(First diary, please be kind.)
My father is Donald Trump.
Metaphorically, of course — to my knowledge, we share no DNA. But like Donald Trump, my dad, is a middle-aged white man who “doesn’t hate black people, just poor people” and refers to his daughter’s house in a (previously gentrified) neighborhood as “the ghetto”. My husband has said, “I hope not all women have PTSD like you do whenever Trump opens his mouth.”
My Dad is a businessman, though not as successful as Trump, whom he idolizes. He likes to brag that he could have gotten his MBA at Wharton — if he wanted to, which he didn’t, because even Donald Trump could build an empire without that cred. I’ve seen him massage the tax code for his purposes, claiming “the only people who pay taxes are those who don’t know the system”.
As children, when my siblings or I would complain about his doing something awful, he would say, “So sue me. No, please, really, sue me. I will keep your lawsuit tied up in the courts for years and make money from it.”
I grew up in the Oregon Trail Generation, in a city close enough to Atlantic City to be raised on prime-time tales of Donald Trump’s treatment of Ivana, his affairs with Marla Maples, and his comments about dating Ivanka or talking about the size of Tiffany’s tits. It was scandalous, but not particularly surprising. I experienced similar things almost day by day. My dad would often remind us that “Trump’s a pig. I’m a pig. All men are pigs,” in an off-hand way. He cheated on my mother with each pregnancy (“She’s disgusting. I can’t stand to look at her fat body,” he would say). He would tell my sister that she was “hot,” and demean her when she failed to keep her hair dyed blonde or gained a pound or two.
It’s not easy growing up with Trump as a father when you “probably a 5” and no better. You get put in a Weight Watcher’s program by age 9 for hitting puberty. You hear comments that you should fix your makeup so that “your boyfriend doesn’t leave you”. On your wedding day, your father fat-shames you by telling your husband to “teach that girl how to eat less”.
He’s knows that he is misogynist and racist, but he doesn’t care. It’s how I am, it’s how men are, it’s the “way of the world”. Judging by Trump’s ratings in the polls, there do seem to be a good chunk of middle-aged, middle-class white men who, like my father, relate to the Orange Bastard.
My father is Donald Trump. My hope in sharing this experience is to give voice to what I know many others have experienced. Trump is not a new sensation. He is the embodiment of everything we women have fought against.