This Is Just Who Trump Is

What motivates President Trump?

Not what motivates Trumpism, whatever that is. Not what motivates his MAGA supporters. Not what motivates the infrequent and marginal voters who delivered him his victories in 2016 and 2024.

No. What specifically motivates Donald J. Trump? What brought him into national politics? What drives him as a national political figure?

His allies say a love of country, but this is betrayed by his indifference to the nation’s ideals, traditions and symbols. It is unclear whether Trump has even read the Constitution, and there’s no evidence that he understands its history and significance to the nation he leads. (It would be unfair to ask whether he’s read the Declaration of Independence — we all know he hasn’t.)

The best way to understand the president’s motivations is to find him at his most unfiltered, which is to say, on social media, late at night. And Thursday night, Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account that depicted President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. The clip, which runs for roughly a minute and shows the Obamas at the end, is set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

I try to avoid superlatives in my writing, but there is simply no question that this is the most flagrant display of presidential racism since Woodrow Wilson screened D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” in the White House in 1915. And for a sense of the racism of Griffith’s film, recall that it both reinvigorated the Ku Klux Klan and gave the organization its modern iconography.

I doubt that Trump’s video — less a creative product than half-baked agitprop — will have the same effect. But it carries many of the same messages. It uses an old white supremacist trope to denigrate the Obamas and, by extension, every American who shares their racial background. It presents people of African descent as little removed from beasts, an insult used to great effect in “The Birth of a Nation,” as you can see in this clip from the film.

Initially, the White House defended the video as a joke. “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But then Republicans began to speak out. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate and the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, posted online.

Representative Mike Lawler, an otherwise stalwart Trump ally, said the video was “wrong and incredibly offensive.” Representative Michael Turner of Ohio decried the “racist images” as “offensive, heart breaking and unacceptable.”

Here, I should probably note that Barack and Michelle Obama are among the most popular political figures in the United States. Trump, on the other hand, is barely treading water with the public, and majorities of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. It makes sense, then, that some Republicans would use this as an opportunity to distance themselves from an unpopular incumbent.

Let’s walk back to where we started. What motivates Trump? The answer is simple: racism. You might also say ego and raw self-interest, but the two are connected. Racism, among other things, is a kind of chauvinism, a belief in one’s inherent superiority, based on nothing other than a meaningless accident of birth. It’s an ideology that papers over feelings of inadequacy, that tells you that — no matter what you have or have not accomplished in your life — you’re still better than someone, some group.

Let’s suppose you’re the spoiled son of a self-made man. Let’s suppose that, despite your flash and bravado, you’ve failed at virtually everything you’ve tried. You’re the laughingstock of polite society, a punchline for the privileged. You think you’re superior enough to be the president of the United States — the highest honor in your country — but the actual president is a man of humble origins, a minority of the kind your family didn’t even rent to when you were in the landlord business. And he is claiming power that rightfully belongs to you. He’s even mocking you, ridiculing you for all the world to see.

For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career — from his embrace of birtherism to his hatred of birthright citizenship — cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism.

Trump is not profound. He has been the same person this whole time. The question is why so many others have refused to see what he has never bothered to hide.

What I Wrote

I was complaining to a friend, recently, that I spend a lot of time writing about Trump. It is obviously unavoidable — he is a singular political force — but it gets old. And yet here we are! In any case, I wrote about the ways that the president has rejected his responsibility to the whole country in favor of governing for a select few.

A hallmark of the president’s language since he stepped onto the national political stage is that some Americans are just a little more American than others, and that this is a function of race, nationality and, above all, allegiance to Trump.

And as usual I joined my colleagues Michelle Cottle and David French on an episode of The Opinions.

Now Reading

Ashley Parker for The Atlantic on this week’s layoffs at The Washington Post.

Jack Goldsmith on the judiciary’s resistance to Trump, for the Executive Functions newsletter.

Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker, on what resistance to ICE the 21st century has in common with resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in the 19th.

Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach in Boston Review, on how not to defeat authoritarianism.

Jeet Heer in The Nation, on the rot at the center of the ruling class.

Photo of the Week

I took this photo about six years ago during a trip to Oklahoma. I’ve only shared a few pictures from the excursion, but I am happy with the work I did. Here is one example, from a small town whose name I no longer remember.

Now Eating: Pizza With Caramelized Onions, Ricotta and Chard

We did a pizza night last weekend. I made the standard pies for the kids — plain and pepperoni — and I made this one for my wife and me. It takes a little effort — caramelizing onions is a pain — but the results are terrific. You can replace the chard with spinach if you prefer. Recipe from New York Times Cooking.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• 1 ¼ pounds onions, sliced

• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

• 2 garlic cloves, minced

• Salt

• freshly ground pepper

• ½ pound chard, stemmed, leaves washed

• 1 14-inch pizza crust (½ batch pizza dough)

• ¾ cup ricotta (6 ounces)

• 2 ounces Parmesan, grated ½ cup, tightly packed

• 1 egg yolk

Directions

Thirty minutes before baking the pizza, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet. Add the onions. Cook, stirring often, until tender and just beginning to color, about 10 minutes. Add the thyme, garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Turn the heat to low, cover and cook another 10 to 20 minutes, stirring often, until the onions are golden brown and very sweet and soft. Remove from the heat.

While the onions are cooking, stem and wash the chard leaves, and bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Fill a medium bowl with ice water. When the water comes to a boil, salt generously and add the chard. Blanch for one to two minutes, just until the leaves are tender, and transfer to the ice water. Drain and squeeze out excess water. Alternatively, steam the chard for two to three minutes until wilted, and rinse with cold water. Chop the chard medium-fine.

Roll out the dough, oil a 14-inch pizza pan and dust with cornmeal or semolina. Place the dough on the pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the ricotta, egg yolk, Parmesan and chard. Spread over the pizza dough in an even layer, leaving a 1-inch border around the rim. Spread the onions over the ricotta mixture.

Place in the hot oven, and bake 10 to 15 minutes until the crust and bits of the onion are nicely browned. Remove from the heat, and serve hot or warm.

The post This Is Just Who Trump Is appeared first on New York Times.