Why Work for Trump?
Considering the history what has happened to those who have become workplace associates with Donald Trump over his history—loss of prestige, loss of money, lawsuits, prison—one cannot help but wonder at times why people would accept the offer to leave the security of the present to gamble on the future. The authors offer an explanation by way of appropriately grandiose metaphorical representations of the self:
“Two kinds of people went to work for the administration: those who thought Trump was saving the world and those who thought the world needed to be saved from Trump.”
Pence Being Pence
Anyone who has watched Vice-President Mike Pence standing to the side when Donald Trump is speaking can relate to descriptions of his behavior the day that Trump launched into a diatribe against the military for losing wars and calling military leaders in the room babies and dopes. What is perhaps less understandable is how these descriptions seem to present any fundamental difference from the way Pence appears any other time. Pence is not exactly famous for being a hyperactive presence in public, so the metaphorical descriptions of his own response to Trump’s diatribe seem utterly believable as much as they seem unimaginative:
“He’s sitting there frozen like a statue…a wax museum guy…total deer in the headlights.”
The Sessions Recusal
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his recusal from official participation into any investigations of wrongdoing by Trump during the election, the result was by most accounts one of the greatest temper tantrums ever seen on Air Force One. But it was not limited to a mere airborne virus, becoming officially pandemic the next day back on the ground. The full scope of the energy produced by Trump’s anger is plainly framed as metaphor:
“…it was a rage that boiled into the next day. He went thermonuclear.”
Genetics
Trump likes to boast his genetic construction is superior and even managed to get a formerly reputable doctor to officially go along with his own unscientifically established conclusion. An unidentified Republican Senator speaking, of course, off the record and in private, came up with own unscientifically established conclusion on the subject of the genetic makeup of Trump:
“His whole DNA is, whatever anybody else has done is stupid, I’m smarter, and therefore that’s why he goes around breaking glass all the time.”
The Twitter Firing of Rex Tillerson
Donald Trump remade his reputation after it was destroyed in the 1990’s with a reality TV show that presented him as a tough CEO who enjoyed telling people they were fired. Then, as President, he remade that reputation by revealing himself as a man seemingly incapable of actually firing anyone in person. One of the most infamous examples of this chasm between “reality” and reality came the day he actually fired the Secretary of State by announcing it on Twitter and letting others handle the actual job of informing Rex Tillerson he no longer had a job. John Kelly, Chief of Staff at the time, could only turn to metaphor to describe the situation:
“The forces of darkness have won today.”
