Donald the Dancer

There are many falsehoods that Trump supporters tell themselves and each other to try to deny the seemingly incontrovertible fact that their god is a sociopathic poster boy for Narcissist Personality Disorder. 

Trump supporters laughably but sincerely posit Trump as a true man of the people, a populist with an unusually powerful connection to the forgotten working man and woman of our great nation. 

Trump cultists similarly insist that Trump is a fundamentally honest straight shooter who is blunt and candid and, to use one of his favorite phrases, “politically incorrect” despite objectively speaking so many falsehoods that it’s damn near impossible to keep track of them all. 

But perhaps the most poignant and pathetic falsehood Trump die-hards tell themselves and the world is that Donald Trump is cool, that he’s a Thomas Crown-like figure of wealth, glamour and intrigue rather than a bloated, befuddled old man in an ill-fitting suit and comically long red necktie.  

It’s easy to see where Republicans might have gotten the deeply wrong impression that Trump is cool. Once upon a time Trump was a legitimately handsome man, and I write that as someone who despises him with every fiber of my being. 

In addition to being handsome, Trump was obscenely rich, or at least pretended to be. He was famous. He was ubiquitous in movies and television shows. Legendarily cool musicians like Prince referenced him in their songs. Trump had sex with actresses and Playboy Playmates and other world-class beauties. 

Yes, Trump has many qualities in common with genuinely cool people but there’s absolutely nothing remotely cool about him. He’s tacky and crass and vulgar and tries way too hard.

Trump is so desperately uncool that he made Kanye West infinitely less cool just by being associated with him. It’s as if Trump is a coolness vampire who made Kanye West and Lil Wayne 75 percent less cool just by taking pictures with them. 

Nowhere is Trump’s lack of coolness more pathetic or poignant than when he’s dancing awkwardly to the Village People at the end of his rallies. 

For a natural born entertainer who not only welcomes the spotlight but angrily demands it, Trump is an almost impressively awkward human being.  He never knows what to do with his hands so he invariably goes with a clammy gesture that combines pointing and giving the thumbs up. 

Trump similarly cannot smile without it looking creepy and artificial, a weird forced attempt at a genuine grin rather than the genuine article. When he doesn’t smile, Trump looks like a scowling  madman who has definitely either killed someone or been in the room when someone was killed. He has that in common with his good friend Vladimir Putin.

So it should not come as a surprise that Trump is the least natural dancer in the world, to the point that whenever I see him dancing my first thought is, “Why is he doing that? Doesn’t he realize how ridiculous he looks?”

There’s a revelatory passage in Art of the Deal where Trump brags that as an elementary school student, he was so enraged by a music teacher he felt was somehow lacking that he punched him in the face and knocked him out cold, and would have gotten expelled if his very rich daddy hadn’t intervened with a timely bribe. 

When I suffered through Trump’s big best-seller, the one that put him on the map culturally, I wondered why Trump would choose to include an anecdote that makes him look not just bad but psychotic, like a pampered bully who could get away with anything thanks to daddy’s deep pockets. 

Then I discovered that Tony Schwartz, the man who actually wrote The Art of the Deal, fucking hated Trump the way that I fucking hate Trump. So it’s likely that Schwartz included this story precisely because it reflects so terribly on the book’s ostensible author. 

It’s worth noting that this probably fictional story about a young Trump punching out his teacher because he disapproved of the way he taught music is literally the only time music comes up in The Art of the Deal. 

At no other point in Trump’s toxic ode to self does he say or do anything that would suggest that he’s passionate about music in the least, let alone that he cares about it so much that he’s willing to physically assault people over it. 

When Trump gyrates painfully to tacky, ubiquitous Bar Mitzvah and wedding staples like “YMCA” and “In the Navy” his total indifference to the entirety of music is achingly apparent. 

The Trump who boogies to the anthems of the Village People is the farthest thing from cool. He’s not hip. He’s someone’s dorky grampa who does not seem to realize that the overall message of pretty much ever Village People song is that gay sex is great, and that you should have as much of it as possible, and never feel ashamed of your love of gay sex. 

I happen to think that’s a great, empowering message. But it sure as shit is not the message of Donald Trump or the MAGA movement. 

Trump has no emotional or spiritual connection to the music he’s dancing to. He’s dancing because the crowd apparently likes it and he is forever attuned to the needs and desires of his audience. 

The only time I ever find Trump remotely appealing is when he’s dancing. There’s something about the clumsiness of it that renders him incongruously vulnerable and human. He’s a hypnotically terrible dancer but he’s trying at least. As loathsome as pretty much everything about Trump might be, there's something weirdly endearing about him when he dances so badly that it becomes impossible to see him as anything other than the deeply un-cool doofus he is now and has probably always been. 

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Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of  THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here