Trump’s not just an abusive jerk, he’s a manipulative asshole too. And it seems he takes every change that he gets to display his power against those that are weaker than him.
Look at the picture for a bit. First, he’s trying to lift Pelosi’s arm up past her shoulder. If she’s got any rotator cuff damage (as most of us over 50 years old do) that could be quite uncomfortable. Also, it’s as if he’s trying to rip the stitches at the armpit of Pelosi’s dress. Then he’s pronated her palm and is pressuring her wrist out, which is effectively pulling her into him. Look at her face. It’s the schoolyard bully scene.
I’m not a fan of Pelosi but I wish she’d shouted “let go of my hand” and kneed him in the groin if he didn’t, immediately.
Trump turns shaking his hand – normally a respectful exchange of greetings with a peer – into an act of submission. Do not shake hands with the president, he’s not worth it. Nobody should want a photo-op like this.
If I am ever unfortunate enough to be in a position where I have to shake the Angry Cheeto’s hand, I think I’ll go for the power grip—try to fucking crush his tiny little hand. Alternately, I might step in close, put my right food behind him and reach around to pat his shoulder with my left hand, and then grab the back of his collar and do my absolute best to throw the SOB into the ground, headfirst.
That Trump is a bully was painfully obvious during the campaign. It’s too bad that Jeb Bush melted under the pressure. Although he still might not have won the nomination.
I forget who moderated the debate between Trump and Clinton, but at the time when Trump stood behind Clinton and loomed over her, I thought that he should have been told to go back to his place. When Clinton finally noticed, if would have been good if she had pulled a school marm on him and scolded him. He had given her the chance to put him down while keeping her dignity, but she was caught unawares. If she had established her personal dominance over him his authoritarian followers would have been impressed.
I was not surprised when being a bully paid off for Trump in the polls, especially among authoritarians, who number many among rank and file Republicans these days. When I was younger I had learned that the best leaders are not bullies, but I did not know until the aftermath of Columbine that schoolchildren (in America, I suppose) admire bullies second behind the class leaders.
Ouch. This looks painful.
I absolutely hate it when people try such crap on me. Well, nobody has ever tried to go this far. I have only experienced people holding my hand very tightly and trying to twist it a little bit. Probably it would be less painful for me if I just submitted and didn’t fight back in these cases. But the problem is that I hate being forced to submit, I cannot just allow another person to display his dominance over me. Thus, if somebody challenges me, I have no other choice but to fight. This is why whenever somebody “greets” me with a forceful handshake, I respond by fighting back—I squeeze the other person’s hand as tightly as I can and I push my hand in the opposite direction. The result is turning a greeting into a quasi arm wrestling match. And it actually hurts. I seriously don’t get people who initiate these matches, because it’s painful.
People who behave like Trump are also the main reason why I wish I was taller. Trump couldn’t have pulled off this trick against a muscular dude who was the same height as he is. In my country, the average male height is about 180cm (here people are taller than Americans). At 176cm I’m below average. I don’t like being shorter than all other guys in the room. And occasionally it gets even more annoying when big guys do crap like what we see in this photo.
Ieva Skrebele@#3:
I absolutely hate it when people try such crap on me.
Me too. It’s making me think that perhaps I should spend the rest of my life refusing to shake hands. I suspect that’d be a fascinating stalling maneuver, when someone puts their hand out, just shake my head and say softly, “I don’t shake hands.”
Do you experience this often? I mean, it makes sense for a bully to try this on a person who looks physically weak (a small guy or a woman), but it makes a lot less sense to attempt this on a guy who looks like he could be strong enough to fight back. Do bullies actually enjoy these arm wrestling matches? In my opinion, bullying makes sense only when the bully anticipates that there will be no resistance from the victim.
You should be glad that you don’t have a female body. People at least put their hands out for a handshake with you. It can get a lot worse for a person with a female body—somebody will greet everybody else in the room and then totally ignore the person who happens to have a female body.
I like the “I don’t shake hands” approach. Expressionless as possible when saying it too.
Years ago I happened to meet the world karate champion. He gave me the limpest handshake I have ever gotten. I suppose that he was used to people trying to hand wrestle him when they shook hands.
BTW, a good excuse for not shaking hands is to claim that you have a cold and don’t want to spread it to the other person. I found that out when I actually did have a cold. :)
My mistake. It was Aaron Banks who gave me the limp handshake.
The way I learned it, the woman makes the decision whether to shake hands or not. I have refused to shake hands with people before. It works. If they try and persist you just look them straight in the eyes with that “you HEARD me” look. Because they totally did.
I don’t know how to explain this, but if you let your hand go limp and press your thumb down properly, you can apply a “thumb bar” on an unfriendly hand shaker. I would not hesitate to do so schmuck l’orange, but the deal is, I would not shake hands with him.
kestrel@#10:
The way I learned it, the woman makes the decision whether to shake hands or not.
That’s how I learned it, too.
In a rather bizzare moment, I was invited to a fire-and-maneuver pistol range in Denver by a jewish group who took the whole “self defense” thing a bit far. It’s easy to lure me with promises of good food. Anyhow, I’m standing around in this crowd of people who are all carrying loaded firearms and this one fellow, who was very conservative, introduces to me to his wife and instinctively stuck my hand out… Everyone recoiled… Apparently in that particular culture you do not offer to touch someone else’s wife in any way.
After that, I don’t offer to shake hands with anyone. When people stick a hand out at me, I usually take it. But now I am rethinking whether or not I’m just going to be unshakeable.
Lord, Trump looks like he is threatening death and destruction. Or trying to hand Pelosi a mud-covered puppy.
One obviously must be prepared to shake hands with Trump
The first few seconds of this video shows Justin Trudeau bracing himself to handle a “Trump Handshake”.
Something says that one should not pull cheap tricks on a former drama teacher.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/feb/14/donald-trumps-strange-handshake-style-and-how-justin-trudeau-beat-it-video-explainer
jrkrideau @#12
It looks like Trump has been practicing his nasty handshake a lot. That makes sense. The position into which he twisted that lady’s arm looks like something you could see from a jujutsu practitioner.
My Krav Maga trainer never taught us how to deal with nasty handshakes, I only learned various wrist grab release techniques. So I looked it up on youtube, and look what I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reLrp7NuoXk. Lo and behold, we have come to the era where martial arts teachers teach people how to defend themselves against the president of the US. Cool! The world cannot get any better than that! /sarcasm tag
Anyway, this particular move shown in this video isn’t suitable for those cases, where you don’t want to further escalate the conflict and you want to maintain the outward illusion of friendliness and civility. Searching for videos demonstrating how to defend yourself against aggressive handshakes also gave me plenty of other options, many of which looked more subtle. The way how Justin Trudeau or French President Emmanuel Macron dealt with Trump’s handshakes was better.
kestrel @#10
The correct way how to do it: a man greets the woman, says hello to her, and let’s her decide whether she wants to shake hands.
The incorrect way: a man enters a room, shakes hands with every male, totally ignores the woman who is also present, and pretends like she is invisible.
Believe it or not, the latter option happens pretty often—men greet each other and shake hands among themselves and pretend like the woman who also happens to be in the same room is invisible.
Marcus @#11
A culture in which you don’t offer to touch women would be fine. A culture in which you don’t offer to touch someone else’s wife stinks like misogyny, patriarchy and male possessiveness.
@Ieva, #13: oh heavens. Of COURSE I believe it. I’ve been female my entire life. I’ve also somehow not had my idea get heard. If a male “happens” to have the same exact idea later, it’s suddenly the most wonderful thing ever in the universe. And so on. And on.
I will be fair. I had an amazing thing happen to me. I am working on a project that will eventually cost about 3.5 million US. It almost cost 4 million. I happened to notice that the map was wrong, and brought it up, in a big meeting, as loudly as I could. The engineer was so surprised etc. but checked and yes, I was right. The design was changed and it cost .5 million US less. I was certain the fact that I noticed this and brought it up would promptly be forgotten but again I’ll be fair: I am still being credited with bringing the cost down. The reason I’m so astonished is that I’m the only woman working on this. Funny, though. I am in none of the photos for the project; that’s because **I am the one taking all the photos.** Oh well. At least I got some credit for an issue I noticed.