I think people get the causality arrow wrong with Trump a lot of the time...

With all due respect to Rick Wilson, "Everything Trump Touches Dies" is at best a very misleading assessment even if it is a catchy book title and a decent hash-tag in acronym form.

Same with "Trump's feces-Midas touch," with "everyone who gets into bed with Trump regrets it," same with "Trump ruins everything," etc., etc. All of these are framed similarly: first an encounter with Trump, then badness.


This totally ignores Trump's ability both to seek out AND to gather in the already-disgusting. Look at his business record. Look at his personal life. Look at his campaign. He did NOT turn all of these people into what they are by interacting with them. He interacted with them BECAUSE of what they were ALREADY. He worsens them, yes, but they are already terrible.

Donald Trump is a magnet, or a self-propelled compass, for the fetid, the fecal, the rotten, the suppurative, the pestilent, the wretched, the noxious, the nauseating.

Trump doesn't merely turn neutral and good things into bad things, though he does some of that; Trump and bad things have a mutual attraction with reinforcing tendencies.