JUNE 29, 2017
Photo: MSNBC
If it’s early morning, it’s tweeting time at the White House. Most of the time, the tweets are childish responses to personal slights as opposed to using the medium for policy discussions or something substantial. It feels like just another day with President Trump.
But on Thursday morning, something felt different. His target was MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who co-anchors the network’s hit morning chat-fest “Morning Joe” along with her fiancé, former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough.
“Morning Joe” has had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the 45th President, who was once a regular guest on the morning show during the campaign. (In fact, both hosts were personal friends with Trump and his family.) More progressive viewers of MSNBC regularly complained that “Morning Joe” appeared to much too cozy with the Trump operation, a charge that dogged the show throughout the campaign.
Then the Trump appearances suddenly dried up. “Morning Joe” suffered a bit in the ratings for a lack of Trump, but the show recovered quickly. More importantly, it unchained Joe & Mika to speak freely about Trump, a man they personally knew well, and the show finally found a special voice of its own. Yes, they have been very hard on the Trump Administration when they screw up (which is just about every day), but they and their guests have never made comments to my knowledge that have been unfairly personal or mean.
Facing a possible disaster in the Senate on the health care bill, did Trump use his Tweeting time to implore wavering senators to come on board? Of course not. He’s Trump. With all the problems that he has, instead he gets up and feels compelled to tweet this:
“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!”
Where to begin? “Bleeding badly from a face-lift”? What’s wrong with this man? And why is he so obsessed with woman and blood? Remember his reaction during the first debate when, faced with tough question from Megyn Kelly, when he said “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her…wherever”? Clearly this is a man who, whenever he is bested by a woman, lashes out in the most intimate personal way possible.
And that’s where Thursday’s tweet crossed the line, bringing to mind the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump proudly stated that his celebrity allowed him to do anything he wanted with women, even “grab them by the pussy.”
The disgusting nature of the tweet aside, why would a President choose to tweet this on a day when one of his most important jobs would be to try to charm GOP women senators, particularly Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, whom the party needs to support the bill but who all have announced that will vote no.
All three women were reportedly repulsed by Trump’s tweet, with Murkowski sternly tweeting Trump to “Stop it!” Republicans can only afford to lose two votes for the bill to pass, but if they lose all three women over the content of Trump’s tweet, that’s the ball game. The promise that GOP candidates have made for the last seven years to replace Obamacare may all go up in smoke because the President could not check his impulse to attack private citizens whom he thinks have wronged him.
It’s yet another example of Trump’s complete disinterest in governing and leading his party. It’s even clearer today that Trump ran for the Presidency to line his own pockets and to use his power to settle scores with people who he thinks are his enemies.
Sad.
