Arnold Palmer’s Club
Politico thinks maybe Trump is crass: “Size matters: 2024 becomes the genitalia campaign,” reads a rather flaccid headline from Politico.
“The former president is delivering a closing argument that expressly embraces locker room talk,” reads the subhed, saying it all hearkens back to Donald Trump’s 2016 run, in which the Access Hollywood tape, and the “grab ’em by the pussy” comments became a major scandal. Trump at the time defended his older comments, saying it was just “locker room talk.”
“Just look at the difference in reaction between now and 2016,” argue Adam Wren and Emmy Martin at Politico. “Eight years ago, voters and Republican officeholders went through a moment of genuine consternation in responding to his comments about grabbing women by their genitals. Then, almost a third of the Republican caucus in the Senate said they wouldn’t back him. He faces no such uproar now.”
Of course he doesn’t! The comments they’re reacting to, though crass, were not offensive toward women or tacit endorsements of sexual assault. They were rambling, amusing comments about Arnold Palmer’s penis.
For the blessedly uninitiated, here’s what happened. Trump was speaking over the weekend in Latrobe, Pennsylvania—the birthplace of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.
“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women—and I love women,” said Trump. “But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it.” (“There’s nothing much to say. I’m not really upset,” said Palmer’s daughter, when reached by reporters for comment.)
Politico is a) acting like crude comments from Trump are something new, and b) ignoring the fact that it was really kinda sorta former President Barack Obama who started the dick jokes.
Obama, when speaking at the Democratic National Convention this past summer, managed to slide it in: “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.” It was on that last part that he made a gesture with his hands, quite well-executed, that made clear he was not talking only about the size of Trump’s crowds.
Nobody cares! Perhaps the best part of the Politico article, which attempts some impressive hand-wringing, is that…the actual sources, the actual Trump voters, didn’t seem to care. A 54-year-old from North Carolina who attended a recent rally told the reporters that the former president “talks just like us.”
“I feel like you just have to have a little sense of humor,” proclaimed another North Carolinian.
“There are things that he says that will be the subject of skits and laughter and jokes,” said Kamala Harris in response to the Palmer saga, “but words have meaning coming from someone who aspires to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States. These are the things that are at stake.”
It’s true that Trump appears to have no respect for any of the decorum that used to be a requirement for seeking high office. “I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying men have periods. But then I met Tim Walz,” he recently jok
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