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COMMENTARY: THE FIFTH ESTATE
What the Trump voters see is a calculated fiction
We need to talk about Donald Trump’s hair. Actually, first, let’s watch his mane in action, in this Jimmy Kimmel bit that pokes fun at the then president.
Here’s an even clearer view.
I find these videos darkly fascinating, because it shows us, frame by frame, how little hair Trump actually has and the absurd lengths to which he goes to pretend otherwise. It’s eerily reminiscent of that famous shot in of the pale, scarred head beneath Darth Vader’s helmet.
You might be wondering what all this has to do with the media’s coverage of candidate Trump. In my view: everything.
Why?
Because Trump’s essential appeal to his base has little to do with his policy proposals, or his record in the White House. It is bound up in his image as a swaggering, shameless strongman.
This is why the Trump faithful continue to circulate images of him as Rambo or Superman. It’s why he was so insistent on taking off his mask, after having a life-threatening case of COVID. It’s why he continually mocks the physical shortcomings of his enemies and rivals. In the Trump-geist, there are two basic pitches: virility and virality.
But the virility is a con. And everybody knows it. Trump is a medically obese 77-year-old man who, according to a former Trump staffer, has a lengthy daily-makeup routine, (potentially) wears a girdle, and has reportedly concealed his baldness through a follicular legerdemain of scalp surgeries, elaborate weaves, and the world’s most gossamer combover.
The Trump we see in front of the cameras is a calculated fiction, an artificial alpha male. So why, exactly, does the media continue to perpetrate this fiction? Why not use photos closer to the unvarnished Trump?
Here is where we encounter a potent example of the obvious asymmetry between the right-wing propaganda machine and the mainstream media.
Because any time one of Trump’s opponents displays any signs of weakness, you can count on his propaganda machine — which spans from Fox News to the Russian bots deployed on his behalf — to blast those images out on a continuous tape-loop of distortion.
And you can count on these images, and the narrative surrounding them, to be amplified by the mainstream media. This is how a single instance of Hillary Clinton (whilst battling pneumonia) stumbling on her way to a vehicle became a “story” during the 2016 campaign.
This is why so many voters regarded Joe Biden as a doddering old man — and why it came as such a “shock” when Biden delivered a tour-de-force State of the Union address that revealed him to be vigorous, both in mind and body.
He is the embodiment of toxic masculinity, a Wizard of Id whose only drive in life is to protect his frail ego.
Contrast this saturation coverage of Biden’s alleged physical infirmity with Trump’s own experience as a COVID patient. It was reported, well after the fact, that Trump was so ill with the disease that doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center considered putting him on a ventilator. But how many images of Trump did we see from the hospital?
None. Because the ailing president was hidden from view for three days, as doctors treated him with an experimental antibody cocktail not yet widely available to most Americans. At the time, some 208,000 Americans had already died of COVID. (Some 1.1 million Americans died of the disease.)
Ultimately, physical stature of our leaders shouldn’t matter. It’s their mind and spirit and conscience that determine their fitness to lead.
To be sure, political leaders have long sought to project vigor. This is why FDR avoided being pictured in his wheelchair, for instance, and why JFK concealed his Addison’s disease and chronic back pain, and why authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jung Un go to such absurd lengths to promote their machismo.
But the need to project strength is almost always compensatory, an effort to mask inner weakness. Those who know Trump most intimately describe a compulsively insecure man whose bragging betrays a chronic insecurity.
Ultimately, Trump is a creature of marketing and television. He’s spent a lifetime promoting an image of brute strength, to preen and bluster and rant because he cannot empathize or persuade.
He is the embodiment of toxic masculinity, a Wizard of Id whose only drive in life is to protect his frail ego.
But just imagine, for a moment, if someone close to the ex-president snapped a photo or video of Trump without the bronzer and girdle and ridiculous combover. Bald, pale, age-spotted Trump. Imagine that this unadorned portrait was the one voters saw, day after day.
Imagine, in other words, if the world could see Trump for what he truly is.
Isn’t that the job of the Fourth Estate?
Editor's note: This commentary is part of Steve Almond's regular Cog column during the 2024 election, "The Fifth Estate." Email him with comments and ideas at stevealmondjoy AT gmail.com.
