“Vanity Fair: In the past month you've called former president Donald Trump a liar, a coward, a loser, a lonely mirror hog, a spoiled child, a baby, and a puppet of Putin.
Chris Christie: I think you’re missing a few.”
Have you ever listened to a politician speak and for a split-second possessed a quick-and-dirty, undeniable urge to smack him in the face for no good reason?
Not because you don’t like him personally. Not because of something particular he’s said. Not because of any rational, conscious motivation. But because an intrusive, atavistic impulse rises off the brain as though one is daydreaming and suggests, “Smack that fool!”
I would have answered this odd question in the negative.
Until yesterday.
For it was yesterday, while watching His Rotundity — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — do his best to destroy Donald Trump with half-baked insults and feckless appeals to principle that my subconscious mind was seething, pleading, and even praying for someone, anyone to make his face wiggle, wiggle, wiggle in the wake of a firm whacking.
Of course, I would never actually advocate such an action — that would be barbaric — but the daydreaming mind wants what it wants, and in a spirit of contempt, my subconscious mind wanted to see a slight wincing on the face of this power-hungry fool. I also desired, in a spirit of good fun and feline curiosity, to test the proposition that the plumper among us can not only twerk with their buttocks but with their chubby cheeks upstairs.
Please, do not construe my slap-happy impulse as some sort of shaming of Christie’s or any other portly person’s girth. I call Christie “His Rotundity” out of love. If the nickname was fit enough for John Adams in the 1796 contest for the presidency, it certainly fits Christie like a stretched-out glove in this presidential race.
Now, if I may put on my political consulting hat, I think Christie made a horrible mistake in losing as much weight as he has since his 2013 “weight-loss” surgery. Ninety pounds, ladies and gentlemen! Ninety pounds!
Congratulations on the weight-loss, Chris, but why pretend to be someone you are not? It’s quite some time since Americans could vote for someone who truly represents and resembles themselves. Modern-day Americans love their identity politics, and your election to the presidency could be of massive symbolic weight for fat bodies and fat activism in American society.
Put simply, America needs a fat president.
Let’s make fat the new black! For far too long, we have ushered into political power a parade of slightly fit fools. Skinny has had its day.
Just imagine! The election of President Chris Christie could mean freedom for the pudgy, liberation for the paunchy, deliverance of the porky, emancipation of the pot-bellied, and ultimately, salvation for all those willing to atone on their knees at the Church of Marshmallows, Cakes, Strudels, Bacon, and Pies.
Some may suggest Donald Trump already accomplished this feat for the obese. Of course, people who suggest this are probably skinny partisan morons – bean poles who clearly do not understand how fat, in fact, Christie remains. Even after shedding 90 pounds (or in less abstract terms, he shed what amounts to a full grown Labrador Retriever), His Rotundity is still much more representative of fat America than Trump could ever dream of being.
“Breaking news… I have struggled with my weight for 20 years,” the “New York Post” quoted Christie as saying after Trump’s team shared a comically edited video of Christie’s recent campaign launch showing the former New Jersey governor at an all-you-can-eat buffet bar holding a plate of food.
“What I haven’t struggled with is my character. I’ll put that up against Donald Trump’s any day. If that’s the best he’s got, then he’s lost his fastball,” Christie continued, “When a spoiled baby misbehaves, you send them to their room, not the White House.”
Thus far on the campaign trail Christie has called Trump “a liar, a coward, a loser, a lonely mirror hog, a spoiled child, a baby, and a puppet of Putin,” while also cheering on special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictments of Trump.
It seems even those who claim to want to elevate the character of national debate and restore faith in the rule of law and other national institutions can’t seem to shake their baser urges to respond in kind to Trump’s wise-cracks and jeers, constantly insulting and metaphorically smacking the former president as they cheer on the prospect of seeing him behind bars.
“It is most likely that by the time we get on the debate stage (on) August 23, the front-runner will be out on bail in four different jurisdictions: Florida, Washington, Georgia, and New York,” Christie recently told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
If Trump is put in prison by the administrative state, he wouldn’t be the first man to run for office from behind bars.
Indeed, Congressman Matthew Lyon — who once called President John Adams “His Rotundity” and subsequently was the first person prosecuted under the Sedition Act of 1798 for his free speech against America’s second president — ran for Congress from prison and won.
Who knows? Maybe Trump faces a future similar to Lyon’s.
Trump’s re-election, from prison or otherwise, would certainly be a smack in the face to the American oligarchy and the Washington uniparty.
But that’s probably just another involuntary populist daydream that will never be a reality.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances as well as any feedback, please email newsandviews931@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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