Donald Trump is currently running for president a third time, but you wouldn’t know it. Instead of laying out his game plan, he’s hawked much-mocked NFTs. Instead of swanning about the nation, holding endless rallies, he’s barely gone anywhere. A new report from New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi, which includes interviews with the big guy himself and many current and former associates, that the former most powerful man on the planet now lives a very “small” life that sounds scarily like one of his favorite movies, Sunset Boulevard.
As per the report, since announcing his presidency last month, Trump has “barely set foot outside the perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.” That’s not all: “For 28 days, in fact, he has not left the state of Florida at all.”
So what does Trump do all day? Not much, as was reported last week in a different, also unflattering article. “He just goes, plays golf, comes back, and f*cks off. He has retreated to the golf course and to Mar-a-Lago,” one advisor told Nuzzi. “His world has gotten much smaller. His world is so, so small.”
Trump doesn’t handle boredom well, and that — combined with the absence of Jared and Ivanka, who used to temper his worst instincts — is how you get his infamous Kanye-Fuentes dinner.
“He doesn’t have anything else to do,” an advisor said. “What else can he do? Why did he see Kanye? He wants to be relevant and wants the limelight. He’s thirsty.”
Details of his campaign are scarce and vague. It may not even have an official headquarters yet, though when it does it will probably be in Palm Beach, near Mar-a-Lago (of course). But so far, his campaign — and his life — seem small, not the least because few of the people who helped his first two campaign are on board this time, including his children.
“There’s nobody around him who wants him to do it,” said an adviser. “Forget Jared and Ivanka — Don Jr. doesn’t want him to do it! The only person who wants him to do it is Eric’s wife, Lara, because she’s so ambitious.”
It’s a long, ambitious profile, stacked with damning quotes from others (and from Trump himself). Perhaps the most chilling sections concern his love of the aforementioned Sunset Boulevard, about Norma Desmond (played by actual former “silent” era star Gloria Swanson), a former Hollywood screen star who’s holed up in her decaying mansion people only with a few sycophants who keep up the illusion that she’s still got it. Trump watches it “all the time.” It’s one of the only things he can watch, says press secretary Stephanie Grisham, without checking his phone or flipping channels. Nuzzi ends her profile by discussing its conclusion:
Do you remember how Sunset Boulevard ends? Norma Desmond shoots and kills the writer [played by William Holden], a fraudster who has fallen under the spell of her charisma, just as he summons the courage to walk away. Her sycophantic butler flips. There are no enablers left to protect her. A final fantasy, a fake movie set, is staged in the mansion’s entryway. The lights go on, and she is lured before the cameras, where the police are waiting to haul her away.
For Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard provided something of a comeback. Norma Desmond wasn’t so lucky, and Trump might not be either.
(Via NY Mag)