Donald Trump's Glittering Galaxy of Garbage Stars

Donald Trump is not on Twitter OR Facebook these days, something he really seems to be taking in stride. So when he wants to communicate with the outside world he has taken to releasing bite-sized communiques, press releases written in the breathless, hyperbolic, just-a-crazed-narcissist-gabbing-with-his-worshippers tone of his tweets. 

In a missive that was unhinged and revealing even by Trump standards, he recently vomited forth the following Statement from Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America:

Omarosa posing with a wax figure of Donald Trump. Or possibly Donald Trump himself.

“Nobody had ever heard of some of these people that worked for me in D.C. All of a sudden, the Fake News starts calling them. Some of them—by no means all—feel emboldened, brave, and for the first time in their lives, they feel like “something special” and not the losers they are—and they talk, talk, talk!

Many say I am the greatest star-maker of all-time. But some of the stars I produced are actually made of garbage.”   

Trump’s delusional exercise in self-mythologizing and petty bitterness runs a mere two paragraphs and eighty-three words, but there’s nevertheless an awful lot to unpack. 

The first paragraph reflects Trump’s delusional sense of himself as someone who made a point of hiring people he knew were stupid and incompetent and disloyal and would do a terrible job but that he took pity on nonetheless because his biggest fault, his only real fault, is that he’s just too goddamn nice, and because he’s such a world-class mensch, he gives opportunities to fantastically unqualified people. 

He’s like those job applicants who disingenuously insist that their biggest weakness is working too hard and caring too much, only in this case the meanest, nastiest, pettiest man ever to hold the presidency pretends that his only real fault is being too generous in giving jobs and power to the patently unworthy. 

I’m also struck by Trump’s curious assertion that the folks THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES gave jobs of great power and responsibility never felt “special” in the least until a New York Times reporter gave them a ring and asked for hot gossip about the star of Ghosts Can’t Do It. 

Didn’t getting a job in the Trump administration make these disloyal goons feel at least a little bit important and special? 

Apparently not! They all needed to be an off-the-record source for Michael Wolff in order to feel like their lives weren’t a complete waste.

“The assholes I gave important jobs never felt worthy or significant until the press asked them about me” is quite the self-own but it’s nothing compared to the distinctly Trumpian combination of self-aggrandizement, self-pity and insanity found in the second paragraph. 

When Trump insists, “Many say” or “Many people are saying” what he really means is, “In my unfettered arrogance, I believe…” 

NOBODY but nobody, is saying that Donald Trump is the single greatest star-maker of all-time. The average episode of The Gong Show, in any incarnation, boasts a more impressive roster of “stars” than either the Trump administration or The Apprentice. 

As for The Celebrity Apprentice, those people were all stars before they ever went on the show. That’s where the “Celebrity” part of the title came from. I’m hard-pressed to think of even a single “star” that emerged from The Apprentice during its lengthy run with the exception of Omarosa, who did double duty as a “star” of the Trump administration and then one of those turncoats Trump despises. 

Lorne Michaels? That dude is star-maker. The same is true of the casting directors for American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, Scott Pilgrim Versus the World and Freaks and Geeks.

Trump, in sharp contrast, has presided over a sorry assemblage of desperate, unethical no-hopers, has-beens and lunatics. Who are the “stars” that Trump has created? Diamond and Silk? The Mooch? Sean Spicer? John Bolton? The MyPillow Guy? The toxic twosome of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz? 

Trump is right in that the “stars” he created are, in fact, pure garbage, but that’s not because they turned on their big-hearted, Christ-like “star-maker” but rather because they were willing, even eager, to work with a monster like Trump in the first place. 

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