Donald Trump: The-Blamer-in-Chief
“Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective. The language of moral condemnation and destructive routine, these are arguments and disagreements that have to stop.”
President Trump at a Wisconsin rally on Oct. 24
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When America came under attack by a would-be bomber last week, our president hinted he was the real victim.
That’s not unusual.
Donald Trump lives in a constant state of victimhood.
On the very night when a number of potentially deadly packages turned up around the country, he took his political show on the road to Wisconsin.
He awkwardly tried to sound reasonable as he told his eager rally-goers that it was time for the country to come together and to “stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.”
That’s the same fellow who recently claimed that Democrats are, “frankly, too dangerous to govern,” because, “They’ve gone wacko.”
Even when it was obvious that the only people sent bombs were those who had been subjected to his verbal or Twitter wrath, he pretended to not know the connection.
He’s smart enough to avoid blame.
He’s just not smart enough to realize that there are many people who know exactly what he’s doing.
And what he’s doing is despicable.
There were two presidents, two members of Congress, his presidential opponent, a philanthropist, a cable news network and a former CIA director, who were sent pipe bombs.
But when he woke up the morning after the initial pipe bombs were discovered, he decided to throw the spotlight onto the media.
“A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he tweeted.
It’s not the media that have it in for Mr. Trump.
It’s Mr. Trump who has it in for the truth.
If he wants members of the news media to stop fact-checking his daily wild claims, he should stop telling lies.
He won’t.
He’s figured out that if one of his outrageous statements gets debunked, he can always deflect attention away from it by making an even more outrageous statement.
He instructed members of the media to take their cameras to the middle of that caravan heading toward the United States, and they’ll easily find lots of MS-13 gang members, and people from the Middle East (hinting that they’re really terrorists).
That claim was debunked by reporters in Mexico.
But then Mr. Trump was onto another lie.
“We’re gonna be putting in a 10% tax cut for the middle-income families. It’s gonna be put in next week,” he bragged.
Not true.
Congress isn’t even in session.
And with a monumental budget deficit caused by the last tax cuts, a new set of tax cuts may never materialize, anyway.
Yet, Trump needed to change the subject from something-or-other, so he hatched a non-existent tax cut.
The result of which led him to continue to attack the “dishonest,” or “evil” news media for doing nothing more “evil” than doing their jobs.
Even after one of the bombs ended up at CNN headquarters in New York, Trump still launched an attack on the media.
It’s true that he read from prepared remarks shortly after the initial reports of bombs found at the homes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack and Michele Obama.
He’s a lousy sight-reader.
So even those remarks seemed forced, and, er, phony.
And his speech later that night in Wisconsin rang hollow.
That meant when he was left to his own devices the following morning, he tweeted what he really thought.
Once again, it was an example of his characteristic incivility.
He wrote, “Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST,” as if the media would douse the very flames he ignited.
It doesn’t work that way.
Most media organizations know that elected officials have always complained about the coverage they’re given.
Trump-being-Trump is a much easier foil because his skin is so thin.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.