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Accessibility statementSkip to main content Democracy Dies in Darkness SubscribeSign in Advertisement Democracy Dies in Darkness OpinionsEditorialsColumnsGuest opinionsCartoonsLetters to the editorSubmit a guest opinionSubmit a letter OpinionsEditorialsColumnsGuest opinionsCartoonsLetters to the editorSubmit a guest opinionSubmit a letter OPINION POOR DONALD TRUMP CAN’T GET ANYONE TO BELIEVE HIM Is he the one human alive whose words mean absolutely nothing? 4 min 373 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participates in a town hall event on Sept. 17 in Flint, Mich. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) By Alexandra Petri October 15, 2024 at 10:52 a.m. EDT Sometimes, Donald Trump had to admit, it was a little inconvenient being the one human being alive whose words had no meaning whatsoever. He hated ordering food. He would order and order, and the waiters would smile and say, “Yes!” and “It’s refreshing to hear someone finally say that. Any idea of what you’d like?” Sometimes at a doughnut shop he would hold up the line for hours. Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work He would say that he was proud of having gotten the courts to overturn Roe v. Wade, and people would say, “I wonder how he feels about abortion.” He would say he would be a dictator on Day 1, and people would say, “What do you think of these bizarre claims by Donald Trump’s detractors that he would be a dictator on Day 1?” Story continues below advertisement “Fact-checking me is wrong and should be illegal, and I’m going to crack down on my detractors in the media,” he would announce. “I will use the Justice Department against my political opponents!” And then the people in the media would say, “Maybe a second Trump term could be good for us!” Advertisement Sometimes he felt that he was going crazy. The only people who seemed to understand what he meant were dogs and Proud Boys. Sometimes, if he stood at the doughnut shop long enough, one or both of them would bring him exactly the doughnut he had requested, but only sometimes. Follow Alexandra Petri Follow “You look beautiful,” he would tell people, and — nothing. “I hate you,” he would tell other people. “I don’t view you as fully human, and I want to destroy your life in this country!” Those people would say, “I don’t think he meant me,” sometimes with their mouths and sometimes with their ballots. Story continues below advertisement “We’ve got a lot of bad genes in the country!” he would say. He thought he was shouting his meaning very clearly all the time. “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them long,” he said at rallies, about immigrants, and then when he turned on the TV, it turned out that they had no idea whether he would really perform any mass deportations. He wanted to shout. He wanted to scream! Advertisement He knew this did not happen with other people. He observed them at their lives and work. They said words, and people knew that the words meant things. If they said, “I will use the National Guard against my enemies,” people would know that they were threatening Americans and take them seriously. Story continues below advertisement He had noticed that the impact of nothing-he-said-meaning-what-he-thought-it-meant was spreading to other people around him. His former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, kept saying Trump was “fascist to the core,” and everyone seemed not to notice, or at least to think that perhaps that was a normal thing to say about someone. But he knew it wasn’t! Nobody said that about Jimmy Carter. He tried everything he could think of to let people know he was serious. People at the Republican National Convention were given signs to hold up that said “MASS DEPORTATION NOW.” But whenever he promised a mass deportation — even suggesting exactly the law that he would use to round up the immigrants he claimed were gang members — people just nodded and smiled and said, “That’s Donald Trump! Impossible to know whether he poses any danger!” Advertisement “I pose a danger to the constitutional order,” he tried yelling, at rallies. The crowd yelled it with him. He watched the rallies on cable later and learned that he had been making remarks about the economy and so had the crowd. It was impossible. Story continues below advertisement “We have no way of knowing what Donald Trump wants,” everyone would say. “Well, I thought I heard him say what he wanted,” one would suggest, but another would reply, “Nonsense! He couldn’t mean that! That’s not how his words work!” Every night, he went to bed ardently wishing that the things that he said would have meaning, just as other people’s words did. Once he dreamed that he walked into a shop and moved his mouth to the man behind the counter and the man said, “I understand. You want a dozen glazed. Words are all we have to convey meaning to each other, and you just told me what you wanted, and I believe you.” Then he gave a speech and the likely voters who heard it all recoiled in horror. “You want to be in charge of the United States?” they gasped. “Everything you just said was creepy and fascistic!” But then he woke up without so much as a doughnut hole and saw that things were just as muddled as ever. Share 373 Comments More from Opinions HAND CURATED * Opinion|The Equalizer: Sarah Vowell on the National Archives October 8, 2024 Opinion|The Equalizer: Sarah Vowell on the National Archives October 8, 2024 * Opinion|The Cyber Sleuth: Geraldine Brooks on the Internal Revenue Service October 1, 2024 Opinion|The Cyber Sleuth: Geraldine Brooks on the Internal Revenue Service October 1, 2024 * Opinion|The Number: John Lanchester on the Bureau of Labor Statistics September 24, 2024 Opinion|The Number: John Lanchester on the Bureau of Labor Statistics September 24, 2024 View 3 more stories NewsletterSundays The Week in Ideas Thought-provoking opinions you may have missed amid the news of the week. Sign up Subscribe to comment and get the full experience. 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