EXTRA: Donald Trump, (a.k.a., The National Goofball, according to Royko)

I’m not about to take credit for that label being affixed to our nation’s new president. Credit for that moniker ought to go to the man who came up with it.

That was Mike Royko, who back when he needed to come up with columns to satisfy his syndicate readers beyond the Chicago Tribune wrote commentary on the 1980s and early 90s antics of one Donald Trump.

BACK THEN, TRUMP wasn’t a political person or a television celebrity. He was a New York real estate developer who lived the Manhattan high life and flaunted his garish lifestyle – which made for good newspaper copy.

The New York Post, in particular, enjoyed having “The Donald” to write about. Even when Trump was engaging in philandering behavior that would make Bill Clinton look like a choir boy, Trump enjoyed the attention, which gave us that ultimate Trump headline “Best Sex I Ever Had” (as in the mistress telling her friends about Donald’s alleged ability in bed).

For the record, “The National Goofball” label came from a column Royko wrote about the public spats Trump had been having with the women who are now his ex-wives.

Although “The National Goofball” is general enough that we could easily resurrect the label and use it to describe just about any of Trump’s behavior during his presidency.

ALSO FOR WHAT it’s worth, a cursory read of old Royko columns (there really isn’t anyone else like him these days) produced these lines by Royko to describe Trump:

n  “Ruthless billionaire with an ego the size of a sperm whale.”

n  “I finally decided that he was totally loathsome when, in addition to his other flaws, he turned out to be a cheapo” (in reference to the divorce settlement provided to his first wife Ivana).

Then, there was the column in which Royko envisioned what a conversation would be like if he were to merely walk up to Trump, who naturally would be with one of his mistresses of the moment.

Wrote Daley book, what would he say about Trump

Royko “quoted” Trump as saying, “Since it is my duty as The Donald to share with the American public every detail of my private life, my every emotion, my every thought, as banal and tawdry as they might be.”

THIS IS A little taste of what we might be getting if we still had Royko on our commentary scene – instead of it being nearly 20 full years since he died just shy of his 65^th birthday.

Personally, I suspect Royko would have been appalled, although not so much at anything Trump did, but at the electorate.

For we did, after all, vote for “The National Goofball” to be our president despite his track record of several decades as not being a serious individual. Why should we be shocked, or appalled, at anything he has done, or will do, during the next four years?

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