Above all things, Donald Trump is a perfectionist (except in the areas of basic spelling, the proper tailoring of a suit, and governance). If you need proof, just ask him!
The man is never satisfied, always fine-tuning, ever grasping for le mot juste. As such, sometimes he needs to deviate from the script, pull us to him, and explain in a gentle parenthetical what he really means. Also, sometimes he just puts shit in parentheses because maybe he thinks they’re decorations? Like earrings for words? I don’t know, you figure the guy out.
Whatever the reason, Trump parentheses are a hot trend, and trend pieces are nothing without rankings, so let’s get to it. Trump’s Best Twitter Parentheticals…(Ranked!).
17: The One Where The Unnecessary Parentheses Meet Their Friends The Unnecessary Quotation Marks.
One of the best and most reliable forms of humour is sarcasm, a practice wherein the speaker says the opposite of what they mean, in a tone of exaggerated sincerity. For example, remember when people were saying “Cool story, bro” a few years ago? In most cases, they meant that your story was not cool at all, bro! It is very complicated. Who better to spell it all out for you, what more perfect person to attempt sarcasm and show his work, than a man who we have literally never once seen laugh?
16: The One Where He Tries Out A Vicious Nickname For James Comey.
My brothers and I got our mum an iPhone a couple of years ago, and once in a blue moon, she’ll tap out a text message. But here’s the thing: when she makes a typo, she types OOPS and just keeps on going. It took a minute to figure out why, but then we all realized: she hasn’t seen a keyboard since using a typewriter at a clerical job in the 1950s, and is therefore completely new to the entire concept of backspace. And because it’s kind of sweet, none of us has told her. Anyway, clearly ol’ Trump got lost in the weeds in his attempt to slander James Comey; “always ends up badly and out of whack” is wordy and vague and the first time those eight words have been arranged in that order. So, like someone who cannot operate a backspace button, he finally just pushes forward and says it in parentheses. Could he have simply said “Slippery James Comey, who is not smart?” Sure. But when you think about it…yeah, no, there is no reason why he should not have just said that.
15: The Other One Where He Tries Out A Vicious Nickname For James Comey.
Was Shadey/Slippery James Comey the author of a third-rate book that was absolutely essential? No. Unlike other third-rate books, this one should not have been written. I struggle to imagine any books of any rating that the US President feels should have been written; so far, I have only “Two Corinthians,” which as we all know, is the whole ballgame.
14: The One Where Criticising Chuck Todd's Eyes Isn't The Weirdest Thing.
Joy to World. Run World (Girls). We are World, we are Children.
13: The One (Okay, One Of The Ones) That Is Unintentionally Revealing.
The implication here is that he hopes for great public servants, but that his expectation upon choosing them is that they will be merely decent. Ever the perfectionist, our boy.
12: The One With Two.
Here we see the rare and thrilling deployment of the double parentheses. In this context, the parentheticals have the effect of the post-hypnotic suggestion. They feel subliminal. But, like, Kevin Nealon subliminal.
11: The One That Is Both Good And Great.
The “good (great)” Trump tweet is nearly a genre unto itself, and offers a truly fascinating glimpse into the man’s mind. What exactly is he trying to do here? Does he mean “good, and maybe eventually great?” Does he say “good” first, and then call upon his more optimistic angels, and then tell them to fuck off, because he's not a guy who edits himself?
10: The One Where He Knows Which State Dallas Is In, And Will Tell You, If You Are Interested In Hearing.
When he clarifies that Dallas is in the GREAT state of Texas, honestly, who do you think he is reminding: his followers, or himself? The answer of course is both.
9: The One Where He Is SO CLOSE.
It barely needs saying, but it will feel good to say it: There is a whole other, commonly used term and accompanying acronym for people who are missing in action, and that term is fucking MISSING IN ACTION (MIA).
8: The One (Okay, One Of The Ones) Where He Badmouths An Ally.
Was Dennis Rodman on drugs, in that he was experiencing relief from minor aches and pains? No, he was on drugs in that he was delusional. Needless to say, four short years later, Dennis Rodman was in Singapore for the summit meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un. At the time, the New York Post quoted a source who said, “No matter what you might think about his presence, one thing’s for sure: the ratings will be huge.” That source doesn’t sound anything like anyone we may know (sarcasm).
7: The One That Makes You Sigh Wearily, Like A Very Old Person.
The thought of the leader of the free world feeling the need to tweet this at all, much less to go back and add a “(much)” is so dispiriting I want to go back to bed. And let’s be honest with each other for a moment here: your personal politics aside, in terms of pure statesmanship, the progression from Obama to Trump is a nosedive in quality not seen since August 2011, when Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” ceded the Billboard #1 spot to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem.” You know it and I know it (because it is a fact).
6: The One We Remember For Three Other Delicious Words.
A true classic of the form, one that continues to be quoted to this day. Very stable genius! It would have been hilarious enough if he had stopped there. But he cannot. That he felt compelled to add “(on my first try)” truly shows his character, and this character needs a goddamn rewrite, stat (quickly).
For the record, this is how much the Trump presidency has warped time and space: "very stable genius" was six months ago. Sam Nunberg going on every cable news channel, maybe not sober? Barely three. How many years have you aged since then?
5: The One With Two Washingtons.
The man could easily have just typed “Washington, DC.” But he didn’t. What he did was needlessly clarify which Washington he was leaving Florida for, as though anyone thought he was going to the other one, just to show you that he knows the state of Washington is a different place. When you go that far out of your way to show people you know something, it is absolutely one hundred percent because you just learned it.
4: The One Where His Supporting Evidence Is Maybe Not Great.
Our fella tweeted this one out after the world saw That Photo from the G7. That Photo in which the rest of the leaders of the world glared at him as though he were a crabby baby who wouldn’t finish his strained peas. “It wasn’t like that at all,” Trump tells us here. “There were also moments in which they were clearly trying to gently flatter and humour me as though I were a crabby baby who wouldn’t finish his strained peas!”
3: The One Where He Takes A Swing At Jimmy Fallon Of All Fucking People.
The parenthetical here indicates that the president’s hair possesses some sort of internal order that can be disrupted. We know this is false. But more pressingly: imagine being at the same time a) the President of the United States, and b) so fragile that you cannot let a Jimmy Fallon joke pass without comment. The leader of the free world is powerless to fire back at the guy whose signature bit is WRITING THANK-YOU NOTES. How great for World.
2: The One Where You're Like: If Someone Handed This Guy A Sponge And A Dirty Soup Bowl, He Would Never Stop Crying, And Everyone On Planet Earth Knows It.
A recent tweet about the Red Hen Incident, one that would be more powerful if you could imagine this guy knowing one single thing about how to run a restaurant. Plus, you and I both know that Donald Trump’s knowledge about physical renovations begins and ends with “chuck a layer of something golden over it.”
1: The One That Tells You Everything You Need To Know.
At last, the greatest and most telling of the bunch. Here, in one four-letter word and two exhausted brackets, he gives the entire game away. By this time, he’d fully hijacked the 2016 election-era concept of fake news, a problem about which we were right to be concerned. Don’t forget that when the term was coined, we were talking about literal fraudulent news sites, with URLs like nytimes.com.co, made to look just like the New York Times and the Washington Post and USA Today, containing seductive and utterly false stories meant to sow confusion and earn a few pennies for the Macedonian teenagers who coded them. Actual fake news was a real problem. But of course, Donald Trump made it about him, as all things in this world must be, and wholly changed the meaning into “stories I don’t like.” Here, he goes one step further by suggesting that every news story that is critical of him is fake. Critical and fake, like good and great, are now the same thing.
And it’s working.
Jokey trend piece notwithstanding, folks, we are in bad shape (doomed).
Dave Holmes is Esquire's L.A.-based editor-at-large. His first book, "Party of One," is out now.
