In reading Donald Trump’s rant on the anonymous freak who wrote in the NY Times that, yes, Donald Trump is a raving loon, but no need to take any extreme measures like electing Democrats, because the people supposedly working for him have everything under control, I was reminded of a weird tic that Trump has that I’ve never seen remarked upon. It’s in this line:
“We have somebody in what I call the failing New York Times talking about he’s part of the resistance within the Trump administration. This is what we have to deal with,” he told reporters in the East Room early Wednesday evening.
Now, if you’re trying to insult someone, you say, “He’s an idiot.” You don’t say, “He’s what I call an idiot.” Calling attention to the fact that this is merely your private designation saps the force of the insult.
Trump is enormously proud of his ability to brand people with epithets (even if no one else actually uses them). So proud, that he needs to call attention to his invention at every opportunity, even against the objective of the epithets. One of the many ways that he acts like a toddler (or a Hollywood producer). “Look Mama, I made it self!”
I imagine a version of the Odyssey featuring Homer’s trademarked characters “what I call grey-eyed Athena” and “Odysseus, or as I call him, ‘sacker of cities'”.
Common Infirmities 