The Angry President.

I've been noticing so many news stories reporting that Trump is angry:

1. "Internal chaos at the White House, Trump angry" (MSNBC March 1, 2018): "President Trump say [sic] he is in a bad place -- mad as hell about the internal chaos and the sense that things are unraveling."

2. "The angry past 24 hours in Trump’s fight with his own attorney general, explained" (Vox March 1, 2018): "President Donald Trump’s public feud with Attorney General Jeff Sessions keeps getting uglier — and may soon lead to the unceremonious ouster of one of the president’s earliest and most enthusiastic supporters."

3. "Trump was angry and ‘unglued’ when he started a trade war, officials say" (NBC News March 2, 2018): "According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team. On Wednesday evening, the president became 'unglued,' in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind."

4. "Think the White House is in chaos now? Just wait" (CNN, Chris Cillizza, March 2, 2018): "The descriptions coming out of the White House describing Trump's state of mind over the last few days all paint a picture of a frustrated and angry executive who feels more and more isolated in his own White House." And maybe that's the way Trump likes it... "President Donald Trump has, throughout his life, embraced chaos as a life philosophy. (He's like Littlefinger in that way)"... and I seem to need to watch a "Game of Thrones" clip to understand the President's psyche.

5. It's nothing new. Look at this from last May, in Slate: "Why Is Trump So Angry?/The president’s uncontrollable rage powers his ruthlessness—and his ineptitude." The illustration artist seems to have been told, just show Trump as angry as you possibly can. He's got pointed teeth arrayed in a circular formation around the circumference of his gaping mouth. His eyes are black. What color are his eyes really? Blue, right? That question was weirdly hard to Google. I kept getting things about the whiteness of the skin around his eyes — the "reverse raccoon" look that might be highlighter makeup and might be from using eye protection while tanning. And I stumbled into "What is going on with Donald Trump’s eyes?" in The New Republic 2 years ago. The young TNR writer — who seems never to have heard of the way older people tend to need reading glasses — questions Trump's fitness for office based on the large size of the font in his printed-out notes. But, yeah, Trump's eyes are blue. And Slate (racistly?) made them black, because he's angry. Imagine if they'd made his skin black to convey that he's angry!

So I'm thinking, what about President Obama? Was he portrayed as angry? No, Obama had to be the never-gets-angry man, perhaps because he actually did not get angry (behind the scenes or in public) but perhaps because advisers and the media believed they had to mollify Americans who were believed to harbor racial stereotypes.

"Obama's Anger Management Problem/As the cool-headed president says goodbye tonight, one lesson from Trump: He should have picked more enemies" (January 10, 2017 Politico): "The best comedy about President Obama has been the series of Key & Peele sketches featuring Luther, the 'anger translator' who screams the unexpurgated thoughts the first black president would scream if he weren’t so chill, so deliberate, and so unwilling to scare white people.... And if you had to pinpoint one specific thing he’s done badly, you might start with his perplexing failure to get riled up about rile-worthy behavior, his no-drama reluctance to pick defining public fights. Obama has an anger over-management problem...."

That's after his party lost the election. Maybe the media wished they'd portrayed him as less bland, more fiery. Well, there was that one time.... "Angry President Obama Tears Into Donald Trump Like Never Before" (NBC June 15, 2016):



Chris Cillizza explained that in "Why President Obama is so angry about Donald Trump’s ‘radical Islam’ attack." I'm thinking maybe Obama was worried that his party was in danger of losing the White House and that he actually had to activate himself to generate support for Hillary Clinton. Cillizza says Obama genuinely disapproves of the "radical Islam" rhetoric and really hates having to do things "purely for the sake of politics."

Obama liked to tell us he was "mellow." Here he is in 2015 at the White House Correspondents Dinner:



Now, clearly, the press was much more favorable to Obama, and I think they portrayed him as exceedingly slow to anger because that's the way he and his people wanted him to look, but it probably had some truth to it. The press is so hostile to Trump, and they seem to be openly attacking him with reports of his anger — sometimes making him look like a scary rageaholic. But there must be some truth in it. Maybe the distortion is mostly in failing to comment on Trump's full array of emotions. He's an outwardly expressive guy, often joyful and ebullient. Another distortion is the failure to speak in positive terms when the anger is justified and properly targeted and a good and balanced part of the psyche of a human being.