Di lunedi, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley was asked whether President Donald Trump felt “emasculated” by being de-platformed from Twitter and Facebook. To which he said this: “The most masculine person I think to ever hold the White House is the President of the United States.”
Adesso, it’s worth noting here that Trump has a badly misshapen sense of what being “masculine” actually is. He thinks being a man means being “tough.” As I wrote back in June 2020:
“His idea of strength and toughness is deeply distorted, twisted and gnarled over many decades of grievance and bravado. Vedere, per Trump, being strong and being tough is tied directly to winning, to dominating, to using overwhelming force to get a desired result.
“In his mind, might makes right. And the world is split between people willing to use their power over others and those too afraid to exert it.”
Masculinity is, per Trump, tied up in power and being a tough guy. Or at least acting like a tough guy.
But even by Trump’s own standards of masculinity, when you compare Trump to the men who have held the office of the presidency, I’m not sure he could possibly measure up to some of them. With an assist from CNN’s Kyle Feldscher, here’s a brief look at some of the more “masculine” men who have served as president.
* George Washington was the nation’s greatest general of his time, winning the Revolutionary War and establishing our current republic.
* Teddy Roosevelt was shot in 1912 outside of his hotel but went on to deliver a speech that night anyway — with the bullet still inside him! “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” he told the crowd.
* Ulysses Grant led American troops to a victory in the Civil War. As he was dying from throat cancer and could no longer speak, Grant ground out his famed memoir to keep his wife out of poverty after he passed.
* Rutherford B. Hayes/ William McKinley: Both served in the Union Army during the Civil War and sustained repeated wounds as a result. (McKinley’s horse was shot out from under him in one battle; he lived — and continued the charge.)
The point here is two-fold:
1) Trump’s idea of masculinity is deeply flawed.
2) Even by that flawed standard — or really any standard — he is nowhere close to being the “most masculine person” to ever hold the White House.
That claim, like so much that has come out of the White House over the past four years, is utter bunk.
