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Trump’s Stink Covers Us All

Jim Moore
4 min readMay 19, 2020

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The odor of his presidency threatens to overwhelm a vulnerable nation

“Miasma” (illustration by Jim Moore)

There is a stink on the Presidency that has become a stink on all Americans. I’m sure you won’t like reading that, particularly if you as vehement a Get-Trump-Out person as I am, but you and I and all of us are covered in the stink just as surely as if the national septic tank that is Trump backed up into all our communities at the same time and washed over everyone and everything.

A majority of us did not vote to be covered in the effluvia that descended that golden escalator not so long ago; but covered we are now. All of us.

If you think I’m wrong, just think back to the last time you drove over a road-killed skunk, or passed a freshly fertilized pasture, or endured the stench of a chicken or hog processing plant even with the car windows rolled up. That stink stayed in the car a good long while, didn’t it? Same with the Trump election. The stink lingers.

Some odors never wash out

The smell of fear

When I was in junior high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, the route our bus took from home to school passed over a slaughter yard. The bottom of the bridge was so close to the slaughter house we could hear the cattle bellowing before they were killed, and the smell of the place…

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Jim Moore
Jim Moore

Written by Jim Moore

Journalist, former Capitol Hill staff (House and Senate), former Cabinet speechwriter, editor, photojournalist and bird photographer. Top Writer Quora 2016–2017

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