TRUMP IS F*CKING CRAZY

A veteran liberal journalist excoriates Donald Trump in a collection of commentaries from the Resistance, his web series hosted by GQ.

Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign and concluding in late June 2017, these pieces pound away at a series of complaints—some profoundly serious—about Trump, complaints ranging from what Olbermann (Pitchforks and Torches: The Worst of the Worst, from Beck, Bill, and Bush to Palin and Other Posturing Republicans, 2010, etc.) sees as Trump’s habitual lying, the Russian involvement in the election, the attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the last-minute involvement of the FBI in the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the firing of James Comey, and the contortions exhibited by Trump officials who defend him through everything. The author pretty much exhausts the thesaurus in his name-calling, and he argues that Trump is a modern Nero; Napoleon; a latter-day Nixon. The author also has harsh things to say about the media (looking for opportunities to call Trump “presidential”), Republicans, and Trump supporters of all stripes (Kellyanne Conway is “Kellyanne Con Job”). Olbermann is fond of some rhetorical devices: an ancient one, anaphora (the repetition of key words or phrases at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph: “Who else but a jackass…”), as well as a more recent one (The. Placement. Of. A. Period. At. The. End. Of. Each. Word.). Olbermann is also not above self-promotion of his own—he mentions the number of visitors to his site and credits himself for a few other good things—but for the most part, his focus is on the man he despises and on the minions who support him. The pieces are generally short and sharply focused on something quite recent at the time of composition—Trump’s post-election talk to the CIA, the testimony of Sally Yates—and the prose is consistently aggressive and often abrasive.

Unrelenting invective for Trump haters, who will love it; Trump lovers won’t read it.