Donald Trump: "Mind-numbingly, epically incompetent"

Lennart Gabel

The New York Times throws a bouquet to Graydon Carter, who's retiring as editor of Vanity Fair, one of those magazines where the table of contents is on page 30. But under Carter's regime it always had something worth reading, if you could find it. 

The story in the Times includes this tidbit:

He talked his way into a job at Time in the late 1970s before cofounding Spy[magazine] in 1986. Spy took special glee in attacking Mr. Trump, whom the magazine memorably deemed a “short-fingered vulgarian.” (The insult stuck: just last week, Mr. Trump referred to his “too big” hands during a visit to Houston.) Among the magazine’s pranks was to mail checks of smaller and smaller quantities to celebrities and wait to see who was avaricious enough to cash them; Mr. Trump redeemed a check for 13 cents.

Earlier this summer Carter shared his opinion of Donald Trump:

The word “trump” formerly was a verb used in polite bridge and whist circles. Trump, the man, is now up there with Hercules and Sisyphus with his own branded adjective. I’m not completely sure what it stands for. 

But when it finally settles into the lexicon, I’m certain that it will be a disconcerting combination of petulant, preening, ignorant, shameless, vulgar, paranoid, vainglorious, reckless, imperious, impulsive, unhinged, callous, corrosive, narcissistic, intemperate, juvenile, disloyal, venal, chaotic, squalid—what have I forgotten? Oh, yes!—and just mind-numbingly, epically incompetent.

As the cliche goes, every cloud has a silver lining---and maybe every category 5 hurricane does, too. Consider this from Michael Daly: 

The most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic is headed straight for the beach houses of [climate change]deniers Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and the Koch brothers.

If I was ever inclined to believe in a divinity---and I've been an atheist since childhood---it would be if hurricane Irma surgically obliterated the beach houses of those folks and left everything else in Florida intact.