Trump is a Piece of Shit, and This Disqualifies Him From Being President

LAST NIGHT, in the wake of the so-called #TrumpTapes, we caught up on some Colbert episodes from last week. There was the bespectacled late night host last Friday, riffing on Trump’s violating U.S. law by attempting to do business in Cuba. In a normal election, this alone would have hung the candidate. Unlike Hillary Clinton, and despite protestation to the contrary from the alt-right, The Donald had broken the law.

By last night, I’d forgotten all about it.

And that’s what boggles the mind about the reality star-cum-GOP-nominee: there are so many gaffes, it’s hard to keep track of them all. We’ve moved beyond his Cuban embargo violation. And his fat-shaming of one of the most beautiful women in the world. And his billion-dollar tax loss. And how he routinely created a hostile work environment on the set of The Apprentice by constantly saying inappropriate things about women. And the older charges, like how he routinely stiffs contractors, and how he isn’t actually a good businessman at all, and how he doesn’t give money to charity even though he claims to, and on and on.

I’ve read numerous articles attempting to classify which mental disorder he suffers from. Here is a less clinical, but more accurate, term: Trump is a piece of shit. After the TrumpTapes, his shit-piece-ness is incontrovertible. The mountain of malodorous evidence is as deep as it is steamy. Like a piece of shit, Trump attracts flies: Giuliani, Christie, Bannon, Ailes, Coulter.

Running for president is like going on the ultimate job interview, and it should be, because being president is the ultimate job. In human resources, there is something called a BFOQ, or bona fide occupational qualification. If you don’t have it, you can’t even be considered for the job. Running backs need to be able to run, truck drivers need to be able to drive, piano movers need to be able to lift heavy objects. A pre-requisite for the job of President of the United States is a functional moral compass. You have to be able to tell right from wrong, you have to have great empathy, and you use this BFOQ to make decisions that literally mean life and death for millions of human beings.

Lincoln during the Civil War and FDR during World War II are the exemplars of this quality, but every president, even the bad ones, has possessed it to some degree. George W. Bush believed that going to Iraq was the right thing to do in the wake of 9/11; in hindsight this appears dunderheaded, but both Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton agreed with his assessment at the time. The point is, Bush didn’t invade Iraq to promote a hotel he was building there, or some Bush-branded line of steaks. He had, and has, the moral and ethical capacity to make the decision. Even George W. Bush possesses some baseline amount of empathy.

Trump, however, has no such moral compass. The last six months have made clear that he is a mercenary animal who cares about nothing but his own enrichment. He wants more money, more pussy, more fame, more adulation. Empathy is foreign to him. Because he is not in possession of this BFOQ, he is disqualified from the job. Period, full stop. His policy ideas are moot. Even if he was a radical liberal whose views I completely agreed with, I would not want him in the White House. Because, again, he is a piece of shit.

Hillary Clinton is not perfect, and her husband is even less so. But no one can accuse her of lacking empathy (actually, plenty of people accuse her of this, but those people haven’t bothered to look beyond the alt-right attacking points and absorb her full biography), and the latter is not running for office. Plenty of people, regular working people, have told stories about Hillary helping him, caring about them. Where are these stories about The Donald?

On the tape, Trump brags about the supposed droigt de signieur that permits him to grab women by the “pussy.” Per Dana Bash at CNN, Trump didn’t think he did anything wrong in the TrumpTapes. His advisors had to sit him down and explain to him why contrition was compulsory.

This is only necessary when the candidate has no moral compass, and no empathy of his own.

When the candidate is a piece of shit.

When the candidate is Donald J. Trump.

GOP nominee Donald J. Trump, in happier times.

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Other notes from last night:

If Paul Ryan was truly “sickened” by the video, why does he not withdraw his endorsement? Why doesn’t John McCain, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the GOP? Isn’t the Republican party supposed to be about family values?

The Russians have hacked into the DNC servers, and now John Podesta’s emails. You know what they didn’t hack? Hillary’s private email server. Just sayin’.

If Hillary Clinton was really the criminal mastermind the alt-right portrays her to be, the mass murderer accumulating a Rambo-level body count, don’t you think Julian Assange would be floating in the Thames by now?

I read that the TrumpTapes came out because Access Hollywood was inspired by the AP story on Trump’s sexual harassment on the set of The Apprentice to dig into its archive. Kudos to my former employer.

That deposition given by Ivana Trump about her then-husband’s sexual violence towards her…can there be any doubt that this is true?

David Fahrenthold should be given the Pulitzer, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and a lifetime supply of Trump Vodka for killing it this year. He is a true American hero.

Ana Navarro is similarly awesome.

First Skittles, now Tic Tacs.