Those familiar with Greek mythology may recall the story of the Trojan Horse. According to the myth, during their bitter and prolonged conflict with Troy, the ancient Greeks constructed an effigy of a horse as a clever ruse to invade the city. Much larger than an actual horse, it was gifted to the Trojans as a peace offering, an impressive statue that they said would safeguard the Trojans against future invasion.
But the horse was a sham, a means of allowing the Greeks to enter Troy unseen. Greek soldiers rode within the hollow horse into the city of Troy. Once inside the walled city, the horse disgorged its hidden enemy soldiers, and Troy was vanquished.
Americans need to understand this bit of ancient mythological chicanery in order to put Donald Trump into proper perspective: He is a Trojan Horse, designed by Leonard Leo, Harlan Crow, and the Heritage Foundation to smuggle a Pandora’s box of social and political evils into American culture. Trump has been identified by these malign forces as an empty suit, a hollow man who will welcome anyone into the vacant space inside him as long as they offer flattery, deference, and money.
Lots of money.
Trump’s lack of a real self and his essentially empty nature make him a tool. He is Putin’s tool; he is Bin Salman’s tool; he is Netanyahu’s tool; he is Orban’s tool; he is Kim’s tool; and he is a tool of the Heritage Foundation. He is a narcissistic, bloviating tool who is easily led by the nose by some of the most unscrupulous people on the planet, effortlessly manipulated by a few undeserved compliments and barrels of cash.
Trump is a made-for-TV pretense. He is a fabrication, a spoof, a fraud. He has no moral code or compass, no unassailable set of values, no strongly held beliefs. He only knows that he exists because he sees himself on television every day. This is why he shrivels when deprived of incessant media attention; without it, he is invisible, even to himself. In the absence of cameras, he disappears.
The crafty and manipulative see Trump as a perfect vehicle for their entirely dystopian plan to recast the United States as a theocratic autocracy, joined with international strongmen and aligned against democracies worldwide. They see that Trump adores dictators, so they won’t get any blowback from him about that. They want people of color and women to be consigned to second-class status, and Trump seems to be OK with that, too.
They would like him to pull out of NATO, and if reelected, this seems entirely possible because he is an obvious dunce when it comes to foreign policy and international alliances. They want him to place tariffs on all foreign imports, particularly those manufactured in China, in their push toward nativism and isolationism, and, apparently, that is no problem, either. Trump loves the idea of making other people pay big tariffs, even when the other people happen to be his own supporters. One wonders whether he intends to place a tariff on his own “God Bless the USA” Bible since it, too, is manufactured in China.
Trump is a Trojan Horse for racists, homophobes, xenophobes, misogynists, and antisemites. He is a pay-to-play candidate so empty on the inside that he has plenty of room to carry their water.
Because he is a hollow man, he is willing to sell women’s rights, gay rights, immigration rights, civil rights, and the United States Constitution down the river. Smart and amoral power brokers know exactly what to do to secure a berth aboard the S.S. Trump. He is pathetically transparent, woefully insecure, and not terribly bright.
Trump is a man so bereft of a real self that he has to substitute the media lie that Mark Burnett and Rupert Murdoch have peddled for decades. According to their fiction, Donald Trump is a canny and successful businessman who is a deal-making phenom. That same business genius has seen his Truth Social stock fall by at least 70 percent since the initial public offering (IPO). That same business genius has declared bankruptcy repeatedly and has been found guilty of business fraud. He also sucked hundreds of millions of dollars out of his own father’s pocket, and contrary to his assertions, those “loans” were never repaid.
That is Trojan Horse Trump, the hollowest and most vacuous of men.
He is so empty that there is an echo inside of him, like the sound of a rock falling in a canyon as it ricochets from one hard surface to another. The echo you hear is the refracted sound of a man who has no inner life and no real ideas, unless you have misconstrued the steaming pile of garbage that he serves up all day, every day, as actual ideas. He is an empty tin pail of a man, willing to sell his soul for a mess of pottage. You just have to pretend to like him and have the wherewithal to shovel buckets of money into his gaping, voracious maw.
A man so untethered to a real self should never occupy the White House. Best to stay at Mar-a-Lago in the comfortable company of the well-heeled and worshipful, who are more than happy to pretend, every day, that he matters.
