“Women are very special. I think it’s a very special time, a lot of things are coming out, and I think that’s good for our society and I think it’s very, very good for women, and I’m very happy a lot of these things are coming out. I’m very happy it’s being exposed.”
— President Donald Trump
“Women are very special.” “It’s a very special time.” “A lot of things are coming out.”
This is some form of code or cipher. I do not understand it.
At the same news briefing, Trump said he does not want to see a “liberal person” in Roy Moore’s seat, in spite of the grotesque and predatory things that women (even Trump voters!) say that Moore has done.
“We don’t need a liberal person in there,” Trump said. It was 40 years ago, he said. We have to listen to Moore, too, he said.
But “it’s a very special time.” It is “good for our society.” It is “good for women.” “Very happy it’s being exposed.”
These are the words to a picture book for children, but the pictures are all wrong. Even the words don’t really go together. Maybe it is a villanelle. Maybe it is a nonsense verse, or an overlong haiku.
“Women are very special.”
Trump faces allegations of a range of sexual misconduct from 17 women. We remember the tape. I remember the tape. Does Trump remember the tape? “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he said. He said other things, too, that I don’t need to repeat, because you know what they are.
“It’s a very special time.”
Trump thinks it would be better not to have a liberal person in the Senate seat.
[Begins to laugh hysterically. Cannot stop laughing. Frogs begin to fall out of throat. Walks into a cave and screams until throat is hoarse. Continues to scream for a long time until the echoes die away. Turns into a bat and flies off into the sun.]
“A lot of things are coming out.”
There are allegations against Moore that are coming out, but Moore is denying them and that is what matters to Trump. That, and the “R” next to Moore’s name. Trump is forever preserving the wrong elephants.
It is “good for our society.” “It’s very, very good for women.” “Very happy it’s being exposed.”
These words mean nothing. They are a yearbook signature. “Very happy it’s being exposed.” Have a great summer. We don’t need to see a liberal person in what could be Moore’s seat.
Sometimes I think words have meaning. But maybe that is foolish of me. I should know better, now, than to think that what people say should have some relation to reality.
“Special time.” “Special” is one of the six words Trump seems to be well acquainted with. He wheels it out all the time, and it means all kinds of things. Women are special, which might mean special like a relationship with Britain or special like a golf tournament or special like an evening with a foreign despot.
Perhaps it is no surprise Trump would use “special” in a context like this. The word is cheerfully meaningless and does not contain too many syllables.
Why am I sitting here expecting words from Trump’s mouth to have meaning?
“Very happy it’s being exposed.”
“A lot of things coming out.” “That’s good for our society.”
Phlegm. Hatstand. Timpanum. Litotes.
Maybe this has broken me. I want to open a print dictionary and see if the words are even still there. I want to go stand on the side of a cliff and scream and scream and see if there is an echo.
It’s a very special time.
Alexandra Petri | The Washington Post
Alexandra Petri writes the ComPost blog, offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”