Donald Trump’s tremendous love

What does Donald Trump talk about when he talks about love? For the man presents himself as being full of it. He is associated with a politics of grievance and retribution that has boiled over at times into violence, most infamously in the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021. And yet no other president, or presidential candidate, has so wreathed himself in valentines.In speeches and blast emails, Mr Trump romances his supporters with constant reminders of his love. Among those for whom he has declared his love over the years are “the Hispanics”, “the Saudis”, “the poorly educated” and officers of the Central Intelligence Agency. His heart often has reasons of which reason would appear to know nothing. Like Titania he has tumbled for the most improbable of creatures (“We fell in love,” he gushed of North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un). Like Rihanna he has found love in hopeless places, including the Soviet Union (“you could see it was a country where there was a lot of love”) and even in that crowd on January 6th (“There was a lot of love out there. There was tremendous love”).