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Jul 1, 2019 By Al Owens 4 min read

Donald Trump is very good at two things – 1.) taking credit and 2.) avoiding blame.

He’ll take credit for stuff he’s had nothing to do with, and he avoids blame for the things he’s caused.

There are hundreds of migrant children being warehoused in filthy, overcrowded detainment facilities, that our president refuses to acknowledge have languished there, only because he set that process into motion.

“I have put in place a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal entry on our southwest border,” Trump’s Attorney General at the time – Jeff Sessions boasted during news a conference on May 7th, 2018. “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you. And that child may be separated from you — as required by law,” Sessions concluded.

There’s the policy that Trump now repeatedly claims was the handiwork of President Obama. (For Trump, everything bad in the world was caused by Obama. I’d say he’s become a broken record. It’s 2019. He’s a broken-CD)

“When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy. I didn’t have it,” he said in one interview.

He was later asked if he was concerned about the conditions at those border facilities. “Yes, I am. I’m very concerned. And they’re much better than they were under (here it comes, folks) PRESIDENT OBAMA by far. And we’re trying to get the Democrats to agree to give us some humanitarian aid; humanitarian money,” he replied.

Within that answer, he managed to push blame onto Obama, while, at the same time, he took credit for those children being “much better than they were,” when Obama was in office.

Both are bald-faced lies.

The separation policy was commenced with Jeff Session’s “zero tolerance” news conference, more than a year after Obama left office.

Politifact.com rates Trump’s repeated claims about Obama having a policy that intentionally separated families — a big, fat FALSE.

Politifact.com does say that during Obama’s time in office, some children were detained at the border if they came into the country alone, or they faced abuse. But they were released as soon as possible.

There was no specific policy, that supports a campaign pledge, that led to thousands of children being housed under deplorable conditions.

All of Trump’s fake empathy aside, he caused the pain, and he’s not doing much to alleviate it.

While he’s showing a baffling capacity to blame others for his own failings, he’s being directly blamed for something he did decades ago.

E. Jean Carroll, an advice columnist, has become the 17th person who has claimed she was sexually mistreated by Donald Trump.

This time, Carroll claims that Trump sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Trump-being-Trump, he used one of his old tricks to deflect any blame.

“I’ll say it with great respect,” he told reporters. Then he showed real disrespect. “Number one, she’s not my type,” he bragged as if she didn’t qualify for rape.

He thinks it’s her fault she didn’t measure up, I guess.

For the record, while he said Carroll wasn’t his type was number one, he did offer as “number two,” a denial. (number two is the appropriate number for that)

Carroll obviously knew she’d be accused of lacking the qualifications to have been manhandled by Trump when she came forward with her story.

When she was told about Trump’s response, she said, “I love that I’m not his type. He denies, he turns it about, he threatens, and he attacks.”

She, like many Americans, are aware of Trump’s (woeful) skill of shifting blame.

Back in 2016, just before the election, he verbally berated another of his accusers, Jessica Leeds, during a campaign rally.

“Believe me, she would not be my first choice. That I can tell you,” he told his adoring crowd.

He formed the punchline of a stump speech joke, out of the very serious claim that he’d fondled a woman during a cross country flight.

It was her fault because she simply wasn’t his first choice?

He knows no shame.

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.