Jesus. Four hundred and seven pages of Donald Trump quotes. This is a terrible book to bring out so soon after New Year’s as anyone who has resolved to lose weight, quit smoking, ease back on the booze or do anything else possibly life-lengthening will, after reading all this word spew burn down their nearest gym, tear the filters off a pack of Marlies, chug down a quart of Wild Turkey and seriously consider that what Keith Richards knows about heroin may well be a lesson worth learning. Look at it this way – if all that doesn’t kill you it may at least put you in a coma for the next four or God help us all eight years.

You may assume from that paragraph that I’m Not a Fan and you’d be right. Well, just to define that a bit further, I’m not a fan of the orange-dyed psychopath soon to be inaugurated as the 45th (possibly the last?) President of the Excited States of America. I am however a fan of the Canadian humorist Jules Carlysle whose first book, Dumbass was a similar compilation of the wit(less) and (dubious) wisdom of George W. Bush. It is borderline depressing to realize that in comparison to Trump, Bush’s mangling of the English language – remember how ‘nuclear’ became a three-syllable word? – seems positively quaint and endearing, calming and gentle like the words of a rustic drawn from the pages of Mark Twain or Jean Shepherd. Trump? Trump is a creature from a crumpled and tossed Kafka story that Franz rejected as unbelievable.

“Donald Trump’s words are angry, often lies and without his two-bit Bronx accent, his quotes are not as much fun as Bush’s.”

Carlysle herself is no fan of her subject. From the Introduction of Dumbass Too:

The original DUMBASS was published in 2006, at the height of Dick Cheney’s reign…err…I mean, George W. Bush’s second term. I was angry back then…well, insulted mostly…because the President of the United States was barely able to string together two coherent words. To me, the election of George W Bush was the death knell of the American democratic system….a symbol of everything that was broken or corrupted by a system run amok. But, DUMBASS was funny. Bushisms can be hilarious. It was a fun book, despite what I felt it represented.

But, DUMBASS TOO is not delivering much in the yucks department. Donald Trump’s words are angry, often lies and without his two-bit Bronx accent, his quotes are not as much fun as Bush’s. Trump doesn’t trip over his words very often, only his ego. Even my quips, lean more towards the sarcastic than the funny….and so I only made them when I just couldn’t help myself. Mostly, my comments are to give
context when needed.

Arranged by subject into chapters with titles such as Family Man, Tweeter-in-Chief, and the horrific Pervert-in-Chief, Dumbass Too serves a purpose well beyond scaring the bejeezus out of anyone or anything with a functioning brain and opposable thumbs. When seen in sequence, the thousands of quotes add up to a virtual peek inside a psychologist’s notebook. For after the ersatz glamour of his television career is stripped away, after the brothel-deluxe fashion of his moneyed surroundings are stripped away, after the reflexively bestowed respect of a President is stripped away, what one is left with is evidence of a personality teetering on the border between Nazi and Fool.

You definitely will want to buy Dumbass Too and then, after reading it, seal it in a thick concrete box and bury it deep in the ground. A few thousand years from now, when our descendants dare to peek out from their mine shafts after the radioactivity has half-lived itself down to tolerable levels … they’ll want to know What the Hell Happened?

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