I was thinking about that word the other day. For the rest of my life, I will forever connect it with Donald Trump. He has used it more than all the other presidents in the history of this country combined. Most other presidents have used it sparingly, if at all, and it was usually to describe an issue such as gun violence, a humanitarian crisis, or some other type of atrocity. In situations such as those, the disgraceful designation is quite obviously deserved.
Trump, on the other hand, uses the word disgrace quite differently. For him, disgrace requires no evidence. It need not be something everyone can agree upon. It can be applied to any person or organization who opposes him in any way.
Here’s an extremely incomplete list of the people, things, and organizations he has declared a disgrace:
Politicians and government officials, particularly if they are female, such as Nancy Pelosi, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, James Comey, Robert Mueller, and Joe Biden.
Members of the press, particularly if they are female, such as Norah O’Donnell and Megyn Kelly, along with entire media outlets such as NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair.
Judges that have ruled against him, regardless of whether he has appointed them or not, such as Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, along with prosecutors pursuing cases against him and witnesses during impeachment hearings, and the impeachment proceedings in general, various district attorneys, the Department of Justice, the Mueller investigation, the Russia investigation, Congressional hearings, the January 6 Committee, Immigration courts, the Stormy Daniels investigation, the New York fraud case, the classified documents case, the Georgia election case, the E. Jean Carroll verdict, and of course, E. Jean Carroll herself, the special counsel investigation, and various tariff rulings by courts.
He has also declared the entire state of California a disgrace, particularly San Francisco. Other cities with this designation include Chicago, Baltimore, and Milwaukee.
He never goes on to provide actual evidence of how or why these people or organizations or things are a disgrace. He doesn’t ever produce documentation or witnesses or photographs. He doesn’t win court cases against any of them.
At best, he might say, “Everybody says so.” And that always makes me think, “Well, I don’t say so, so who is everybody? And how would he know what everybody says, when he’s so completely out of touch with the real world?”
He has called things that pose a threat to him, real or imagined, a disgrace, such as birthright citizenship, mail-in voting, sanctuary cities, NATO burden-sharing arrangements, the Paris climate agreement, various protests, wind turbines, leaks from investigations, immigration policies, and Rosie O’Donnell.
He has even applied the word to conditions that, ironically, he has eventually managed to make much worse, such as trade deficits, election fraud allegations, inflation, human trafficking, drug trafficking, high gasoline prices, high grocery prices, the Iran nuclear deal, China’s trade practices, politics, and “the swamp”.
Things he envies or wishes he could take credit for or be capable of participating in are disgraceful, too, like Harvard University, the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the Academy Awards.
If something makes fun of him, it is most definitely a disgrace, such as Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of him, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Stephen Colbert, and all comedians in general. Trump uses the word disgrace the same way a small child would use the phrase “she hurt my feelings.”
And now Trump’s trollish followers use the word disgrace more than ever before. I’ve had more than one of them call me a disgrace. But here’s the thing: I reserve the word disgrace for things that are moral or ethical failures that are irredeemable. When you overuse a word like disgrace, it loses its oomph. It starts to sound comical. As Shakespeare might say, it becomes full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Whenever Trump uses the word disgrace, he seems increasingly pathetic. His voice sounds as if he’s been sucking on helium. He looks like he’s shrinking, like one of those apple carvings I used to make as a child. At first they look almost like a human face, but over time they darken and shrivel, until eventually they become so grotesque that you decide that the best thing to do is throw them away.
And that’s as it should be.
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