I Really Don’t Care Do U: The Trump Morality Play in Full View

By Jim Miller

“I Really Don’t Care Do U” read the designer jacket that Melania Trump wore in June of 2018 when visiting the New Hope Children’s Shelter in McAllen, Texas that housed 55 kids, including those separated from their parents as a result of President Trump’s draconian immigration policy.  Of course, last week, we all learned that our worst suspicions at the time were correct as a new tell-all book by the First Lady’s now ex-friend and senior adviser reveals that she was less concerned about the children’s fates than the fact that they made the Trumps look bad while she was slaving away on her onerous Christmas work.

As CNN reported, Mrs. Trump whined at the time:

“I’m working … my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?”

She continued, “OK, and then I do it and I say that I’m working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, ‘Oh, what about the children that they were separated?’ Give me a f****** break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that?”

This would all be just one more example of the Trumps’ vast and vulgar narcissism and contempt for others, except that now, in the wake their COVID-19 diagnoses, the phrase on the First Lady’s jacket screams volumes about the Trumps’ character and that of the immoral cult that surrounds them.  Indeed, it is like the signs that characters in the Medieval morality plays carried that signified which deadly sin they represented.

As more details emerge, it is becoming clear that the Superspreader in Chief and his posse knew of their exposure and potential risk as they jetted around the country to rallies and fundraisers endangering and riling up the rubes and emptying the wallets of their moneyed cronies at golf clubs.  And we also know that the first impulse of the Trump Campaign/White House was to conceal Hope Hicks’ diagnosis in order to continue business as usual, and then, after the President fell ill, to minimize and conceal his status from the American people.

Then it all came apart as the President had to be whisked away to Walter Reed for a stay in the hospital and the circle of White House aides, Republican Senators, and others in Trump nation with positive test results swelled to the point where it was impossible to deny that the White House was a COVID-19 hot spot with lots of frequent flyer miles under its belt.  Nonetheless, Mark Meadows and Kayleigh McEnany still spoke to the press without masks or apologies for their history of arrogantly heedless behavior.

Zero lessons learned.  Full steam ahead on defending the defiance of public health guidelines, ad nausea.

If this was indeed a morality play, there would be plenty of apt placards to go around emblazoned with Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride for the various scoundrels milling about.  Of course, we all know what Pride comes before, but I would be hesitant to turn this morality play into a tragedy as the tragic hero needs to be a person of noble soul, and, dear reader, I don’t see any suitable match for that quality in the current cast of bad actors.

It’s unlikely that this story will end with the character Death entering the room to deliver his final verdict thanks to the best health care in the world for the President (as opposed to millions of his fellow Americans), but it is also true that Good Deeds won’t have much of a role at all either after Trump’s likely recovery.  However this drama ends, I think the First Lady’s jacket will serve as the best epitaph for this pathetic period of our history with its perfect distillation of arrogance, idiocy, and malicious selfishness.

I Really Don’t Care Do U