The Problem is Trump as President of the United States

To email questions by The New Yorker’s Judith Thurman, Philip Roth, the author of “The Plot Against America,” said, “It isn’t Trump as a character, a human type—the real-estate type, the callow and callous killer capitalist—that outstrips the imagination. It is Trump as President of the United States.”

And, I might add, “It is Trump as President of the United Sates” who believes he can use “alternative fact” and “truthful hyperbole” to con America. Providing facts does not make it easy to deceive or trick someone.

“I was born in 1933,” [Roth] continued, “the year that F.D.R. was inaugurated. He was President until I was twelve years old. I’ve been a Roosevelt Democrat ever since. I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Thurman’s column is worth a read.

PHILIP ROTH E-MAILS ON TRUMP

 By Judith Thurman