How Donald Trump's Fat Shaming Hurts America
Not just a deeply offensive narcissistic projection (though of course it's all that too), Trump's revulsion toward corpulence is a catastrophically misapplied metaphor.
Fernando Botero, “The Family,” 1966.
At a February Cabinet meeting photo op, President Donald Trump said, “This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting,” As my most doggedly faithful readers may recall, two years ago I articulated a different view. America wasn’t “disgusting,” just metaphorically constipated, “struggling, finally, under President Joe Biden, to drop a deuce.” I stand by this analysis, much of which remains applicable today (the largest fecal mass then awaiting discharge was Donald Trump), but something about this particular metaphor seemed to put people off, and as a consequence my carefully considered argument never, I feel, received a fair hearing.
But let’s don’t cry over spilt milk. We gather today to consider not Timothy Noah’s metaphor for America, but Donald Trump’s. He has a well-known and oft-articulated aversion to overweight, on display this week when he screened out Army attendees at his Fort Bragg speech based not only on political affiliation (which was bad enough) but also on whether they looked fat. Offensive? Absolutely. Narcissistic projection? Of course. According to a BMI reading during Trump’s first term—if White House doctors are to be believed, he’s lost weight since then—Trump is the sixth-fattest sitting president in American history.
But the most destructive thing about Trump’s February diagnosis is that it was 100 percent wrong. That’s the topic of my latest New Republic piece. You can read it here.