From the beginning of his presidential run, Donald Trump was a controversial candidate who sold, in the immortal words of H.L. Mencken (and later Daniel Patrick Moynihan), “boob bait” to his supporters. There was his pledge to get Mexico to pay for a wall on the USA-Mexico border. There was his insistence that “trade wars were easy”. There were the pledges to rebuild American manufacturing. And there were always the attacks on immigrants, which were often rhetorically directed at illegal immigrants but in practice applied to all immigrants. Trump sold all of this snake oil with the understanding that only he could accomplish all of these goals, although, like the best religious stories, the means through which he would accomplish these miracles had to remain between him and his God.
And his supporters believed. Oh, did they ever believe. Some of them sold themselves on a fantasy version of D.C. run by . . . child pornographers. Everybody hates child pornography, right? Well, if you weren’t 100% behind Trump, you were guilty of supporting child pornography. The stories would have been pathetic if they hadn’t had tragic real-world consequences. And then came the 2020 election, which ended with Trump being escorted out of D.C. (before Joe Biden’s inauguration) despite his desire to steal retain the presidency notwithstanding the election (which we’ll discuss later).
Once he was out of office, it quickly became clear that Trump’s appetite for the spotlight hadn’t lessened one iota. This led some people to refer to him similar to J.K. Rowling’s epithet for Lord Voldemort: “he who must not be named”. Yet the reason people in Rowling’s stories did that was because they were afraid of Voldemort, and no one was really afraid of Trump. Afraid of the damage that he could do to America in a second term? Yes. But afraid of Trump himself? And that led pundits to start seeking a somewhat-derogatory nickname for this continued presence in public life.
Long before Trump’s presidential campaigns, back in 1988, the satiric writer Graydon Carter (who later spend 15 years as the editor of Vanity Fair) had dubbed Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian”. Trump hated the characterization, for perhaps obvious reasons from a man on his third marriage (short fingers, short . . .). But the derogatory characterization always had an element of elitism to it as well, since Trump was in part being derided for being from Queens instead of being a Manhattan urbanite. Why glamorize such elitism?
In another political discussion group unlucky enough to have me participating, two of the members started using the term “TFG” to refer to Trump. TFG stands for “The Former Guy” — or, in other words, the ex-president. After trying a number of other alternatives (“Donny from Queens”, “Orange Cheeto”, etc.), here at Salida we’ve settled on TFG as being inoffensive, clear, and still non-promotional about someone who loves to see his name in the news while spreading chaos wherever he goes.
So if you wonder “why TFG?”, that’s why.
I enjoy your comments. I think of Trump as a strange mixture of a genius and a fool. The truly effective comments and positions he takes comes straight from his Id. He has an amazing lack of knowledge which he hides brilliantly. Trump doesn't worry me, except perhaps his getting elected again. What does worry me, is the 74 million people who voted for him.
I simply can't believe that that many people can listen to him for 4+ years, and not realize what they are seeing. I heard many pundits and experts expound on Trump; I get it. Yet, I've heard little or no professional discussion explaining the hold he has on so many Americans. That is the question we really need to understand.
Yes, I too, have had three friends unfriend me.