Donald the dealer — and the hidden fear driving Trump’s ultimate reckoning

It was 43 Augusts ago …

My future- and now ex-wife, Kathy, and I were heading to one of those backyard parties where a sweating keg of beer was the center of attention, but the grimiest star of the night had yet to rise as dusk spilled toward darkness.

The 1980s were a weird time. After getting everything possible both right and wrong in the ‘60s, and paying for it with a terrible hangover in the ‘70s, the ‘80s offered a new chance to get everything wrong again in new and creative ways. Trickle-down economics was going to make everybody’s lives better, and the Christian Right had crosses to bear, and grudges to sell.

I had just returned to New Jersey after hitchhiking large swaths of the country trying to find myself, and the occasional job, after escaping the Navy with an honorable discharge, and a new-found suspicion of authority.

Me, my ponytail, and 12-string guitar made it as far as Lake Tahoe, a paradise tucked in the middle of the Sierra Nevada. It was more than I could imagine, but after nine months just never felt like home. So I spent about two week’s worth of wages, and returned to New Jersey in style on a jet plane, my hitchhiking days pretty much over.

That’s when I met Kathy, and lightning struck.

Everything in my life was immediately sweeter. She was a beautiful, brave girl studying to be a registered nurse. In no time at all we were married. She was paying most of our bills healing people, while I started latching onto newspapers, and finally found the perfect vocation to punch back at unchecked power and authority.

Trouble still lurked, though, because cocaine was everywhere back then.

I liked coke even if I knew I shouldn’t. It was insanely expensive, but the 20 minutes after the snort were bliss. Life was perfect, until 22 minutes later when it wasn’t, and you needed to feel that bliss again.

Too many nights went like this: Snort-bliss-crash; snort-bliss-crash; snort-bliss-crash.

It was a heckuva way to spend an evening, but damn near everybody we knew was doing it, and we still liked them more than the coke, until all of a sudden we didn't …

That’s when we attended that party with the keg and all those red plastic cups on that infamous night 43 summers ago …

The beer was on the warm side of cold, the ‘60s and ‘70s music was tasty, but if people make the party, then this one was flatter than the brew. There was an uneasiness in the warm, balmy air, and we couldn’t figure out why.

That’s when the grimy pusher, and our epiphany arrived.

The big, oily loser with no personality, but a bagful of blow rolled through the crowd, and everybody dropped their beer, along with their dignity, and sidled up to the two-legged mess to get a powdery piece of the action.

A guy with absolutely nothing to recommend him except for the mind-altering garbage in his dirty pockets was finally the big man at the party.

It was a gross thing to watch.

Kathy and I shot each other a look, and simultaneously said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

That was the last time I was around coke, and many of those people ...

Have you noticed that the very second Donald Trump walks into any room, containing any people that he immediately starts to lie, exaggerate, pontificate and make everything under the sun he tries to block out all about himself?

Have you also noticed how so many phonies fawn over him, and fall at his fat little feet?

Silly questions, I know.

Trump has never harrumphed into any room during his entire miserable life, and completely told the truth. Like that loser that bombed into that party 43 years ago, selling the devil’s drug, the insecure Trump just can’t stop shopping himself.

When he really gets into it, he starts doing that accordion thing with his hands and arms. He puffs out his fat a--, and gets a twinkle in his cold, dead eyes. Finally, there’s that moment of satisfaction, when he is just as pleased as punch that one of his lies and insults have landed. It’s the only time he ever smiles. But it’s not so much a smile as it is that satisfied look babies get after they’ve filled their diaper.

For the past decade I’ve been among the millions who wonder how roughly 35%-40% of the American electorate can possibly stay with this ugly, 80-year-old baby no matter what.

I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that they stay with him for the same reason those people at those parties I used to attend sidled up to the lowlife with all that cocaine.

Trump is an expert pusher, and he sells them something they think they need to temporarily feel good about themselves and their tiny lives. He feeds all their worst habits. He hates who they do. He speaks like they do. He gives them permission to be just awful as they want to be, and not feel a bit guilty about it.

“Hey, if the president can be a spoiled-brat loser, why can’t I?!”

“If the president can make lewd jokes about women, why can’t I?”

“If the president is a stone-cold racist, then it’s about time I stopped keeping my bigotry all bottled up.”

“If he says to attack our elections, who am I to question him …?”

“Finally, somebody who makes us feel good about ourselves!”

Life can feel pretty big if the guy in your corner is the President of the United States, and is prepared to feed your nasty habits for just a few bucks and your undying loyalty.

Deep down inside you know he’s not improving your life — quite the opposite — but it just feels so good in that magic moment when he’s calling a woman a dog, or screaming for Obama’s birth certificate.

Trump has done nothing for anybody since being reelected except make himself richer, and the center of attention. He’s plastered his name all over Washington, and turned our White House into a gold-infested nightmare that would make Liberace blush.

Anybody can visit, just long as they bring plenty of cash and equal doses of praise. Do that and he will perform for you by lying relentlessly and telling lewd jokes. He will gladly empty his diaper while you empty your pockets.

You can’t quit him now, because after a decade of this, you’re completely hooked. You feel like you couldn’t go back to whatever your life looked like 10 years ago even if you tried.

Besides, if you were to give up your Trump addiction, who and what could possibly replace it? Who could so dependably give you your high, while dragging everyone lower?

JD Vance?

Marco Rubio?

Please.

Trump’s the real McCoy. A racist’s racist. A traitor’s traitor. A liar’s liar. Nobody has pushed more dangerous junk into the veins of America than Donald the Dealer.

You’d think he’d be easy to quit, but nasty habits are hard to break, and require a certain amount of guts, responsibility and decency that Trump is betting his users will never acquire.

Because here’s the truth: The reason Trump starts with the lying, the bragging and the pontificating every time he enters a room is because like that guy who walked into our party all those years ago, he’s scared to death people will stop buying the junk he has been pushing for decades.

They’ll just walk away.

That’s the day, he will be all alone, and finally forced to deal with himself.

He wouldn’t last a minute.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.