So what is former President Trump “like”? Speakers at the Democratic National Convention have some ideas, and this week they’ve offered up plenty of comparisons — and punchlines.
Neighbor with a leaf blower
Former President Obama, speaking at the convention in Chicago on Tuesday night, likened the 45th president to a noisy neighbor:
“The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size. It just goes on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.
“From a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.”
Ex-boyfriend
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York got laughs Wednesday with this comparison:
“Donald Trump is like an old boyfriend who you broke up with, but he just won’t go away. He has spent the last four years spinning the block trying to get back into a relationship with the American people. Bro, we broke up with you for a reason.”
Communist dictator
Republican commentator Ana Navarro, noting on Tuesday that Trump has called Vice President Kamala Harris a communist, said, “I fled communism from Nicaragua when I was 8 years old.” The experience, she said, taught her a thing or two about dictators:
“Let me tell you what communist dictators do, and it’s never just for one day. They attack the free press, they call them the enemy of the people, like [Daniel] Ortega does in Nicaragua.
“They put their unqualified relatives into cushy government jobs so they can get rich off their positions, like the Castros do in Cuba. And they refuse to accept legitimate elections when they lose and call for violence to stay in power, like [Nicolas] Maduro is doing right now in Venezuela. Now you tell me something: Do any of those things sound familiar?”
Bad boss
Sen. Richard J. Durbin, of Illinois, on Monday, told the convention that Trump’s record was defined by failure:
“To put it another way, Donald Trump is like a bad boss.
“You want time off to take care of your sick parents. Ask Donald Trump: denied. In Donald Trump’s America, there is no paid family leave. Want to have a child but need IVF? Too bad. That’s shut down, too.
“Want a pay raise? Too bad, the boss just gave himself one, so there’s nothing left for you. Trump reminds us of a boss we all had. The guy who thinks he’s a very stable genius but is driving the company into the ground.”
Operatic tenor
Then on Wednesday night, former President Clinton called Trump a narcissist, evoking the image of a tenor warming up before the opera — “trying to get his lungs open by singing me, me, me, me, me, me.”