Ways of Referring to Trump

Robert Reich, whom I wrote about yesterday, has always thought it’s inappropriately respectful to call Trump “President Trump” or “Mr. Trump.” Among the hundreds of Professor Reich’s Facebook postings I’ve read over the past five years; he never once referred to the former TV reality star other than as “Trump.” I read the transcript of an interview with Spike Lee a couple of days ago, from which I learned that Mr. Lee thinks that calling Trump “Trump” is inappropriately respectful and makes it a practice to never refer to him other than as “Agent Orange.” Jennifer Rubin, who in my opinion is the most astute of the Washington Post op-ed columnists, also thinks calling Trump “Trump” is inappropriately respectful. She prefers to refer to him as “the disgraced former president.” That’s more elevated verbiage, certainly, but I think “Agent Orange” is preferable because it more perfectly captures the essence of the man.