By Bob Gaydos

Catherine Lucey and Donald Trump

You can tell a lot about people by the way they speak, their choice of words.

Donald Trump has told us he has “the best words”. He has also demonstrated on many occasions that he is willing to use a lot of them in succession to no meaningful message. This suggests, at least superficially, that he is superficial, pretending to be what he is not or, worse, that he is not pretending but really believes what he says about magnets and windmills and shopping at grocery stores.

But this week he gave us a look inside the real man with just four words:

— “Quiet Piggy!”

— “Things happen.”

They were uttered on two separate occasions, both times to female journalists with whom Trump was more than a bit annoyed. Each had dared to ask the important question of the moment, in public and in front of witnesses.

Trump can’t handle this approach. He either explodes, as in the first case, or he lies, as in the second. Both replies were pathetically inappropriate, infuriating and embarrassing for having been uttered by the person occupying the office of President of the United States.

But then, that’s what we’ve come to expect — and far too many still accept — from Trump.

The “Quiet Piggy!” insult was directed at Catherine Lucey of Bloomberg News last Friday aboard Air Force One. As part of a group of reporters, she was asking him why he had not yet released the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“Quiet!” Trump barked. “Quiet Piggy.”

Trump’s well-documented misogynist attitude towards women in a nutshell. If they’re too smart and not appropriately deferential, insult their appearance. He’s done it before. Pathetic.

Mary Bruce

The “Things happen” remark was his nonchalant dismissal of Mary Bruce of ABC News who was asking Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, about the killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Khashoggi had written articles critical of the ruling Saudi family and the CIA concluded that the prince now sitting next to Trump in the Oval Office had ordered the murder.

No matter to Trump, whose family has several financial deals in the works with the Saudis. He said the prince knew nothing about the killing and scolded the reporter for asking an embarrassing question of “our guest.“

“A lot of people didn’t like the gentleman that you’re talking about,” Trump said. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

Things happen. Death by dismemberment. The body parts placed in acid. No biggie. A journalist working for an American newspaper. A murder condemned around the world as an attack on the free press. The CIA says the “friend“ sitting next to Trump gave the order. Trump blamed the victim and called the question “insubordinate,” as if the reporter worked for him. He also called her a terrible reporter working for a terrible company and wondered about lifting their license, which is par for the course.

It’s difficult to try to come up with new ways to describe what an insult Trump is to the presidency and what a stain he is leaving on the idea of American democracy. Forget American exceptionalism.

And yes, as an American and a journalist, I do take this personally. I have lived through the presidencies of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Biden without ever feeling that any of them, faults though they may have had and policies with which I may have disagreed, had so little regard for what the office of president stands for to the average American. Even Nixon. He had the decency to resign.

Decency is not included in Trump‘s “best words” vocabulary.

Maybe the Epstein thing will finally get this little piggy. Hey, things happen.