Monday, November 03, 2025

ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AS GOOD-LOOKING AS DONALD TRUMP, ACCORDING TO DONALD TRUMP

That was a weird moment in Donald Trump's 60 Minutes interview:
In a wide-ranging interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that aired Nov. 2 ... Norah O'Donnell asked Trump what he thought of comparisons to [Zohran] Mamdani, 34, as a left-wing version of the 79-year-old Republican president. They are both seen as charismatic leaders breaking old rules.

"Well, I think I'm a much better looking person than him," Trump responded.


Trump does this a lot. In August of last year, Trump said at a campaign appearance that he was better-looking than Kamala Harris.
Trump then goes after a “Ronald Reagan speechwriter,” presumptively Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. Noonan has written about Harris’s appearance in recent weeks, saying that, “Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce: radiance.”

“She said one thing that got me,” Trump began, seemingly talking about Noonan’s columns. “She said Kamala has one big advantage, she’s a very beautiful woman. She’s a beautiful woman.” The crowd boos.

“But I say that I’m much better looking than her. Much better. Much better. I’m a better looking person than Kamala,” Trump continued, to cheers.
He also said it to Elon Musk:
... Trump claimed he was "better looking" than the vice president, after previously calling her "beautiful," during a conversation with Elon Musk last week.

"Don't ever call a woman beautiful, because that'll be the end of your political career, please." Trump began, later going on to say, "But I say that I am much better looking. I'm a better-looking person than Kamala."

"They said, 'No, her biggest advantage is that she's a beautiful woman.' I'm going, huh? I never thought of that. I'm better looking than she is."
In 2018, during Democrat Conor Lamb's successful campaign in a special House election in Pennsylvania, Trump said this about Lamb at a campaign appearance for his opponent, Rick Saccone:
"And Conor Lamb, Lamb the Sham, right? Lamb the Sham. He's trying to act like a Republican, so he gets—He won't give me one vote," Trump said. "Look, I don't know him. He looks like a nice guy. I hear he's nice looking. I think I'm better looking than him. I do. I do. I do, and he's slightly younger than me...."
In November 2015, Trump said he was better looking than one of his opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, Marco Rubio.
Trump made the comments on Bloomberg Television's "With All Due Respect," referencing the media fawning over Rubio, who had a successful performance at last week's Republican debate.

"I watched someone on [MSNBC's 'Morning Joe'] this morning...He's fawning over him. He says how handsome he is," Trump said.

"I don’t know, I think I’m better looking than he is."
And Trump said this, in the third person, about billionaire Mark Cuban, a frequent Trump critic:



This message was even worked into a staged shouting match between Trump and World Wrestling's Vince McMahon in 2007:
"I'm taller than you, I'm better looking than you—and I will kick your ass!"
Trump does a lot of self-soothing on the subject of his looks. He likes telling himself he's handsome:


And he likes it when other people (or bots) call him handsome.


In 2018, Annie Karni reported:
Tall and broad-shouldered, Trump sees himself as a leading man and has told friends in recent years: “Can you believe I’m better looking in my 70s than when I was 35.”
Occasionally he dials it down, saying only that he once was handsome:



A thought I had while reading the transcript of Trump's 60 Minutes interview is that self-soothing is how Trump gets through the day, and it's also how the Republican Party maintains its grip on its voter base. Trump continually tells himself that he's the best:
I rebuilt the military during my first term. My first term was a tremendous success. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.

But my second term is blowing it away. It's blowing it away when you look at the numbers, the stock market, the jobs. Look at the job numbers, how good they've been. And, again, I have costs down.
And his enemies are evil:
Joe Biden was the worst president in the history of our country. We had the worst inflation, we had the worst of everything....

If [Democrats] get into power and someday I guess they will. Who knows? It's hard to believe when they have men in women's sports, open borders, open everything, a transgender for everyone....

... from the standpoint of winning is, they have the worst policy of-- it's hard to believe. Think of it. Open borders, men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody.
Trump's self-soothing habit and the right-wing propaganda machine work well together because they work the same way: At every point where a reasonable person might say, Maybe this is a mistake and we should take a different course, the response is a series of hyperbolic claims of brilliance, accompanied by equally hyperbolic claims of the calamity that would result from abandoning the current course.

America sucks right now, and most Americans understand that. Trump's poll numbers are beginning to plummet. A majority of Americans think we're on the wrong track. But Trump soothes himself, and the GOP base is soothed with him, as the Republican propaganda operation repeats Trump's claims as fact or allows them to stand unchallenged, as 60 Minutes largely did last night,
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