These Bullies are Crybabies (Unsurprisingly)

Three months ago today, I began my Dorf on Law column with this observation: "One of the laments that I have seen more and more in the Trump II era is some variation on this rhetorical question: 'How is this not the only thing that we are talking about?'"  I then argued that the militarized attack by ICE agents on a Chicago apartment building and its residents, which included the zip-tying of elderly citizens and children (with one witness saying that an agent said, "f*** them kids"), was the only thing that anyone should have been talking about.

That incident remains one of the most shocking stories in a year filled with jaw-dropping evil, but I must sadly report that it is no longer the one thing that everyone should be talking about.  As everyone reading this column surely knows, the new occupant at the top of the list of malevolence is the cold-blooded murder of a young woman in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, two days ago.

Unfortunately, even though I believe that this is what everyone should be talking about, I am barely able to talk about it -- or even think about it -- without breaking down.  Fortunately, unlike the Chicago apartment raid, it does indeed seem that everyone else is talking about this.

To save whatever might remain of my own sanity, I will focus in this relatively short week-ending column on the Trumpists' response to the murder, putting it into perspective as yet another example of how bullies react to any resistance to their bullying by crying about how unfair other people are being to them.  While holding a kid upside down on the playground to shake the money out of his pockets, they scream that he is being mean to them when he flails and tries to fight back.  Except, of course, unlike on that playground, the stakes are now literally life and death.

I make no claim to being the first to make this point. It is simply too obvious not to be noticed, and many have already commented on it. A few minutes ago, my online search for "trump bullies crybabies" turned up an article from mid-2016 titled "The Cry-Bully," by someone named Joe Keohane. Toward the end of the piece, Keohane summarizes his point nicely:

Despite all its warrior posturing and claims to indomitable strength and fortitude, ... there’s just one name for it: @realDonaldTrump is a cry-bully. Abusive, needy, sulky and thin-skinned. In reflexively retweeting ugly and factually baseless tweets that dovetail with its beliefs, it stands as a living, breathing object lesson on the perils of confirmation bias. While promising to “make better deals” for America, it fails to convince on any points other than its profound weakness for flattery and utter inability to take criticism. It doesn’t so much say what it believes as it does say whatever pops into its head. That’s not political incorrectness; it’s just a plain old-fashioned lack of restraint.

Again, that article was written almost ten years ago, just as Trump was wrapping up the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Back then, it was still possible to laugh it all off, comfortable in what seemed to be the certainty of an epic thumping that Trump and his new enablers would suffer in the general election.  And whereas Keohane was writing about Trump's social media personality, we now know that he is no mere rhetorical bully.  He is showing himself to be increasingly willing to inflict any amount of pain on his perceived enemies, including causing (and even celebrating) the deaths of innocents with nothing resembling legal process.

Even so, it is impossible not to remark upon the continued effort by Trump and his supporters to claim at every opportunity that "We're the real victims here!"  In short order, the Trump team leapt into action, asserting that Good was a "domestic terrorist" who tried to run down federal officers with her car.  This is all a lie, as video evidence makes clear, but they repeat the lie nonetheless.  Then, when the possibility arose that their tough-guy-gone-horribly-wrong policies might get them in trouble, they pushed out the Minnesota law enforcement agency that might have been able to bring real justice.  "You can't investigate me, you meanies.  I'm afraid you'll do something to me that I don't like."

Here are just a few more examples of variations on this crybabying behavior from the bullies:

-- When Trump went to the UN in New York last Fall and an escalator stopped working, Trump claimed "sabotage" by some unknown nefarious forces (even though it was soon reported that the incident was the fault of someone in the US delegation).  Trump insisted that this was all "sinister," and he even claimed -- again contrary to clear video evidence -- that the escalator "stopped on a dime" and that he and his wife were lucky not to have "fall[en] forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first."  And this was all in service of a speech that Trump delivered to foreign dignitaries in which he insulted them and lied to their faces.

-- An under-reported incident a few months ago saw Katie Miller, the wife of Trump lieutenant Stephen Miller and an active troll in her own right, participate in a "debate" on Piers Morgan's show, discussing Islamophobic attacks on now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani.  Responding to liberal commentator Cenk Uygur, a naturalized US citizen who was born in Turkey, the other Miller warned that Uygur "better check your citizenship application and hope that everything was legal and correct," suggesting that his citizenship could be revoked.

    But the crybaby-bully aspect of her appearance was most obvious in her response to Uygur calling her a liar.  She offered up this nonsense: "Piers, quite frankly, I’m really sick and tired of this racist bigoted rhetoric that can comes from people like you against my husband, against my family and my children."  To his credit, Uygur was quick on his feet and immediately retorted: "Who brought your children into this?  What a weirdo."  It truly is amazing to see someone directly threaten a person and then cry that anything he says is racist bigotry that is somehow aimed at her children.  Weirdo, indeed.

-- Finally, we have the almost bland but somehow also astonishing example of the Trump-installed president of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, who responded in horror to the drummer Chuck Redd's cancellation of his show in protest of Trump's attempt to add his name to that cultural institution.  Threatening to sue Redd for one million dollars, Grenell wrote with no apparent sense of irony that the cancellation was a "political stunt," adding: "Your decision to withdraw at the last moment – explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure – is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution."  One of Grenell's vice president's issued an additional statement, claiming that "[a]ny artist cancelling their show at the Trump Kennedy Center over political differences isn’t courageous or principled — they are selfish [and] intolerant."

Yes, the forces of intolerance have their feelings hurt when people respond to that intolerance, and they say that "I'm rubber and you're glue."  Any criticism is met with wailing and accusations that their detractors are the true monsters.  This is all deeply tragic, but it tells us what we have always known: People who talk big are profoundly insecure, and they flip out when they are met with even the smallest amount of defiance.  Even controlling the levers of power and getting away with lawless behavior (including getting away with murder) cannot satisfy their neediness.  It is not enough to dominate people.  People also have to be happy about being dominated, or the tears will start to flow. 

- Neil H. Buchanan