{"id":57199,"date":"2018-01-07T20:46:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-07T20:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=57199"},"modified":"2018-01-08T00:33:56","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T00:33:56","slug":"uday-and-qusay-trump-traces-back-to-bill-maher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=57199","title":{"rendered":"Uday and Qusay Trump motif traces back to Bill Maher"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — more striking examples of form in the news, “pressed down and flowing over” ]
\n.<\/p>\n

Michael Wolff<\/strong>‘s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House<\/a> has been quoted extensively, but one accusation struck me forcibly, both because of its viciousnes and because it has a formal property of double, parallel construction. The comparison was between Trump<\/strong>‘s sons Donald Jr.<\/strong> and Eric<\/strong>, and Saddam<\/strong>‘s sons, Uday<\/strong> and Qusay<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Don Jr. and Eric \u2014 behind their backs known to Trump insiders as Uday and Qusay, after the sons of Saddam Hussein \u2014 wondered if there couldn’t somehow be two parallel White House structures, one dedicated to their father’s big-picture views, personal appearance and salesmanship, and the other concerned with day-to-day management issues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Crudely but vividly put in a Pinterest graphgc<\/a> [I’ve reduced its scale, but you get the idea]:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

Under the header, Maher Rips Trump Sons \u2014 Calls Them \u2018Uday and Qusay<\/a>\u2019, Breitbart<\/strong> reported in September 2016 what seems to me most likely the original source of Wolff’s unsourced remark:<\/p>\n

On the Friday airing of HBO\u2019s \u201cReal Time,\u201d host Bill Maher slammed the two sons of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump.<\/p>\n

Maher partially cited a Trump quote from his 2008 book, \u201cThink Big,\u201d which he used as a segue to attack the Trump children.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump also once said, \u2019Sometimes people will come into my office and they will be great. They will look great, they\u2019ll sound great, they dress beautifully. Everything is great. Then after you hire them they turn out to be morons,\u2019 which explains his sons Uday and Qusay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean Trump, Sr. at the what House is bad enough without these two American psychos putting plastic over the furniture so that they can axe murder prostitutes while discussing Phil Collins,\u201d he continued.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Breitbart, then, Maher<\/strong> would seem to be the ur-source — with just a hint that Trump himself may be partially responsible at that:<\/p>\n

which explains his sons Uday and Qusay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Trump sourcing strikes me as so attenuated as to be worthless, but the tie to Maher seems undeniable — whether it’s Wolff’s only source or not.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of other items in the news which have caught my eye on account of their formal propeties. Here, from Real clear Politics<\/a>, is the first:<\/p>\n

President Trump said there was no collusion between himself on the Russians, but there was collusion between Hillary Clinton and the Russians and the Democratic National Committee and the Russians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That strrikes me as a clear instance of what psychologists term projection<\/strong> — Ari Melber<\/strong> writes in his intro to psychologist Dr. Justin Frank<\/strong>, who discusses the issue with him:<\/p>\n

Trump uses ‘projection’ as a defense tactic<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump is an expert at projecting his own faults onto his political rivals as a defense mechanism<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are plenty of other arguable examples of Trump’s likely instinctive use of projection, but to my mind the most powerful are those that use the same words or phrases — eg: “collusion between [self, other] and the Russians” — in a short span to contrast the denial [against self] and accusation {against the other].<\/p>\n

It’s a widely-found psychological trick — and a beautiful formal setup. The saying about “the pot calling the kettle black” summarizes it nicely, as Ari Melber obviously knows:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And dig this example:<\/p>\n

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How meta: Trump's complaint about @ABFalecbaldwin<\/a>'s perfectly hilarious parody of Trump is like a perfectly hilarious parody of Trump. https:\/\/t.co\/oKG2lVvXqv<\/a><\/p>\n

— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) October 16, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n