The World Doesn't Revolve Around Trumpanzee But..."It Was As I A Chill Had Descended On That Front Row" When He Showed Up

The Sound of Music by Nancy Ohanian

Fox News' Chris Wallace came up with the "a hill had descended" line in the station's coverage of George H.W. Bush’s funeral on Wednesday when Trump awkwardly joined the legitimately elected presidents in the front row. He didn't belong-- and it was obvious, even at Fox. "You had seen a lot of chatty talk between the Clintons and the Obamas, the Carters," said Wallace. "But when Donald Trump sat down, the greeting that he was given by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama was about as cold, about as cool as it could have been." Then the previously chatty front row fell silent as they had to endure the usurper among them. Wallace: "And I have to say that where you usually have a presidents club and people that ran against and maybe one beat the other that doesn’t seem to have extended to President Trump when you see them sitting in that front row."

Others noted that the funeral couldn't help but come off like a renunciation of Trump and Trumpism. Dana Millbank at The Washington Post: "Bush’s funeral was so powerful a renunciation of his current successor because it was a celebration of character. Friendship was invoked 21 times by his eulogists. Loyalty, 10. 'Honor,' 'integrity,' 'dignity,' 'decency' and inner peace all recurred. Certainly, Bush could be a fierce partisan and a brutal politician (remember Willie Horton?), but his service in World War II-- he was shot down over the Pacific-- left him with lessons that fueled his generation’s greatness: The opposition is not the enemy. There are causes greater than self. Political defeat is not the worst thing. And American leadership in the world is indispensable... Trump, for whom no cause is greater than self, must have struggled to sit through 90 minutes of something that was not all about him. Rather, it was all about what he is not."

Trump sat grimacing self-consciously and making angry monkey faces all through the ceremony. In his head, he was likely composing his howling-in-the-wind tweets which he likely wished he was sending rather than wasting time at an event that had nothing to do with him and that he clearly didn't want to be at. John Harris, writing for Politico noted that in Washington these days, subtext always becomes text. "The service," he wrote, "was replete with praise for the 41st president that could, with just the slightest nudge of interpretation, be heard as implied rebuke of the 45th president. But only implied, never explicit-- this, unlike almost everything else in American politics today, was not about Donald Trump. And yet it very much was. Speakers rhapsodized about Bush’s natural good cheer and optimism; his willingness to share credit and accept blame; his preference for self-deprecating humor; his gift for personal diplomacy; his loyalty to friends when they were down; his talent at assembling international coalitions; his mistrust of 'unthinking partisanship'; his inaugural address in which he said that Americans must judge our lives by kindness to friends and neighbors rather than the pursuit of 'a bigger car, a bigger bank account'; his commitment to truth and to living up to the obligations of a 'gentleman.' Who wouldn’t admire these traits? Or expect that any president should try to emulate them?"