"Our Impossibly Small-Souled President".. a rightwing media carrying a negative Trump story
Our Impossibly Small-Souled President
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/our-impossibly-small-souled-president/
That leads us to Thursday, when Machado arrived with a gift for America’s (and, apparently, Venezuela’s) benevolent leader: her Nobel Peace Prize, which she of course insists properly belongs to him. Trump was happy to agree, posing with a broad grin next to his newest framed trinket. As far as people celebrating trophies they didn’t and never could win goes, it’s not quite like that time when Vladimir Putin stole Bob Kraft’s Super Bowl XXXIX ring — but it has that stench regardless. (Machado, clearly, knows how to “take one for the team.”)
Once again, there is nothing to be done about it except lament the unspeakably small-souled trashiness of our president,
a man who needs to be bribed and publicly flattered to maybe do the right thing. Spare me your defense of “She gave it to him! She even said he earned it!” Nobody is fooled by the pretense. Donald Trump took office in 2025; Machado has devoted her entire adult life to opposition to Chávez and Maduro, and her party won an overwhelming election long before he retook power. Trump earned this prize in the same way that he earned the addition of his name to the Kennedy Center: by being vain enough to demand it beyond all reason.
Machado should not have had to debase herself — but that is the price of international politics in the Trump era. (Middle Eastern oil magnates instead bribe him with resort concessions and airplanes.) I refuse to judge her for bending to the obscenely vainglorious pretenses of a man who holds all the military and diplomatic cards, and is happy to show his hand to the world.
I instead judge the man himself. Even if Machado saw fit to “give” her prize to the president, any president worthy of the name would have been the big enough man — to say nothing of international diplomat — to politely reject the offer, and in so doing bank goodwill from the gesture. Not our president. Trump doesn’t care about diplomatic goodwill; he wants things. So instead, his administration has announced that Trump will keep the Nobel Peace Prize — eagerly pocketing another shiny bauble to add to his trophy case. Don’t be surprised if he breaks the medal out from behind its framed protective glass to wear to next month’s State of the Union.
This is a low.
= new reply since forum marked as read
