Is There Literally Something Rotten in Mar-A-Lago?
The rumor that #TrumpStinks proves that there's nothing that happens in presidential campaign season that accidental, or that doesn't make sense--if you squint hard
This newsletter began almost four years ago, at the beginning of the 2020 presidential campaign. As we start to turn the page to the 2024 election, I can promise you lots of excitement (and weird shit!) at Political Junkie, and a few changes that will make being a a subscriber very worthwhile. So, if you know someone who wants to take this ride with us, please:
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Since I am no longer on Twitter, it’s harder for me to keep up with the Nazis and bottom-feeders. I no longer see the Republican politicians who post family Christmas photos where everyone from the baby to Grandma is sporting a semi-automatic weapon. So, I was late to the party when, on Christmas Day, I picked up on a Thread by former Illinois Representative and anti-Trumper Adam Kinzinger that referred to former president Donald J. Trump as “odorous.”
Initially, I thought this was just a figure of speech, and that, metaphorically, Trump stinks! Except, of course, politicians don’t speak in metaphor. So, in the tradition of middle school students everywhere, what Kinzinger actually meant was: the King of Mar-A-Lago has awful hygiene. “I’m genuine surprised how people close to Trump haven’t talked about the odor,” Kinzinger had Xeeted a week and a half earlier. “It’s truly something to behold. Wear a mask if you can.”
A week later (which is a surprisingly long time, if you think about it), a spokesperson for the Trump campaign responded to Kinzinger’s sensation charge in the same spirit. “Adam Kinzinger farted on live TV and is an unemployed fraud,” the unsigned statement read. “He has disgraced his country and disrespects everyone around him because he is a sad individual who is mad about how his miserable life has turned out.” Leading with “farted on live TV” would make any seventh grade boy proud, but in fact, I think it isn’t true. Research suggests that it was Eric Swalwell (D, CA-14) who may have done that particular deed, although it seems like a doctored video to me: it would have had to be a very, very, loud fart to be picked up outside by a lapel mic.
But I digress. The question is: if Trump smells bad, what does he smell of? The Lincoln Project has put out an attack ad picturing a variety of possibilities—the general categories are “garbage” and “poo”—while loud sniffing interrupts the dolorous musical sound track.
Even though it is news to me, Donald Trump’s allegedly lousy hygiene is not such a secret, but as we sort the evidence, be aware that the sources of these rumors are not unimpeachable. In May, 2023 actress Kathy Griffin Xeeted about one of her appearances on The Apprentice, an episode in which she cohosted a challenge with Liza Minelli. “Liza and I tried to ignore him, but he does smell really bad," Griffin wrote.
In November, Griffin described the alleged odor to Mary Trump, the former President’s aggrieved niece, as “like body odor with kind of like a scented makeup products.” Trumps hair products were also allegedly so powerful and thickly applied that you could smell them “even outdoors.” In a dig at her uncle’s penchant for selling anything he can, Mary Trump responded by suggesting that MAGA fans might enjoy a Christmas candle with the scented with the former president’s cosmetics-laden BO. This is, by the way, only slightly weirder than reality: Trump is currently marketing what are purported to be scraps of fabric from the suit he wore during his arraignment in Fulton County, Georgia.
These are also not new rumors. Gossip about Trump’s poor hygiene emerged during the 2020 campaign, perhaps because it was overshadowed by things like his self-described penchant for sexually assaulting women. But in one video that year, a standup comedian and former production assistant on The Apprentice named Noel Casler, claimed (without corroborating evidence) that, as a reality TV star, Trump had already developed a persistent, and ill-managed, incontinence problem.
Although this didn’t have political legs, it simmered in the netherworld of media that specializes in political and celebrity gossip shows. In October, as he questioned British TV tabloid journalist Piers Morgan, Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian admitted that he had “always wondered what Trump smells like.” Morgan responded:
“Quite expensive aftershave and not overly done, just a light, gentle aroma. You imagine he’d smell like some flamboyant nightclub owner in the 70s, but he doesn’t.” And the hair product? “You get a whiff of hairspray, ’cause it is permanently coiffured.”
It’s such a weird exchange. Speaking only for myself, it has never occurred to me to wonder what Donald Trump, or any other politician smelled like.
But it is also important to note, should this rumor surface as more than a sideshow in 2024, that incontinence is nothing to be ashamed of. Approximately 13 million Americans, many—but not all of whom—older, manage this condition, it’s normal, and no one should be deploying incontinence as a slur or a joke. There are plenty of excellent products (as well as a few drugs) that alleviate and make incontinence invisible to others.
It also isn’t clear that Trump has this condition, or that if he does, manages it poorly and with disregard for others. Supposed visual evidence circulated on Xitter (along with the hashtag #DiaperDon) was firmly debunked by Snopes.com back in 2020. And it strikes me as unlikely that a man who is deeply vain and a legendary germaphobe would be impervious to, or careless about, any hygiene challenges he faces.
But since this is a political, not a medical, newsletter, the question is: why does reviving these rumors about Trump matter to the 2024 election? I think there are two answers.
Most obviously, the #TrumpStinks hashtag, which trended on Xitter over the holiday, is a strategy for pushing back at Republican assertions that Joe Biden is too old to be president but Trump isn’t. “Ya wanna talk about age,” I can imagine a political consultant saying, while combing the internet for photoshopped images that appear to show other politicians grimacing and holding their breath around the president. “OK, bring it on, Diaper Don.”
As a political strategy, #TrumpStinks seems like a psyops campaign to force Trump himself to finally feel shame abot something, and the Trump campaign to defend itself from something it can’t disprove. I mean, who ever gets close enough to smell a politician or any other celebrity? Furthermore, many Republican voters have also shown themselves to be vulnerable to weird, inconsequential, fact-free narratives about the political world, and impervious to common sense efforts to debunk these narratives. Might the idea that Trump is falling apart physically, as they believe Joe Biden is, take hold among some Republicans?
So, #TrumpStinks plants the seed of uncertainty. It is a tactic for cutting through GOP voters’ unwillingness to take Trump’s verbal incoherence and erratic behavior, much less his dishonesty and contempt for democracy, as signs that he is unsuited for the job of President. If your intellect can’t receive the information that the man is unsuited to the highest office in the land, could planting an idea in your nose puncture Trump’s facade? If it becomes difficult for voters to not think about Trump without conjuring a the mid-rank nursing homes we have all visited (or worse, the men’s bathroom at a Greyhound stop), it may then become difficult for them to imagine him back in the Oval Office.
So, if we dig a little deeper, the psychology of a #TrumpStinks campaign becomes clear: attaching stigma to Trump by causing voters to imagine him as physically disgusting. This may seem desperate, and it is. Yet, we are now in a situation in which there is virtually nothing a Republican can do that is so awful that the party is unwilling to excuse it (unless, as in the case of expelling George Santos, they think they have a better chance of winning that seat if Democrats are not flocking to the polls in that district to run against Trump.) Thriving in the world he made, running far ahead of even the closest rivals as we head into the first two Republican primaries, and carrying more baggage than a 747, Trump himself seems impervious to the stigma that used to attach to a politician who was a liar, a cheater, a terrible parent, a bad husband, and fighting 91 indictments in four jurisdictions.
Still, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, half of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa say they will support Trump’s candidacy. According to Rasmussen Reports, that number holds firm nationally, and more than 60% of Republicans plan to support him should he become the nominee. Compared to what Trump really is charged with, should insinuations about a mysterious, discomfiting odor around the former president matter?
No—at least, not unless it shatters Trump’s sense of invulnerability and opens the door to voter disgust about what really smells: the former president’s moral incontinence. So keep your eye on New Hampshire, where former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has reportedly pulled within 4 points of Trump.
Short takes:
Let’s give Nikki Haley her own item, since she really is within striking distance of Donald J. Trump in New Hampshire. As Jay Kuo points out at The Status Kuo (still my favorite Substack name after my own): “On one hand, the Trump campaign has taken out advertisements against Haley in New Hampshire, which indicates they now see her as a real threat. On the other, Trump has begun asking others what they think of Haley, a sign that he is wondering if she might make a good VP candidate.” On the other-other hand, MAGA world despises Haley as a soft, globalist, free-trade, corporate-friendly alternative to the national populist philosophies that they detest. Also she’s a woman, and Brown, and her parents were immigrants. And on yet another hand, it’s unlikely that Haley would risk blowing up her career to be Trump’s veep, given what happened to the last one. She’s a shape-shifter, but she isn’t dumb. (December 26, 2023)
In a hilarious end of year send-up at The New Republic, Edith Olmsted names the Worst Employee of the Year: Republican Party chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. Party chairs are generally pretty anonymous, only gaining “broader recognition for doing the job poorly,” Olmsted writes. “As the head of the RNC for the past six years, McDaniel has overseen one electoral loss after another, and now she’s also losing the fundraising game. She is failing miserably at the core responsibilities of a party chair—and yet, her job seems as secure as ever.” And of course, on another, related, context, who else does this sound like? Hmmm…starts with T, sounds like dump….in any case, as Olmsted concludes: “In 2023, the GOP couldn’t organize a lemonade stand. So keep up the awful work in 2024, Ronna!”(December 26, 2023)
One of my favorite 2023 year-end wrap ups was posted on Instagram by Michigan Governor Gretchen “Big Gretch” Whitmer. You have to see it to believe it: as Whitmer makes her way through a laundry list of accomplishments that tells you concretely how Democrats govern, she is systematically decorates a gingerbread house. This is true Ginger Rogers territory: doing everything that Fred does, but backwards and in high heels. (December 22, 2023)
The stink of corruption. The impurity of the body releasing its corruption as it decomposes. A vast number of Americans seem to like Febreze etc that covers up what you’ve not got time to clean. Perhaps it’s another area of unconscious identification on the part of his male supporters: you smell bad like us but you get away with it. Like being able to pretend you are fit.
Dear Goddess, it never occurred to me to wonder what any politician smelled like either, but It seems only reasonable to ask: Could the stank be sulfur?