So why is it, then, that the thing Trump seems to have most feared from the last month is a threat he refuses to discuss at all—contrary to his decades-long modus operandi of punching back at even the smallest and most obscure slight? To put a finer point on it, why are so many in America now talking about how Donald Trump smells, and why is Trump acting like this superficially puerile question is somehow political Kryptonite?

The accusation that Donald Trump smells atrocious in person is so familiar to anyone who’s “extremely online” that you may well have already read the Know Your Meme page about it; or read some of the many, many major-media reports on the subject (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, for instance); or found yourself inundated, whether in the past few days or the past few years, with occasional appearances on social media platforms of hashtags like #TrumpStinks, #TrumpSmells, or #TrumpSmellsBad. Indeed, at one point in the final days of 2023, at least one of these three hashtags was trending on Twitter—arguably the most-used digital platform that’s still generally friendly to Trump—for several days straight.

A well-known former Republican congressman now reports that Trump smells like “armpits, ketchup, [and] a butt…all [put] in a blender.” Yahoo News has reported on widespread rumors in Washington and around the country to the effect that Trump “has a certain signature aroma that has rarely been described as being good.” Salon, in naming Trump one of the Republican Party’s “Biggest Losers of 2023”, described the ex-president—cheerily, if not wittily—as “Donald ‘Smells Like a Butt’ Trump.”

OK Magazine just regaled its readers with the tale of a viral video on TikTok—posted by a popular user on the video-driven, Gen Z-beloved platform—that relayed a strange narrative about Trump’s apparently infamous odor to American voters (a narrative that gained credence from the fact that it had previously been posted online by the TikToker in question long before hashtags about Trump’s smell were trending, and addresses a 1983 incident that predates Trump’s political career). As the user reported . . .

https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/will-americans-vote-for-a-man-who?triedRedirect=true