{"id":757,"date":"2026-07-31T14:13:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=757"},"modified":"2026-07-31T14:13:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:13:43","slug":"trump-speaks-like-a-thug-because-he-wants-to-rule-like-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=757","title":{"rendered":"Trump Speaks Like a Thug Because He Wants to Rule Like One"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In 2015, my editors at the Nation <\/em>first set me on the task of covering Donald Trump by asking me to write about his coarse, mobster-like use of the English language. In the years since, Trump-speak has continued to fascinate\u2014and horrify\u2014me.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Lethal Ad-Libbing in Iraq Enters Its Most Dangerous Phase<\/a><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, two weeks into the renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran, Trump announced on Fox News that \u201cwe\u2019re going to beat the fucking shit out of them. We\u2019ll be hitting them hard. They\u2019re going to get a beating.\u201d In the past, such a tirade would have at least been termed \u201cunpresidential\u201d; quite likely, it would have triggered calls for the president\u2019s resignation. Of course, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and countless other senior political figures swore like sailors, but they did so in private, understanding that democratic political systems are sustained, in part, by the illusion of civility. Trump deliberately dispenses with that illusion. There\u2019s a swagger to how he communicates that is intended to project a murderous, unstoppable intent. His speech is similar to how the erstwhile Filipino strongman leader Rodrigo Duterte talked of meting out violence to his enemies and to street criminals while in office or to how Jair Bolsonaro addressed his supporters in Brazil.<\/p>\n

In the Oval Office, on the same day that Trump pledged to beat the fucking shit out of the Iranians, the madman-in-chief told a gathering of journalists who were questioning him about Iran\u2019s latest attacks on US military facilities in the region, \u201cThey\u2019ve already apologized, but you know we gotta smack them a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the language of high-stakes foreign-policy decision-making; it is a crude, brutal way of talking that Trump thinkswill convey toughness. It\u2019s a simulacrum of the strong man, a fantasy woven in Trump\u2019s brain to present an image of indomitability. It\u2019s the language of the made man in a mafia movie explaining how you gotta soften people up, rough them up just enough to make them pay for protection or pony up their late rent or do whatever favor the Godfather has asked you to do.<\/p>\n

I can practically hear Marlon Brando\u2019s Don Corleone saying with a combination of menace and self-pity, \u201cYou don\u2019t ask with respect. You don\u2019t offer friendship. You don\u2019t even think to call me Godfather.\u201d Except Brando was a first-rate actor; Trump is as third-rate as you get, and in his dotage, he is getting more third rate by the minute. As his tired and desperately boring performance at the recent White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner showed\u2014do we really want a commander-in-chief who thinks the funniest thing in the world is to make fat jokes about his political opponents?\u2014he\u2019s become little more than an aging Catskills\u2019 performer, seeking just one more chance to win the adulation of an audience. The thing is, no one is buying it anymore. Witness the reaction of the Alabama Daily News<\/em>, which tends to cater to a conservative, business-friendly audience in the Deep South\u2014the sort of people who have voted for Trump and MAGA candidates in every election cycle since 2016. As Trump launched into a series of bizarre personal attacks on CNN\u2019s <\/em>Kaitlan Collins (a onetime Alabama native) that were supposed to amuse the captive members of the news media, the newspaper reported, \u201cThere was no laughter or any sound from the audience.\u201d His jabs had fallen flat, and his punchlines were met with crickets.<\/p>\n

For a man as needy as Trump, the silence must have been brutal. Like all authoritarians, Trump insists that he knows best about everything, be it humor\u2014if he says something\u2019s funny, then goddammit it must be funny\u2014 be it war, or be it culture.<\/p>\n

Read more America\u2019s Crisis of \u201cDeath by Incarceration\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Take his shamelessly fascist efforts to try to intimidate the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of American History into toeing the MAGA party line. Last week, after months of failed attempts to bend the museum to his will, Trump signed an executive order mandating that the National Park Service put up warning signs and alternative exhibits in public areas surrounding the museum, informing visitors that the museum\u2019s exhibits were \u201cinaccurate\u201d and that the museum has \u201cfailed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.\u201d\u00a0More generally, the warnings were designed to let visitors know about \u201cthe ideological capture\u201d of the museum by a bunch of anti-American lefty lunatics. By doing so, Trump is posing as an all-knowing historian; just as during the World Cup, he became the all-knowing arbiter of soccer fouls.<\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t familiar with the Nazis\u2019 clampdown on \u201cdegenerate art,\u201d I suggest that you read up on it. I suggest, too, that you study how Joseph Stalin used the cult of the personality around his leadership to attack\u2014and ultimately to have imprisoned or killed\u2014artists, musicians, writers, and other cultural figures whose work, and whose understanding of the Soviet Union, he disapproved of.<\/p>\n

Trump and his enablers know that time is running out on their odious project. For months, the public has soured on every signature policy they have put forward, and the latest poll numbers regarding Trump\u2019s leadership are devastating: Just one in five Republican voters are \u201centhusiastic\u201d about his remaining years in office, and more than two-thirds of US voters polled are fearful or pessimistic about the country\u2019s future so long as Trump remains in power. With inflation surging again, the Iran war intensifying, ICE agents going on a killing spree, and public health crises such as the Cyclospora outbreak escalating, those numbers aren\u2019t going to get better any time soon.<\/p>\n

Yet, the more the public turns against this vicious political movement, the more extreme Trumpism becomes. The KKKer Fred Trump taught his son that thuggery is the way of the world, that compromise and an admission of fault signify only weakness. And so no matter how distasteful most Americans find his schtick,Trump will work ceaselessly to shore up his thug credentials, nominate more extreme people for senior government rolls, and push more extremist policies via executive order.He will always, always, always go on the attack.And if the public doesn\u2019t buy what he\u2019s selling anymore, well that\u2019s clearly the public\u2019s fault. It\u2019s a G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerungphilosophy that threatens to bring the house down not only on his regime but on the American democratic experiment. <\/p>\n

Read more Abdul El-Sayed Knows Just How to Beat Billionaire-Funded Republicans<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-authoritarian-watch","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump Speaks Like a Thug Because He Wants to Rule Like One - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=757\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump Speaks Like a Thug Because He Wants to Rule Like One - Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Nation Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=757\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-31T14:13:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\"},\"headline\":\"Trump Speaks Like a Thug Because He Wants to Rule Like One\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-31T14:13:43+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757\"},\"wordCount\":1116,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/bb0758380aba2512cd45362b4c1349bf.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Authoritarian Watch\",\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=757\",\"name\":\"Trump Speaks Like a Thug Because He Wants to Rule Like One - 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