Governor Mills vs. Trump

 

Donald Trump spent the day throwing a tantrum at the Governor of Maine because she refused to kneel before his latest ridiculous executive order banning transgender women from playing in women’s sports. It was classic Trump—loud, petulant, and so obviously desperate to be seen as a tough guy that it had the opposite effect.

He tried to wield federal funding like a bludgeon, warning Governor Janet Mills that her state would suffer if she didn’t comply. She met his threats with a casual, “We’ll see you in court,” a response so perfect, so effortlessly dismissive, that you could almost hear the air hissing out of Trump’s ego like a punctured parade balloon.

The man has built his entire persona on the idea that he is the world’s most dominant alpha male—an image that falls apart the moment he faces a challenge he can’t simply buy off or shout down. He is a bully, but more importantly, he is a coward. 

When he’s on the attack, he swaggers and postures like a professional wrestling villain, but when confronted by someone who won’t back down, he folds faster than a cheap lawn chair. His idea of masculinity is a bad 1980s action movie—loud, brash, and entirely built on illusion.

Trump isn’t angry because Mills disagrees with him; he’s angry because she isn’t afraid of him. That’s what really burns. He thrives on fear, on the illusion of unchecked power, and when that illusion is shattered—when someone like Mills stands toe-to-toe with him and refuses to budge—he doesn’t know what to do. So he sputters, he threatens, and he lashes out in every direction, hoping something will stick. It never does.

Meanwhile, JD Vance was weeping into a CPAC microphone about how America is turning men into “androgynous idiots.” “Our culture wants men to suppress every masculine urge,” he cried, no doubt wishing he was being cradled in the warm embrace of a father figure who actually loves him. 

It was a speech meant to conjure up the image of some glorious lost era of chest-thumping American manhood, but instead, it only reinforced what anyone with a functioning brain already knew: JD Vance has no idea what masculinity actually means.

These two buffoons love to cosplay as warriors, champions of testosterone in a world gone soft. But let’s take a look at what they’re actually doing. Trump, a man who dodged the draft because of imaginary bone spurs, is threatening to withhold federal funding from Maine because its governor won’t bow to his demands. 

And JD Vance, a man who once wrote an entire book about the dangers of sucking up to elites, is now licking Trump’s boots so hard you’d think they were made of chocolate.

Masculinity, real masculinity, is about strength, courage, and integrity. It’s about standing up for what’s right, even when it’s hard. It’s about protecting the vulnerable, not attacking them for political gain. It’s about facing adversity head-on, not throwing a fit when someone tells you “No.” By that measure, Trump and JD Vance are about as masculine as a wet paper towel.

Trump can puff out his chest and scream at governors all he wants, but at the end of the day, he’s just a blustering coward who folds under the slightest pressure. JD can cry about the decline of masculinity, but no real man spends his days groveling at the feet of a guy who wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire.

The irony is that the people they’re attacking—women who stand their ground, LGBTQ people fighting for equality—are showing more guts, more resilience, more true strength than either of these pathetic frauds could ever muster.

Trump and JD don’t represent masculinity. They represent the weak, whimpering, flailing desperation of men who know, deep down, that they are frauds. And nothing is more pathetic than a man who has to constantly remind you how strong he is.

from Fear and Loathing