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“ ‘This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like.’ ”
That’s George Will, the conservative political commentator once hailed as “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America” by The Wall Street Journal, in a serious takedown of the Trump administration posted this week in the Washington Post.
Will is well known for his use of flowery language — he once referred to the vice president as “the oleaginous Mike Pence” — and he didn’t hold back in his latest op-ed.
“Because of his incontinent use of it, the rhetorical mustard that the president slathers on every subject has lost its tang,” Will wrote. “The entertainer has become a bore” and “the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office.”
He added that the U.S. is in a downward spiral that has not yet reached its nadir, “but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected.”
For his part, Trump’s not a huge fan of Will, either:
Along with Will’s sharp criticism of how the president’s team has handled the coronavirus pandemic, he also blasted the “gangster regime” for letting Roger Stone off as a quid pro quo.
“Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not ‘roll on’ Donald Trump,’” he wrote in his op-ed. “By commuting his sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying.”
As for Will’s use of big words, let’s test your knowledge:
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