Look who’s joined the war against Christmas
by digby
I’m sure the conservative evangelicals for whom he can do no wrong won’t care, but I have to say I think it’s pretty funny that Donald Trump hates Christmas parties:
By the 26th, he will have attended 21 Christmas parties, clocking in at more than 52 hours of festivities in total, or about 10 percent of his waking hours this month.
This is the life of a modern president of the United States in the month of December — and Donald Trump hates every minute of it. While he is known to enjoy hosting large social events and rallies, current and former White House staffers say he regards presidential Christmas parties with a special loathing and goes out of his way to escape early. Making Christmas great again may have been a pillar of his presidential campaign — “We’re going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” he often promised — but the war on Christmas is now raging inside of him.
One person close to the White House told me, “It makes perfect sense” that Trump hates the entire production surrounding Christmas, “because it’s not about him!” This person added, “If it were about him, he’d love it. Christmas is not about him.”
“It’s just a lot,” a senior White House official told me. “They’re hosting all these people, half of whom they don’t know,” the official said. “He just gets impatient. He likes to go go go. Sitting through things, he gets restless.”
For his first Christmas as president, the White House parties featured a procedure for guests to enter a line and take a photo with Donald and Melania, an excruciating and monotonous ritual endured by most modern presidents since the early 1960s. It can, and often does, go on for hours. But Trump seems to have less patience for it than his predecessors. At one party, Trump grew so annoyed that he began complaining openly to one of his aides. “He said, ‘I’m supposed to be the president, but now all I do is stand there and take pictures all day. There’s no telling what’s going on in the world right now. I’d never know,’” the former aide told me, recalling the conversation.
While shaking hands with guests and standing for photos at another party last year, Trump spotted Mike Pence in the crowd. According to a second White House official, he forced the vice-president to take his place. “He and Melania left and subbed in the vice-president for the photo line,” the second official said.
Hilarious that he actually said “all I do is stand there and take pictures all day. There’s no telling what’s going on in the world right now. I’d never know” which to me is a feature, not a bug. He should spend all of his time posing for pictures at parties. Like Kim Kardashian, a reality show celebrity as he is. We know for a fact that he isn’t really interested in the world. He’s interested in what people are saying about him on television and in the papers. Like Kim Kardashian.
He hates having to do anything for longer than a few minutes because he needs to feed his TV addiction at regular intervals. Even a Christmas Party is an interruption.
The good news for people attending the party is that he sneaks out early so they can actually have some fun. If he’s in the room, you know it’s all about kissing his hem and telling him how he’s made America great again. It certainly isn’t about Christmas.
If you find what we do here to be helpful in understanding what’s happening around us in this wild political era, if stopping by here from time to time gives you a little sense of solidarity with others who are going through their days as gobsmacked by events as you are, I hope you’ll find it in your heart to drop a little something in the Hullabaloo stocking to help me keep the light on for another year.
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As always I am immensely grateful for your continued loyalty and interest in my scribbles.
And I wish all of you Very Happy Hollandaise!
cheers — digby
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