rape of Ukraine is to tell Ukraine to dress less provocatively.” (David P. Barash, Goleta, Calif., and Carol McCormick, Sacramento, Calif., among others)
Also in The Washington Post, George F. Will remarked on the allegation that the Trump administration official supervising our military had given a verbal order to kill any survivors of missile strikes against boats in the Caribbean: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.” (Stuart Parsons, Odessa, Fla., and Carol Taylor, Black Mountain, N.C., among others)
In The New Yorker, Dhruv Khullar beheld the blurring of correlation and causation on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web page that “points out that autism rates have risen in recent decades and so has the number of infant vaccinations — an observation that might also be made about prestige TV shows and pumpkin-spice lattes.” (David Olan, Manhattan, and Peggy Slez, Charlottesville, Va.)
In her newsletter, Joanne Carducci (a.k.a. JoJoFromJerz) scoffed at the peace prize that FIFA, the international soccer organization, awarded Trump: “It’s a participation trophy for geopolitical corruption. It’s so stupid it makes my remaining sanity stand up, politely excuse itself, and dive headfirst into oncoming traffic.” (Mike Rogers, Wilmington, N.C.)
And in The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Andrew Coyne inventoried the American president’s outrages: “We are in a kind of hyperinflation of presidential derangement, an exponential curve asymptotically approaching Nero.” (Toby Zanin, Toronto, and Hugh Murray, Cobourg, Ontario)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Watching
-
As I continued my usual December ritual of catching up on award-season, statuette-hungry movies, I found myself at a showing of “Hamnet,” ready to weep. So many critics had promised that it would reduce me to tears, and I’m ever primed for such reduction. There’s a puddle under me at the end of any viewing of “Terms of Endearment.” I sob uncontrollably during “Jerry Maguire,” one of my favorite movies, when the football star played by Cuba Gooding Jr. is unconscious in the end zone. But “Hamnet” tried too hard, with too many close-ups of Jessie Buckley (as William Shakespeare’s wife) and Paul Mescal (as the Bard himself) and too much strenuous emoting from the both of them.
-
I was disappointed as well by “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” with Rose Byrne as an isolated, overburdened mother at wit’s end. Its punishing grimness is a kind of indulgence that’s redeemed somewhat by the satisfaction of seeing Byrne in the kind of meaty role she deserves. I’ve loved her since she played opposite Glenn Close in the television series “Damages” almost two decades ago, but her crazy productivity has often translated into stock roles in genre hokum such as the “Insidious” horror franchise. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is idiosyncratic indie fare — and it recently brought her best actress accolades from the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
-
So what pleasantly surprised me? “Sorry, Baby,” an emotionally resonant movie about trauma and its aftermath that was written and directed by Eva Victor, who is also its star (and who recently picked up a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a dramatic movie). Fair warning: “Sorry, Baby” moseys along for a while and frequently opts for silence over exposition, implication over incident. It’s a quiet, quiet movie that you may, depending on your taste or mood, find dull. But the dialogue that it does have is in an awkward, naturalistic, subtle and effective league of its own. And Victor keeps finding and tapping veins of gentle comedy beneath her tale’s surface.
On a Personal (and Quasi-Regan) Note
A friend who shall go unnamed, lest she be stripped of all dignity, remarked recently that she was behind schedule. With Christmas just weeks away, she had yet to put on her dog’s jingle-bells collar.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “You don’t really do that to her, do you?” I care about her dog. I don’t want the poor creature turned into a four-legged chime, her every movement announced with a seasonal racket.
“Oh, she likes it,” my friend insisted, and for a few seconds, she seemed to be convinced of that. Then she registered the disbelief on my face. “OK, I like it,” she said. Points for honesty, however belated.
The degree to which we pamper our pets and the money we lavish on them are well documented. Less frequently acknowledged is how little of that is about them and how much is about us. Don’t get me wrong: We’re entitled, to a point. We’re putting the roofs over their heads, the kibble in their tummies, the squeaky toys in their jaws. Some harmless payback is in order.
But let’s not fool ourselves about our motives. I bring Regan to a groomer every seven or so weeks because, yes, her teeth benefit from expert cleaning, her ears from careful swabbing, her nails from dexterous trimming. But the taming of her flyaway hairs, the fussing over her coat, the perfumed shampoo — I pay top dollar for all of that because of the pleasure it brings me. She emerges from the beauty parlor gleaming and aromatic.
I do, however, remove whatever colorful miniature scarf the groomer has tied around Regan’s neck. She’s not going to terrify the neighborhood squirrels — and Regan lives to terrify the neighborhood squirrels — looking like some canine Isadora Duncan. I draw the line at doggy accessories, doggy attire. No Halloween costumes for Regan. No special holiday collars.
And never, ever those faux antlers like the ones the Grinch affixes to his dog. They’d obstruct my kissing of the top of Regan’s head.
The post Trump’s Superlatives Are Bigger Than Yours appeared first on New York Times.
