Is Donald Trump a ‘badass?’

Logan Paul, a wrestler with 23 million YouTube subscribers, called Donald Trump’s immediate reaction to his shooting “the most badass thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” It helped that it was photographed with Old Glory flying against a blue sky and Trump, fist in the air, mouthing “Fight! Fight! Fight!” with blood trickling down his cheek.

Earlier the wrestler had also approvingly called the photograph “the most gangster image of all time.” There is an overlap between gangster and badass. In his 2006 novel Londonstani, Gautam Malkani has a character say: “Don’t get me wrong, we in’t wannabe badass…

Logan Paul, a wrestler with 23 million YouTube subscribers, called Donald Trump’s immediate reaction to his shooting “the most badass thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” It helped that it was photographed with Old Glory flying against a blue sky and Trump, fist in the air, mouthing “Fight! Fight! Fight!” with blood trickling down his cheek.

Earlier the wrestler had also approvingly called the photograph “the most gangster image of all time.” There is an overlap between gangster and badass. In his 2006 novel Londonstani, Gautam Malkani has a character say: “Don’t get me wrong, we in’t wannabe badass gangstas or someshit.”

That was six years after Kid Rock peaked at twenty in the Billboard Modern Rock charts with “American Bad Ass.” Rock (real name Robert Ritchie) has supported Trump. Rock performed a more topical version of “American Bad Ass” before Trump’s acceptance speech at July’s Republican National Convention, adding “Fight! Fight!” to the refrain and introducing “the most patriotic, badass on earth, President Donald J. Trump” as he left the stage.

A sort of anti-Kid Rock is the rapper Joey Bada$$. His 2017 album, All-Amerikkkan Badass, included the obiter dictum: “Fuck Trump.” Later he regretted giving Trump publicity: “I wish I didn’t even say his name.”

The ass in badass is only a dialectal variant of arse. In the no kinder, gentler politics of 1861, Abraham Lincoln, four years before he was shot, received a letter. “If you don’t resign we are going to put a spider in your dumpling,” it said, then lapsed into verse: “Buss my ass, suck my prick, and call my bolics your uncle Dick.” It was signed. The letter belongs to the Chicago Historical Society. Note that it was dated February 14, St. Valentine’s Day, when it was the custom to send rude verses.

The status of a badass is unstable. Among early examples, one from 1956 declares that “A Marine who postures toughness is sarcastically labelled a badass.” For the time being, Trump is being lauded as the real thing. You bet your ass.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 2024 World edition.