I generally can’t go a week without missing Gawker and some of their insider-y jokes. One of my favorites was Gawker’s obsession with Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter. Noonan has been daft for years, if not decades, and her “hot takes” of the week are usually amusingly out-of-touch (like that time she heard a Latina speak) if not downright offensive. Noonan is also a regular on the roundtable discussions on Sunday morning shows, and she’s considered one of the most respected of “old guard” voices of the Republican party, even if she’s usually completely wrong in her analysis. So… if you’re a Republican and you’ve “lost” Peggy Noonan’s favor, most Republicans get worried. Donald Trump has lost Noonan’s favor. From her WSJ column today:

The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.

He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.

Half the president’s tweets show utter weakness. They are plaintive, shrill little cries, usually just after dawn. “It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their president.” The brutes. Actually they’ve been laboring to be loyal to him since Inauguration Day. “The Republicans never discuss how good their health care bill is.” True, but neither does Mr. Trump, who seems unsure of its content. In just the past two weeks, of the press, he complained: “Every story/opinion, even if should be positive, is bad!” Journalists produce “highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting.” They are “DISTORTING DEMOCRACY.” They “fabricate the facts.”

It’s all whimpering accusation and finger-pointing: Nobody’s nice to me. Why don’t they appreciate me?

His public brutalizing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t strong, cool and deadly; it’s limp, lame and blubbery. “Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” he tweeted this week. Talk about projection.

The way American men used to like seeing themselves, the template they most admired, was the strong silent type celebrated in classic mid-20th century films—Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Henry Fonda. In time the style shifted, and we wound up with the nervous and chattery. More than a decade ago the producer and writer David Chase had his Tony Soprano mourn the disappearance of the old style: “What they didn’t know is once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings they wouldn’t be able to shut him up!” The new style was more like that of Woody Allen. His characters couldn’t stop talking about their emotions, their resentments and needs. They were self-justifying as they acted out their cowardice and anger.

But he was a comic. It was funny. He wasn’t putting it out as a new template for maleness. Donald Trump now is like an unfunny Woody Allen.

[From WSJ]

I’ll say it: Noonan is right. Donald Trump is a sniveling wimp, a coward, a drama queen, a pathetic excuse for a human being. He is the personification of toxic masculinity, and yet it’s turned on it’s head, because every word from his mouth shows how thin that veneer really is. He’s too weaksauce to fire his own attorney general, so he just whines about Jeff Sessions constantly, like a petty little Mean Girl trying to bully Sessions into resigning. Trump is too weaksauce to actually shuffle his White House staffers so he hires The Mooch to be his enforcer. When are people going to realize that? Donald Trump is too weak to even stand up to Reince Priebus. Seriously.

Photos courtesy of Getty.