As Trump mounts the White House stairs, the lines from “Don’t Cry for me, Argentina,” come to mind.

“It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange
When I try to explain how I feel
That I still need your love after all that I’ve done
You won’t believe me…

“And as for fortune, and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired
They are illusions

“They’re not the solutions they promised to be
The answer was here all the time
I love you and hope you love me…

The title of the song comes from the epitaph on a plaque at Eva Peron’s grave in Buenos Aires, “Don’t cry for me Argentina, I remain quite near to you,” it reads.[1] The music critic, Erik Haagensen, writes that Tim Rice intended the song to be a “string of meaningless platitudes,” delivered by a “megalomaniac” who is “attempting to bamboozle half a million people” by using high emotional display and intensity, with low content.[2] This is the formula that we have seen Trump and his supporters like Limbaugh use from the beginning. It works because it has always worked.

How ironic that today is Eva Peron’s one-hundredth birthday! One wonders if, under his breath, Trump is humming. His reference to Evita was so clear that Patti LuPone, the famous mezzo-soprano who played Peron on Broadway, tweeted “I still have the lung power, and I wore less makeup.”