“This was Trump at his best. Everything else was even worse.”
Of all the things Trump has done, perhaps this was the high point of his presidency. There he is, delighted with himself, able to “realize the fever dream of a ketchup-addicted 9-year-old”. Nothing wrong as such with enjoying your inner child, but when that’s the peak of a 4 year reign of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, it’s not a great legacy.
This fits well with my impression of him:
And while there are enough angles to this episode to merit a 30 for 30 episode, all of them lead back to the deep-fried narcissism of Trump, who has never seemed happier than when surveying a room packed with big winning boys piling their plates with his own preferred cuisine. Critics called him classist and racist for the stunt, as well as for commenting, “I would think that’s [the players’] favorite food,” and while there’s no doubt he harbors every prejudice you care to name, in this case, I tend to believe he genuinely couldn’t think past his individual desires: I love McDonald’s, so they must, too. This egoistic principle has bred disaster far and wide since Trump was sworn in, and yet, for the moment, it was just hilarious. The most powerful man in the world, marshaling the forces at his command in the dumbest way imaginable — to realize the fever dream of a ketchup-addicted 9-year-old. Nothing short of sublime.
After handing Trump his eviction notice, we should have the courage to admit that among his lasting and horrifying failures as this country’s leader, he totally crushed it this once. The outrage that attended the fast-food feast seems petty and forced in retrospect, because it was. Why did we grasp for another reason to hate a demagogue when his idiocy was briefly harmless? We needn’t have bothered, and we never ran dry of cause to condemn him. Someone should paint the scene and hang that in the dining room, as a reminder of our national shame, a note to history and a warning for the future: This was Trump at his best. Everything else was even worse.
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-mcdonalds-feast-was-the-only-good-thing-trump-did