Trump’s Gorgeous Chest

This came across my Instagram feed this morning, and it made me laugh out loud:

It made Ann Althouse laugh, too, and one of her commenters connected the tweet with a riff in the speech Trump delivered last night. In the course of ripping the press, he referred to his own “gorgeous chest,” presumably an unscripted moment:

This is a good example of President Trump as Rorschach test. Some people absolutely hate him, as manifested by the fact that the percentage who disapprove of Trump in polls is nearly equal to the percentage who want him to be impeached and evicted from office. Why do they hate him so? Not because of record low unemployment, strong economic growth, and standing up to America’s foes abroad. They hate him because he does things like the “gorgeous chest” tweet.

Conversely, some people–like me–enjoy Trump’s unorthodox personality. I think he is hilarious, especially in person. There is of course a conservative/liberal divide in people’s feelings about Trump. But why are some conservatives never-Trumpers? Why do they, like most liberals, have a visceral dislike for him? I think it is mostly on account of what I see as the funny, playful side of Trump’s personality.

Of course, Trump knows that tweets like this morning’s will be greeted with outrage from his detractors. Nevertheless, he trolls them mercilessly. (The gorgeous chest tweet might be the most magnificent troll of all time.) That suggests that Trump believes there are more people who see this side of his personality positively–like me–than there are people who are driven up the wall by it. Or more swing voters, anyway.

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