January 24, 2025

A Man Among Men: Keeping ScOR #2

January 24, 2025

I was planning to write about something else this month, but then I came across this piece in the New York Times featuring a dozen men who voted in November for Donald J. Trump. A pair of reporters interviewed the men, focus-group-style, in an attempt to probe the place of men and masculinity in Trump’s America. I braced myself and read it as though from behind my hands, peering between fingers.

One of the men, 60-year-old Andy, a white Republican from New York, called Trump a “man’s man,” and not only that, a “true gentleman.” Rich, a Latino Democrat, said of Trump, “That’s a dude.”  

All right, then. Let’s discuss. Is Trump a “man’s man?” Never mind, I retract the question. The phrase “a man’s man” is problematic for multiple reasons, one being that it can mean wildly different things depending on the beholder. Which man’s man? To some guys, a man’s man is another guy who will talk sports with you. To a sexual predator, a man’s man is a fellow rapist. See: Jeffrey Epstein and his pals — Trump included. Such camaraderie among those fellas! On the other hand, how would (Mr.) Fred Rogers or the Dalai Lama describe a “man’s man”? 

So, forget it. Let’s take on a different, more important question: Is Donald Trump a good man?

You can guess my opinion. But the question is worth exploring, I think, for the simple reason that 49.8% of U.S. voters, 77 million American men and women, concluded that Trump is a good man – or, in any case, a good enough man to be, of all things, president of the United States. (55% of male voters chose Trump, according to exit polls – 60% of white men, 54% of Latinos, and 21% of Black men. The majority of women voted for Kamala Harris — 53% overall — though Trump won among white women, 53-46%.)

Another reason to ponder Trump and his relationship to good-manhood is that his second election has brought with it a major vibe shift, or so we’re told, and the ascendancy of Trumpian manliness is surely part of this zeitgeist. “The election was close, but the vibes have been a rout,” as Ezra Klein put it. “Defiance is out, deference is in,” declared the headline over a Peter Baker analysis in the New York Times. It’s Trump’s world now, we all just live in it.

The new president and his supporters want you to know that, despite his historically narrow victory, he’ll be remaking America and some things are just over — including the rule of law, diversity and equity initiatives, kindness to asylum-seekers and other people in need, and all efforts to limit climate chaos. (Windmills, EVs and the Paris Agreement are so yesterday.)

What’s in, on the other hand? Autocracy. Blood-and-soil nativism. 19^th century-style imperial expansion. Oh, and brazen conflicts of interest and outright presidential grifting (see: Trump bibles and memecoins).

Also in: masculinity, as understood by Trump and his followers.

Immediately after the election, some young men on social media took up the transgressive slogan, “Your body, my choice,” as if Trump’s victory signaled the end of #MeToo, and even sexual consent, once and for all.

A week before the inauguration, Mark Zuckerberg sat with Joe Rogan to opine that “Masculine energy, I think, is good.” Zuck offered that things have become “culturally neutered” inside the business world, even though corporate America and, especially, Silicon Valley, are still overwhelmingly male dominated. Enough with the “feminized culture,” baby. Masculinity, toxic or otherwise, is back.

Before we get to the question I’ve posed, a disclaimer: No, I do not believe that being a good man is distinct from being a good person of any gender. But we live in a patriarchal culture where gender is traditionally freighted with deep meaning, and lots of people, especially men, carry strong associations with the notion of a “good man.” So, for our purposes here, let’s go ahead and frame the question of Trump’s goodness in the kind of language long used to describe admirable dudes, using criteria that most of Trump’s supporters would presumably endorse. Some who loathe Trump like to attack his manliness based on superficial stuff – the orange makeup, the sprayed pompadour, the being too tender to hold his inauguration outdoors on a chilly January day. But bigger questions of character matter much more.

What then are some traits that we associate with “good men” — and does Trump possess them?

A good man is honest, a person of integrity, a stand-up guy.

Trump has built a lifelong record as a shady businessman who’s stiffed countless contractors and lenders. He’s been adjudicated as a fraudster in both civil and criminal courts. He was convicted of 34 felonies for filing fraudulent business records (to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with a porn star lest her claims become public during the 2016 campaign). The only president to be impeached twice, Trump launched his political career by shouting a big lie — about Barack Obama’s birthplace — and never stopped making stuff up. During his first term, the Washington Post found, he averaged 21 false statements a day, more lies than waking hours in his days.

A good man respects and protects others, including (if not especially) women.

Would you trust Trump alone in a room with your daughter? He said publicly that he’d like to date his own, and casually agreed with Howard Stern when he called Ivanka, then 22, “voluptuous” and “a piece of ass.” A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million. Carroll is one of at least 26 women who’ve credibly accused him of sexual misconduct, from groping and unwanted kissing to rape. Trump frequently insults the looks and intelligence of high-profile women who oppose him and his politics, with his most demeaning attacks reserved for Black women. “A true gentleman,” indeed.

A good man is strong and brave.  

If praising “strong” dictators signified strength, and if inserting the words “strong” or “strongly” into sentences made a man strong, Trump would be the mightiest of men. But is there anyone in public life – I mean anyone, anywhere – with as fragile an ego as Donald John Trump? Every president receives relentless criticism. Only one has been compelled to lash back in childish social media posts while talking routinely of using the powers of his office to punish and even jail his critics.

Trump likes to literally hug the U.S. flag and talks incessantly about “our country,” but he passed on a chance to put his life on the line in one of its wars. He avoided the draft in 1968 thanks to a podiatrist, a tenant of Trump’s father, who gave Donald a bone spurs diagnosis as a “favor” to the Trump family, according to the doctor’s daughter. Trump disparaged those who made a different choice. During his first presidency he described U.S. servicemen who gave their lives in World War II as “suckers” and “losers,” said his then-Chief of Staff, John Kelly.

A good man is self-reliant.

Trump built an image as a self-made, super-rich, dealmaking businessman – after his father gave him more than $400 million. As for day-to-day self-sufficiency, that do-it-yourself spirit? One of the Trump voters in that Times article, 62-year-old Brett, a Black Democrat from California, was asked to describe a “man’s man.” It’s “somebody who’s not soft,” Brett said. “Change your own tire. Change your own oil. Put your own gas in your car.” If you think Trump has ever changed a tire I’ve got a story about a stolen election to sell you. And yet Brett uttered the above in a conversation about why he and most American men voted for Trump. Brett himself seemed to catch the disconnect, quickly adding that Trump was his lesser-of-two-evils choice — “because Kamala Harris would have been horrible.”

A good man plays fair. He’s a good sport, gracious in victory and defeat.

You know where I’m going with this: Trump cheats at golf. Just kidding — though reportedly he does. More importantly, Donald Trump lost an election but would not, could not, accept that result. He didn’t just incite a riot on January 6th and do nothing to stop it for hours; he did much more. After he lost, Trump and his allies launched a calculated, multifaceted, almost certainly criminal effort to steal back the presidency. Four years later, he pardoned almost everyone convicted of breaking the law on January 6, including people who brutally assaulted police officers. This gave away the game, settling the question of whether Trump himself believed the insurrectionists were acting on his behalf. To this day it’s clear that anyone who wants to work for him is required to coddle his ego and his lie — witness the craven behavior of his second-term appointees when asked who won the 2020 election. Trump seems pathologically unwilling to admit defeat or failure in any way. This too of course is a sign of profound — dare we say manly — strength of character.

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The obvious rebuttal to all this is that, you know, “we elect a president, not a pope.” True enough. Many U.S. presidents have been scoundrels of various types. The vast majority were racist and sexist. Given America’s two-party system, most of us enter the voting booth to cast a ballot for one of two candidates, often without admiring either one. We tend to vote for a party more than an individual. A vote is a pragmatic choice, not a full-throated endorsement of anyone’s character.

And yet. No other president tried to overthrow the bedrock principles of democratic governance: the will of the people and the peaceful transfer of power. Only Trump tipped over the table when the game didn’t go his way. As that kind of scoundrel, Trump stands alone in U.S. history. If his catastrophic attempt to overturn the 2020 election did not forever disqualify him for elected office, then nothing could. Trump’s actions were far worse than shooting someone on 5^th Avenue — and not only because they led to more than one death on January 6th. He tried to shoot American democracy in the head.

I know that to many of my readers, this is all so obvious as to not need saying. So why take the trouble to say it? In the face of a deluge of nonsense and lies from the Trump camp and an acquiescent news media, one essential task is to keep saying what’s true, day after day. After Elon Musk threw up that fascist salute, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video saying that, just to be clear, she’s “still not rocking with anyone sympathetic to Nazis.” This too should be a given but considering the times, said AOC, “it’s very important for us to assert these things.”

Americans have often been lied to, and we’ve lied to ourselves a whole lot, for centuries. But now we’ve entered a newly dystopic era in which falsehoods rain down on the daily. One of the untruths that’s hardest to stomach is the notion – underlying every word of Dear Leader praise – that Donald Trump is a good and decent man, even an exceptionally admirable one. There are reasons he turned out as he did — a petty, thin-skinned, bigoted, un-self-aware, cartoonishly dishonest narcissist. As a damaged human being he’s genuinely to be pitied. But black is not white, up is not down, fascism didn’t suddenly become cool. And the fact that millions of Americans go around pretending Trump is a virtuous man — even a great one, or one sent by God — does not make it so.

There’s never been an emperor more naked, or one more prone to showing his ass, yet here we are. We made this bed – well, half the country made it for us. We all have to lie in it, but we can still speak the truth.  

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While we’re talking gender: Trump declared in his inaugural speech that it is henceforth the policy of the U.S. government that “there are only two genders, male and female.” Since the 47th president claims the power to issue decrees about nature, what’s next? The sun revolves around the earth after all because Donald likes that story better?

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If you haven’t listened to our Season 3 series on patriarchy, MEN, with co-host Celeste Headlee, well, go get it.

Scene on Radio the podcast is available wherever you get your shows, and at sceneonradio.org.