Trump: It蘑菇视频 always about me!
Much of the country stopped last week, with the news that venerable journalist Cokie Roberts had died at the age of 75.
She’d been a highly respected veteran at National Public Radio, PBS and ABC News, as well as a best-selling author.
It wasn’t surprising that even former presidents Obama and George W. Bush paid tributes to her.
“We respected her drive and appreciated her humor,” said Bush. “She became a friend.”
Obama was even more effusive. “A role model to young women at a time when the profession was still dominated by men,” he said in a prepared statement.
What did our current president say about one of the most important voices of our time?
“I never met her. She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish her family well,” said President Trump aboard Air Force One.
Given the opportunity to reflect on the true accomplishments of a recently departed person, he complained about her instead.
No matter what the subject is, it’s really all about him.
The responses to Trump’s statement nearly broke Twitter within hours.
“We need to amend the Constitution to include making sure the President is a human being,” tweeted Phil Plait, who calls himself the “Bad Astronomer.”
The noted author/reporter, David Corn, used pith to indicate his antipathy, “No class. Not even for a moment.”
A president doesn’t always need to be dignified.
Just sometimes.
Especially when somebody dies who’s held in high esteem by just about everybody who knows their work.
Trump feels compelled to look inward when anybody asks him anything.
If he has some hostility toward Cokie Roberts, it may have stemmed from the morning she appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” on March 9th, 2016.
(I happened to be watching that morning)
Cokie Roberts was talking to Trump, who’d called into the show.
She was asking him about some of his anti-immigrant rhetoric that had catapulted him into the lead for the Republican nomination for president.
“There have been incidents of white kids at basketball games, holding up signs to teams that have Hispanic kids on them, saying, ‘We’re going to build a wall to keep you out,’ are you proud of that?” she asked.
Trump, whose prideful of many things, as long as they’re about him, feigned ignorance of the fact that his words may have ignited foul behavior. But he did manage to attack Roberts.
“Well, I think your question (is) a very nasty question, and I’m not proud of it because I didn’t hear of it,” he shot back.
That interview revealed Trump as a person who’d rather lash out at a tough questioner than to answer the tough questioner’s questions.
It’s also why, after hearing that Roberts had died, he claimed he’d never met her, but that she’d never treated him nicely.
That March 2016 interview, as I recall, also involved Bob Woodward, who was being just as tough as Cokie Roberts was about Trump’s stands on immigration.
Ironically, I remember that Joe Scarborough appeared to cut that interview short.
(To refresh my memory, I found it online. My recollection of that abrupt ending was confirmed)
Back then, Scarborough appeared to be one of Trump’s apologists.
When Roberts and Woodward began asking Trump tough questions about Trump’s rhetoric, and how he would get Mexico to pay for the border wall, Scarborough appeared to awkwardly cut that interview short.
Those days being a Trump apologist are over.
After Trump’s election, there was a big New Year’s shindig down at Mar-a-Lago. Scarborough and his Morning Joe co-host and future wife, Mika Brzezinski, were invited.
But later, Brzezinski happened to make fun of Trump on one of the show’s segments.
That led to Trump tweeting about Brzezinski, “…How come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”
That may have earned Trump a daily shellacking at the hands of Mika and Joe.
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.