A racist post, TV apology, Trump gripe

WASHINGTON: It was not the racist comment that made the president angry. It was the apology from ABC.

Wading into a public outcry over remarks made by Roseanne Barr, President Donald Trump did not condemn on Wednesday the language the comedienne had employed in a Twitter post about a black former aide to former president Barack Obama that led to the swift cancellation of her popular rebooted ABC sitcom, Roseanne. Instead he expressed his own grievances with the network over what its on-air personalities have said about him, and said that he was the one who deserved an apology.

He specifically called out Robert A Iger, the chairman of Disney, the parent company of ABC, who had phoned the former Obama aide, Valerie Jarrett, on Tuesday to apologise for Ms Barr’s language. The president, referring to himself in the third person, complained on Twitter that Mr Iger had “never called President Donald J Trump to apologise for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC”.

His response was not a total surprise. Mr Trump has reacted to other divisive events not by issuing statements of unity or moral clarity as other presidents might have done, but by finding equivalence or diverting attention. He declared last summer that there were “fine people” on both sides of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and when African-Americans raised the issue of police brutality last fall, he attacked the NFL players who knelt during the national anthem in protest.

While Mr Trump did not specify the “horrible statements”, ABC is home to Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night host who is one of his biggest critics.