“It was a slow and brutal death for so many,” Donald Trump said last week from Florida as he announced the American attack on a Syrian airbase in retaliation for the Assad regime’s reported use of chemical weapons on a rebel town. “Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack.” If the images of the “beautiful babies” themselves swayed Trump’s heart, then his invocation of them seemed to sway many of his critics. This was a speech that turned the president of the United States into the president of the United States, we were told. This was a new president whose “heart came first,” and who is “an emotional man, but … also a very smart man.”
Some cynics, perhaps not understanding the consistency of the president’s support for beautiful babies, have been skeptical about his baby-induced change of heart toward Syria. “If Donald Trump truly cares about the beautiful babies of Syria, he wouldn’t have banned them from entering the United States as refugees,” California congressman Ted Lieu told MSNBC on Wednesday. Others pointed out that more than 55,000 children had already died in the Syrian civil war, seemingly with no emotional effect on the American president.
But what if Trump’s interest in beautiful babies is sincere? We already knew Trump has an eye for beauty, of course. He ordered the Syrian strike while polishing off a piece of beautiful chocolate cake. He appreciates beautiful funerals, beautiful air, beautiful rallies, beautiful suits, a beautiful common touch, and beautiful American tax dollars; he has enjoyed beautiful mornings and beautiful evenings and beautiful standing ovations. And, of course, he has an eye for beautiful “girls (women).”
But the president also has a longstanding interest in beautiful babies in particular. Last spring he anticipated the birth of his daughter Ivanka’s third child, a “beautiful Jewish baby.” And way back in 1994, the mogul and his then-wife Marla Maples appeared on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous soon after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany. “I think that she’s got a lot of Marla,” Trump remarked of his infant daughter. “She’s a really beautiful baby.” Some men might have stopped there, but not Trump. “She’s got Marla’s legs,” he continued. Then he made a cupping gesture at his chest. “We don’t know whether she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.”
This episode certainly complicates the question of what exactly Trump means by “beautiful babies,” but let’s not dwell on that. It turns out that he has also thought deeply about how public policy affects beautiful babies. Some beautiful babies, for example, illuminate the supposed dangers of vaccines. “You take this little beautiful baby and you pump—I mean, it looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child,” then-candidate Trump said in a Republican primary debate in 2015. “We’ve had so many instances, people that work for me. Just the other day, two years old, two-and-a-half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
Naturally, Trump encountered many beautiful babies on the campaign trail. “Look at this baby,” he said after holding an infant in Florida aloft in front of a screaming crowd. “That is a great, beautiful baby, congratulations.” (As a journalist, it’s my duty to report that the baby was just O.K.) “I love babies,” Trump told another crowd last summer. An infant had started wailing during his stump speech, and he seemed to welcome the chance to go off script. “What a baby, what a beautiful baby. … It’s young and beautiful and healthy and that’s what we want.” When the baby continued crying, alas, not even its beauty couldn’t save it. “Actually, I was only kidding,” Trump said. “You can get the baby out of here.”
That’s the nice thing about babies: They show up, they don’t ask tough questions, and women whisk them away from you when they get too noisy. Beautiful.
