Yeah, I wasn’t kidding. That was the most scared the Trump administration has made me.
I was thinking Miller looks a bit like a young Vincent Schiavelli
“Look! I threw up a tooth!”
Here’s the accumulated evidence I have on the millions of illegal votes in California, as well as the New Hampshire voter fraud.
“Wow they’re even smaller in person.”
“Why yes, Emperor, those clothes you’re holding are very beautiful”
“Can you spare a dollar for an old man trying to build a wall?”
“When I close this up, I call it a ‘cunniling-fist’.”
“Does this smell like taint to you?”
When you can snatch the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.
“And then you just grab it”
So I held the baseball like this for the opening pitch…
And then you grab em, right there.
The car door opens. This is it. It’s go time. Trudeau steps out of the car and glides into Trump’s outstretched hand. He quickly braces himself on the president’s shoulder, establishing an indomitable centre of gravity. He is going fucking Super Saiyan on this handshake. But Trump will not be deterred. He ratchets up the pressure and tries to pull this punk kid in. There is a tug of war. Trudeau is not moving. His hand is too strong. Their forearms are jerking around with electrical power and neither of them were ready for this to happen.
He can barely believe it himself and he has to look down at his own hands to make sure that this is really happening that, yes, he is not broken. He raises his head again to meet Trump’s gaze with blazing eyes that scream SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS but also AINSI TOUJOURS AUX TYRANS because bilingualism. Utterly destroyed but wanting to be cool about it, Trump gestures at the cameras before leading Justin into his den of lies. He cannot hide the look of absolute mystification on his face.
The handshake thing is so stupid. Does anyone fall for it? Does anyone shake Trump’s hand and think “Oh! He’s so commanding and authoritative! He really established dominance over me when he jerked my hand towards him. What a leader!”?
Well he did get millions of people to somehow vote for him by just blatantly lying so I guess it must work on some folks out there.
I felt this way about everything Trump does, every single answer to a question where he talks about how he knows more than anyone else, still can’t believe he got even 5% of the vote.
This handshake technique comes from an old bit that used to get tossed around many decades back, and it’s probably something that Trump picked up from his father. There is some truth to handshakes having an impact on first impressions, but unless it’s extremely negative then it’s fairly minor and quickly overcome (for better or worse) with any personal interaction thereafter. So why do some people still focus on it? Probably for the same reasons Trump cares about the size of his hands.
I get the psychology behind handshakes. I totally understand that on some level, men do judge other men on their handshakes. A limp, clammy handshake is inevitably going to make someone seem like a milquetoast, and a firm crisp handshake reflects positively on the person, but Trump’s blatant gorilla grab jerk-and-yank? Fuck that. It’s dumb and obvious and only makes me think he’s compensating. It literally has the opposite effect on me.
There are definitely a subset of people who respond positively to this kind of bullshit. In my experience, they tend to be babyboomers, who embrace the kind of good ol’ boys stuff.