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Trump and His Team Have ‘Fetishized’ Bragging: Columnist
A New York Times opinion columnist is taking President Donald Trump and his team to task for what he described as having not only “normalized bragging,” but “fetishized it.”
“It’s a naughtiness they allow themselves, a perk they accord themselves, a rite by which they identify themselves to one another as birds of a feather — peacocks, in this case,” observed Frank Bruni. “It’s a competition: My superlatives are bigger than yours.”
Declaring that “Trump and his team exuberantly violate just about every precept of character that I was ever taught, and so it goes with moderation and humility,” Bruni reported on Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent comments.
READ MORE: Forecaster Reveals ‘Massive Shift’ in Party Americans Trust
“It has been a historic year at the Department of War,” the Secretary said.
“He added that ‘the spirit in our ranks’ was ‘unprecedented’ and that recruitment and retention were ‘at the most historic levels our country has ever seen.’ Not just historic — most historic.”
Trump “can’t find enough hours in the conventional workday to proclaim his glory adequately, so he has been known to spend the wee hours strutting on Truth Social, as he did from 9 p.m. to midnight on the first day of December, in a narcissistic meltdown of more than 150 posts.”
“Me, me, me. Best, best, best,” Bruni recorded.
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After pointing out Trump’s recent self-congratulatory “A+++++” claim on how he is handling the economy, Bruni offered some perspective.
“That’s five pluses, for those of you too nonplused to pause and count. I assume he stopped there only because he was winded. He’s not the cyclone of energy he used to be. He’s more an erratic breeze.”
“As for the economy,” the columnist continued, “all the pluses in the world may not persuade voters of their good fortune. An AP-NORC poll released on Thursday showed that just 31 percent of Americans — a new low in that survey — approve of how Trump is handling economic issues.”
Bruni concluded, “That’s an F with minus upon minus in tow.”
READ MORE: Trump Reveals White House’s ‘Primary’ Policy Goal — And It Isn’t Cutting Costs
Image via Reuters
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