Press secretary needed, now

On Wednesday, America and all the world watched as yet another soap-operatic reality TV meltdown played out on our video screens.

This one wasn’t another episode about the dysfunctional marriages of Beverly Hills housewives or the distressed family life of a has-been rock star. It was about the decline and fall and dysfunctional reality that has befallen the presidency of the United States of America and its present occupant.

President Donald Trump was in his backyard at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., demonstrating to a head-scratching world that he still hasn’t grasped a basic fact of presidential governance that was understood by all his contemporary predecessors since the advent of the video age: Presidents must rely upon functioning press secretaries to conduct properly planned daily news briefings that have been staffed out at all levels.

A president who insists upon being his own Lone Ranger of news management runs the risk of screwing up all manner of things, global and domestic. And that’s just what happened in this mondo bizarro news week.

America’s mercurial 45th president is now working with a press secretary (Stephanie Grisham) whose professional credentials may be slight, but her job duties are even slighter. Never mind. That suits Trump’s Bumper Car presidency just fine. He’s all about full-speed ahead, pedal-to-themetal until he hits his first predictable obstacle— bam! (That’s just part of the game.) Reverse, floor it—bam! Turn left or right (it doesn’t matter) and floor it—bam! It’s just a game.

On Wednesday, he did all the above—and did it to himself—on gun reform, his China trade war, a tax cut to prevent a looming recession, pushing Israel to ban an Islamic Democratic U.S. congresswoman’s visit. Also, he wants to buy Greenland.

After firing off 13 tweets Wednesday morning, Trump took reporters’ questions in his White House backyard—and produced a mess of flipflop news that would have been every other president’s nightmare.

“BREAKING NEWS: Trump Defends Retreat on Background Checks,” MSNBC bannered across its video screen just after 1 p.m. First Trump had favored tougher gun purchaser background checks (hopefully closing the loophole to apply checks to gun shows as well as gun stores). But after talking with the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, Trump had seemed

to reverse, warning instead that changes might be a “slippery slope.” And when that triggered public outrage, Trump shifted yet again and later Wednesday called for loophole closing after all. He never mentioned the urgent need to restore the ban on combat-styled assault weapons used by mass murders.

“NEWS ALERT: In Reversal, Trump Says He Is No Longer Considering Tax Cut,” The Wall

Street Journal emailed. Trump had insisted the economy was great, then acknowledged he was looking at a tax cut to head off recession, then rejected a tax cut because everything is great.

“News Alert: Trump attacks Danish prime minister for her ‘nasty’ comments about his interest in U.S. purchase of Greenland,” The Washington Post emailed and reported online. After Denmark’s prime minister said Greenland wasn’t for sale, Trump abruptly canceled his plan to visit Denmark. (Remember when Denmark sent troops to fight and die in Afghanistan to support America after the 9/11 attacks?) One news organization fired out this multipronged news alert, and you can tell just from the headlines that this probably infuriated Trump more than any others. CNN? No, this came from Trump’s presumed pals at Fox News:

■ “Defiant Trump digs in amid battles on trade, guns, Israel: ‘I am the chosen one.’ ” Trump’s chosen one claim wasn’t about the Holy Land, but his assertion that he was the only president willing to use tariffs to fight China’s trade abuses.

■ “President Trump doubles down on claim that Jews who vote for Democrats are ‘disloyal.’”—his riff on the reprehensible attack long leveled by anti-Semites.

Finally, everybody alerted us to Trump’s fixation blurtation that wasn’t a flip-flop, just an absurd lie: Trump claimed President Barack Obama forced Russia out of the G-8 because “President Putin outsmarted President Obama.” No, it was because Russia seized Crimea and had troops elsewhere in Ukraine, so the G-8 countries ousted Russia. Trump’s next stop: a meeting in France of the now G-7. (What does Putin have on Trump?)

Trump was never one to tiptoe through the tulips. But last week, Trump’s one-man effort at news management ended up repeatedly damaging his own image and disrespecting America’s presidency around the world.

Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive.