Does Donald Trump smell?
An investigation -- and an explanation.
I tried to mostly stay off of social media over Christmas. Because, mental health.
But, I did sign on a time or two — I can’t help myself! — and saw something, well, odd trending on Twitter X: #Trumpsmells.
Which was weird! (At least to me!)
After a bit of digging, I got to the origin of the hashtag. It was a tweet from former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the most outspoken Republican critics of the former president.
Back on December 16, Kinzinger tweeted this:
Which, I missed at the time.
The Trump campaign, um, didn’t. “Adam Kinzinger farted on live TV and is an unemployed fraud,” a Trump spokesperson told The Independent. “He has disgraced his country and disrespects everyone around him because he is a sad individual who is mad about how his miserable life has turned out.”
(Sidebar that I can’t believe I am writing: I couldn’t find any evidence of Kinzinger farting on live TV.)
The Lincoln Project didn’t miss Kinzinger’s tweet either. The anti-Trump organization, which specializes in producing viral clips making fun of the former president, leapt into action on Christmas Eve — producing this video:
So, yeah.
This raised two questions for me — one obvious and one not-so-obvious:
Does Trump actually smell badly?
Do tactics like this actually work?
Let’s tackle them one at a time.
On the “smell” question, there’s not much to go on beyond Kinzinger’s tweet. The only other corroboration is from comedienne Kathy Griffin, not exactly a neutral source on Trump, who told Mary Trump on her podcast that the former president smells “like body odor with kind of like a scented makeup products.” (Griffin is quoted, without her name attached to it, in the Lincoln Project video.)
A quick Google search of “Trump smells” and “Trump odor” turns up some interesting stuff.
Trump actually did a Q and A with GQ magazine in 2012 on smells. (He was promoting his new cologne “Success” — available at Wal-Mart!)
Asked when he started wearing cologne, Trump responded: “I started in my 30s. More or less for formal events. I'd wear it with tuxedos and things. But over the years I think, really, I've changed. I tend to use cologne more. I've always liked sweet smells.”
Did he have smells he hated? “In terms of fragrance, sometimes I smell things on people that are just terrible—things that make you not like them,” responded Trump. “We tried to stay away from those things.”
And then the coup de grace — on whether he had ever fired someone for smelling bad:
No. Actually, maybe that's not a correct answer. I've had people where it's a little unpleasant. Not because of the cologne—I've never fired anybody for the wrong cologne—but I have fired people that, and maybe it wasn't the main reason, didn't exactly smell good. Maybe that was an early indicator, as they say.
There’s also this quote from September of this year in which Trump runs down wealthy people in California for smelling bad because of the water restrictions in their state.
“That's why rich people from Beverly Hills generally speaking don't smell so good,” Trump said. “Their hygiene is not good. But it’s forced to be that way.”
Speaking of hygiene — which is closely related to odor — Trump is a longtime germaphobe, preferring not to shake hands or touch elevator buttons.
“One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get,” he wrote in “The Art of the Comeback.” “I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”
But, generally speaking, there’s very little out on the Internet to corroborate Kinzinger’s claim about Trump’s odor.
Which brings me to the second question I posed above: Do tactics like this work?
That depends on what you mean by “work.”
For the Lincoln Project, which has built a business by being willing to say, well, anything, about Trump, stuff like this is manna from heaven. The video has already been viewed almost 400,000 times (in three days) on You Tube. It’s been watched 200,000 times on Twitter X.
The people who hate — and I mean HATE — Donald Trump, love this stuff. They want to think the absolute worst things are true about him — including that he smells badly. They don’t need any evidence. They just want to be fed what makes Trump look the worst.
(Sidebar: This exists on the right too. These are the people who lap up any and everything about Joe Biden being mentally and physically incompetent.)
My guess is that if you asked the folks at the Lincoln Project, they would insist it’s not just about rolling up clicks and page views — that they have shown in the past that they know how to get under Trump’s skin in ways no one else has or can.
Which is sort of true! Earlier this month, Trump blasted the “perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project.”
And, I suppose you could make the case, that every minute Trump or his campaign spends time responding to questions about, say, whether he smells, is a minute where they take their eye off of how to win the Republican nomination and beat Biden in the fall.
I mean, maybe? My general sense of this lowest common denominator stuff — and a debate over whether Trump smells is very much in this category — is that it is red meat for the Trump haters but totally ignored by people who may not have made their minds up on the 2024 race just yet.
In other words: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (or not much).
That this has gotten any traction at all is amazing. But….even though Trump washes his hands, it doesn’t mean that he cleans the rest of himself as scrupulously. He is a large fella who wears a suit jacket almost continuously except on the golf course, his diet consists entirely of junk food, and I am guessing that maintaining the badger that dwells on his head means fewer showers. Add cologne to that, and a sweaty scalp loaded with product, and I am guessing that the combined effect is pretty interesting. Thankfully I will never find out. Perhaps some others who have had the dubious pleasure of close contact will weigh in. If Trump were not so savagely critical of the looks and intellects of EVERYONE who ever says anything even remotely critical of him, I would hesitate to be so mean.I think that he deserves all of this.
What I love about this is the hypocrisy of the Trump defenders saying how childish this is. You know, because all of Trump’s lies and playground insults were like the rhetoric of Cicero.
Also, do these guys ever stop projecting?
“He has disgraced his country and disrespects everyone around him because he is a sad individual who is mad about how his miserable life has turned out.”
If Trump had used some of the half billion he inherited and gotten some therapy we’d all be so much better off. Please Donald! Work through the daddy and mummy issues.