President of petty
This is the way the Leader of the Free World, the head of state of the most powerful democracy on earth, began his day yesterday:
“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore).”
“Then 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!”
With the future of his health care bill on the line in the U.S. Senate, an immigration bill up for a vote in the House, his travel ban hours away from implementation at airports around the nation, this was what President Trump chose to focus his attention on: a screed aimed at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
The two had been poking some fun at the president over the now well-publicized fake Time magazine cover on display at several Trump properties. It had already been a topic of some amusement for just about every late-night comic. Who wouldn’t enjoy the irony of the man who delights in criticizing the “fake news” media having, of course, a fake Time cover of himself on display?
But this is a man for whom no slight is too trivial to warrant a tweeted response. And the best his spokeswoman could do was say that the president was entitled to “fight fire with fire.”
Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to come up with a magical unicorn of a health care bill that could get 50 votes in the Senate — something which would call for a little adult expenditure of effort from the president.
And there was poor House Speaker Paul Ryan a few hours after Trump’s tweetstorm trying to get some traction on House efforts to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities and having to respond to the latest controversy.
“Obviously I don’t see that as an appropriate comment,” Ryan said. “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone and civility of the debate, and this obviously doesn’t help.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham responded with a tweet of his own: “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” Which pretty much says it all.