From this interview in The Atlantic:
The threats to American democracy—and to the broader cause of freedom—are many, he said. He was withering on the subject of Donald Trump, but acknowledged that Trump himself is not the root of the issue. “I’m not surprised that somebody like Trump could get traction in our political life,” he said. “He’s a symptom as much as an accelerant. But if we were going to have a right-wing populist in this country, I would have expected somebody a little more appealing.”
Trump, Obama noted, is not exactly an exemplar of traditional American manhood. “I think about the classic male hero in American culture when you and I were growing up: the John Waynes, the Gary Coopers, the Jimmy Stewarts, the Clint Eastwoods, for that matter. There was a code … the code of masculinity that I grew up with that harkens back to the ’30s and ’40s and before that. There’s a notion that a man is true to his word, that he takes responsibility, that he doesn’t complain, that he isn’t a bully—in fact he defends the vulnerable against bullies. And so even if you are someone who is annoyed by wokeness and political correctness and wants men to be men again and is tired about everyone complaining about the patriarchy, I thought that the model wouldn’t be Richie Rich—the complaining, lying, doesn’t-take-responsibility-for-anything type of figure.”
Ain’t that the truth. The old model was John McCain. And there were plenty of flaws with those guys too. Even the masculine heroes in my book like Nelson Mandela or Mark Twain or Franklin Roosevelt were flawed human beings who didn’t fit that movie mold he speaks of, weren’t infantile whiners and delusional braggarts as Trump is.
Honestly, looking beyond Trump’s obvious incompetence and ignorance the idea that anyone would like a person with his personality, much less put him up on a pedestal as a great leader, is what continues to confuse me more than anything. I will never wrap my mind around the idea that such a lying, whiny little bitch who trowels on makeup and dyes his hair became the hero of the aggressively macho American right wing.
WTF????