As have thousands, I have written often of Trump's inhumanity; his utter obliviousness to others' pain, his soullessness, his clinical solipsism. And then there's his profound ignorance, and unwillingness to learn; not to mention his wholesale lack of principles. I could write volumes on this pathetic little man's vacancy of anything human, but nothing I wrote could ever match Roger Cohen's simple description of an Oval Office scene earlier this month: "Trump’s Inhumanity Before a Victim of Rape." With apologies to Cohen, I have reprinted a significant part of his column below.
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I cannot forget Trump’s recent treatment of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her campaign to end mass rape in war. The Islamic State, or ISIS, forced Murad into sexual slavery when it overran Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in 2014. Murad lost her mother and six brothers, slaughtered by ISIS.
She now lives in Germany, and has been unable to return home, a point she made in her July 17 White House meeting with Trump. "We cannot go back if we cannot protect our dignity, our family," she said.
Allow me to render the scene in the present tense. Trump sits there at his desk, an uncomprehending, unsympathetic, uninterested cardboard dummy. He looks straight ahead for much of the time, not at her, his chin jutting in his best effort at a Mussolini pose. He cannot heave his bulk from the chair for this brave young woman. He cannot look at her.
Every now and again, in a disdainful manner, he swivels his head toward her and other survivors of religious persecution. When Murad says, "They killed my mom, my six brothers," Trump responds: "Where are they now?"
Where are they now???
"They are in the mass graves in Sinjar," Murad says. She is poised and courageous throughout in her effort to communicate her story in the face of Trump’s complete, blank indifference.
Why this extraordinary attitude from Trump? Well, at a guess, Murad is a woman, and she is brown, and he is incapable of empathy, and the Trump administration recently watered down a United Nations Security Council resolution on protecting victims of sexual violence in conflict.
At the mention of Sinjar, Trump’s unbelievable response is, "I know the area very well, you’re talking about. It’s tough."
Let’s play how-well-does-President-Trump-know-Sinjar? It’s a wildly implausible game.
Toward the end of the exchange, Trump asks Murad about her Nobel Prize. "That’s incredible," he says. "They gave it to you for what reason?"
"For what reason?" Murad asks, suppressing with difficulty her incredulity that nobody has briefed the president. Nobody can brief this president. It’s pointless. He knows everything. "I made it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women," she says.
"Oh really?" says Trump. "Is that right?"
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Even the most evil fictionalization of this benighted barbarian could never overstate his wicked reality.