As Mr. Carter became the national scapegoat, the qualities that once made him the antidote to Richard Nixon — his piety, simplicity, openness, gentleness — could now be coded as impotence. (This is a cartoon; but Mr. Trump thinks in cartoons.) It was this transition that helped turn “Trump into Trump” — from a comparatively minor fish in the Manhattan real estate pond into the world’s greatest popinjay. Mr. Trump, of course, may be so impulsive as to lack a coherent self. True to form, Mr. Carter began his speech that night by deriding the “isolated world of Washington.”

Source: International New York Times January 11, 2020 15:00 UTC