I have made jokes before about TЯump's fake masculinity: the makeup, the shoe-lift rumors, the girdle and Spanx jokes, the whole costume of dominance wrapped around one of the neediest public men in American life.
I was saying some version of this years ago, including in an October 2020 post about the people who call others “soy boys” while bowing before the “manliness” of DT. But the real issue was never cosmetic. The costume is funny because the character underneath it is so obvious.
Masculinity, at least in any traditional sense worth defending, is not loudness. It is not cruelty. It is not bragging, grievance, or the ability to turn every room into a referendum on your own importance. A man is measured by steadiness, restraint, courage, responsibility, and the capacity to honor something larger than himself.
That is why the Fernando Mendoza story is so revealing.
Mendoza skipped Indiana’s White House visit because he had football obligations. That should have been the whole story. A normal president would say, “He had practice,” praise the team, and move on. TЯump could not do that. He had to narrate the emotional politics of the absence. Mendoza called. Mendoza was nice. Mendoza was a fan. TЯump was “not happy, but that’s OK.” And if Mendoza had skipped because he disliked him, he said he would not have mentioned him at all.
That is the whole pathology of the man in miniature. The missing quarterback becomes a loyalty drama.
TЯump repeatedly converts ceremonial space into a mirror, as he cannot handle decentering. A ceremony is supposed to point outward—to a team, a military unit, a civic tradition, a dead hero, a group of children, a religious gathering. In his tiny hands, the ceremony bends inward. The question becomes: Do they like me? Did they thank me? Are they loyal? Are they giving me the respect I deserve?
Once you see the pattern, it appears everywhere.
At the CIA Memorial Wall, a sacred space honoring fallen officers became another stage for crowd-size grievance and media resentment. At the Boy Scout Jamboree, an event about youth, service, and citizenship became a rally about crowd size, Obama, Hillary Clinton, fake news, and the 2016 electoral map. At the Lima Army Tank Plant, workers were told, “You better love me,” because he claimed credit for keeping the plant open. Then he complained that John McCain’s funeral had not produced a thank-you note. Even death did not end the loyalty ledger.
At the National Prayer Breakfast, a ritual supposedly about humility became a revenge scene after impeachment. Prayer itself was converted into accusation.
This is not strength. It is need wearing a red tie.
Real strength can endure ambiguity. It can go unpraised. It can let the room be about someone else. It can honor the dead without demanding applause, speak to children without needing crowd validation, and stand before workers without turning them into emotional debtors.
The Mendoza moment is funny because it is small. But that is also why it is clean. One quarterback misses one ceremony, and TЯump cannot leave the silence alone. He has to fill it with loyalty, reassurance, and self-protection.
The office asks him to honor something larger than himself. Again and again, he treats that larger thing as a mirror.
