Proposed independent presidential candidate David French has a problem with what he perceives as Donald Trump’s brand of masculinity, claiming the billionaire represents “the caricatured, counterfeit masculinity of the feminist fever dream.”
According to reports, Bill Kristol is aiming to get French, a lawyer, National Review staff writer, and Iraq war veteran, to challenge Trump and Hillary Clinton as an independent candidate.
French is so seemingly concerned with Trump’s alpha male persona that he dedicated an entire National Review Online (NRO) column to the subject, titled, “Trump’s Counterfeit Masculinity.”
“The masculinity of Trump is exactly the caricatured, counterfeit masculinity of the feminist fever dream,” French writes. “It takes the full energy of manhood and devotes it to sex, money, and power.”
To French, Trump’s alleged style of masculinity threatens to “revive a failing ideology,” one that seeks to counter feminist concepts of manhood by becoming predatory and regarding women as objects.
These kinds of men, French claims, live a “life in full reaction against feminism,” and they view Trump as a hero.
He continues:
While not rapists, they are predators — seeking serial sexual conquests. While not criminals, they are bullies — using threats and swagger to get their way. Life is about winning, and women and money are the ways in which they keep score. …
And Trump is their hero. To enter the world of the pick-up artist — or of segments of the so-called men’s-rights movement — is to enter the world of the Trump fanboy. Trump has “tight game,” to borrow the phrasing of Château Heartiste, a popular website for frustrated male Millennials. He’s the “ultimate alpha.”
French posits that Trump appeals to “men locked in their cultural ghetto” and “speaks to the eternal adolescent and awakens in him his secret envy of the high-school punk who always seemed to get the girl.”
French lectures that “teaching a boy to be a man doesn’t mean teaching that strength, bravery, loyalty, and a sense of adventure are exclusively male or even always found in men, but it does mean cultivating those virtues in our male children.”
He warns that the “angry man” must grow up, put away “childish things,” and understand that “every moment that Trump commands the national stage is another contribution to feminism’s ultimate triumph.”
In a separate NRO column, French seems to link Trump’s supposed brand of masculinity to the billionaire’s alleged affinity for the bravado of Vladimir Putin.
“He admires strongmen, even when those strongmen behave brutally and directly against American interests.” writes French. “In short, Trump admires open displays of aggressive strength, and he thrives on praise. This love for power would be pathetically easy for Putin or any other dictator to exploit.”
French is by no means an opponent of expressions of masculinity and manhood. In a 2015 column titled, “Victim Culture Is Killing American Manhood,” French waxed nostalgic over his childhood in rural Kentucky, where he said the process of “becoming a man” meant “gaining toughness, shedding weakness, and learning how to take care of yourself and others.”
He wrote that masculinity is under assault by the emergence of what he called “victim culture,” which he partially defined as “the micro-aggression, where people literally seek out opportunities to be offended.”
French concluded:
The only proper response to this sorry state of affairs is to confront the crybabies until they man up or shut up. No more yielding to the utter nonsense of social media shame campaigns, hand-wringing deans of students, or idiotic, politically correct corporate press releases. There are real victims out there, and real victims need actual men to stand in their defense.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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