One of Donald Trump’s creepiest campaign stunts is to read to his rally rooters the lyrics to an old song called “The Snake.”
Written and recorded in the 1960s, “The Snake” is a parable about a kind woman who saves a suffering snake from a freezing death when he begs for help.
After she feeds him and warms him, he bites her with poisonous, fatal venom. The woman asks the snake why he did this and Trump smiles as he reads the snake’s reply.
“‘Shut up, silly woman,’” said the reptile with a grin. “‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you brought me in!’” Trump claims it is about immigration.
After chanting the lyrics in a sing-song cadence from a piece of paper and gesturing with his free hand for emphasis, Trump practically hisses these final lines as his red-hatted cult members laugh and cheer him on in primary states like New Hampshire last week.
It is one of several conscious and unconscious “tells” the former reality TV star has put on display for more than a decade as a right-wing, Republican demagogue. Another clue is the over-the-top aggression of Trump’s very signature, which looks like, among other things, the sharp teeth of a shark.
In reading the lyrics to “The Snake,” Trump usually adds the adjective “vicious” before the word “snake,” although it is neither written nor recorded that way in the lyrics by Oscar Brown, Jr., and the most popular vocal by Al Wilson.
But Trump seems to love the word “vicious.” In his recitation — from the only paper script he pulls from his suit pocket —you can practically hear the saliva bubbles dribble across his forked tongue as he spits the word through his twisted lips.
After using “The Snake” in his successful 2016 campaign for president against Hillary Clinton, the large, loud, orange-faced, yellow-haired bully has revived this golden oldie for his 2024 campaign against President Joe Biden.
And it serves Trump well, perhaps revealing more than he realizes. Trump claims the song works as a metaphor for “illegals” who migrate across the southern border and bring crime, disease, drugs, mental illness, terrorism, and sabotage. First, it was just Syrians and Muslims. Now, it’s any “other.”
He never portrays migrants as families hoping to find work and improve their lives from the lowest rung of the ladder of the “American Dream.” No, it’s always an “invasion” of “military-age men.”
And Trump doesn’t need to tell you these “illegals” are dark-skinned because you can see that every hour on Fox News, right alongside the Texas razor wire and pieces of Trump’s “wall.”
Trump never portrays migrants as families hoping to find work and improve their lives from the lowest ladder of the “American Dream.” No, it’s always an “invasion.”
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By comparing migrants to reptiles, Trump lowers them to subhuman status with skin that is dark and slimy. Such creatures are easier to fear and to hate. Trump constantly reminds us they are “vermin” who will “poison the blood” of people Trump calls “true patriots.”
In a Frontline report by PBS in 2019, the Austrian language researcher Kateryna Pilyarchuk analyzed Trump’s recited words as they applied to immigrants from Muslim nations, one of Trump’s first target groups.
“He uses this metaphor to present himself as a hero, as someone who will protect you from these animals,” she said. “That means everyone else who comes to the country becomes not a human being, but an animal. And if that person is Muslim, that person is not even a mammal.”
And then there is the Freudian interpretation of Trump’s Snake obsession. A proud New York City playboy who has been found civilly responsible for sexual assault, Trump in the past has bragged about grabbing women by the crotch the first time he meets them.
By cheering for the aggressive Snake in his song recitation, Trump seems to side with an uncoiling male predator who takes advantage of an unsuspecting female victim. The weak snake becomes stronger and attacks the naïve female, penetrating her.
In real life, Trump seems obsessed with women who are rivals and critics, often expressing revulsion to specific female details ranging from GOP rival candidate Nikki Haley’s dress to Mika Brzezinski’s face to Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle.
One of few women he regularly praises is “Our Luv-lee Fust Lay-dee” who no longer appears with him.
And what about the so-called “evangelicals” who support Trump no matter how many wives he marries and buries on his golf course? That God squad might meditate upon the Biblical significance of Trump choosing the Snake as his hero.
According to the Book of Genesis, the serpent in the Garden of Eden stands for Original Sin and evil and, by extension, the devil, that is to say, Satan, Lucifer, the Father of Lies, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness.
Why would a candidate for president — even one indicted for multiple felonies and guilty of frauds like “Trump University” — choose to identify even by metaphoric extension with the beast that turned Man against God?
If song lyric symbolism and psychological projection are not your thing, you can evaluate this former President simply with a glance at his signature.
At best, his jagged, cramped lines are an artistic impression of Trump’s beloved Manhattan skyline as seen from Queens. Or, as mentioned above, the teeth of a shark, moving in for the kill. Certainly those sudden peaks and valleys suggest a volatile temperament and impulsiveness, do they not?
Consider Trump’s autograph and what you might think if your doctor handed you this series of jagged jolts and told you it was the EKG reading of your heartbeat. Or if the guy on TV told you this was the Richter scale reading of an earthquake in Mexico.
The handwriting analyst Michelle Dresbold, who studied her craft at a Secret Service school, told Politico that Trump’s lack of curves in his letter formation reveals his hard-headed and self-centered personality.
“Curves in handwriting show softness, nurturing and a maternal nature,” she said. “Angles show a writer who is feeling angry, determined, fearful, competitive or challenged. When a script is completely devoid of curves, the writer lacks empathy and craves power, prestige and admiration.”
Sound like anyone we know? Anyone who should ever again get close to power?
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