CNN
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The January 6 committee officially subpoenaed Donald Trump last week, although its members likely would acknowledge that getting the former President to testify is something of a long shot.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, is trying an unorthodox strategy designed to goad Trump into appearing before the committee: Questioning his manhood.
“I don’t think he’s man enough to show up,” Pelosi said in a recent interview with MSNBC. “I don’t think his lawyers will want him to show up because he has to testify under oath.”
And, just in case you missed it, Pelosi reiterated: “We’ll see if he’s man enough to show up.”
Which, if you know Trump, is a pretty interesting ploy to a) get his attention and b) lure him into considering testifying.
Trump is all male bravado. He spent both the 2016 campaign and his four years in the White House portraying himself as a macho man, a tough guy who couldn’t stand what he viewed to be the softening of American men.
As I wrote back in 2020 of Trump’s masculinity obsession:
‘His idea of strength and toughness is deeply distorted, twisted and gnarled over many decades of grievance and bravado. See, for Trump, being strong and being tough is tied directly to winning, to dominating, to using overwhelming force to get a desired result.
“In his mind, might makes right. And the world is split between people willing to use their power over others and those too afraid to exert it.”
His recent past is littered with an obsession regarding manliness.
When he released his partial medical records during an appearance on Mehmet Oz’s TV show, Oz singled out Trump’s testosterone count for special praise. “Your testosterone is 441, which is actually –” Oz said, before adding: “It’s good.” (Oz is now…
Source : cnn
