Trump’s tweets ripping London’s Mayor Khan veer from idiotic to odious
What if Thomas Jefferson had written brief, daily letters to the public attacking his political enemies for every tiny slight, either real or imagined? What if Abraham Lincoln had sent off a constant stream of telegrams to newspaper editors complaining that reporters picked on him and printed fake news? What if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had made unannounced, middle-of-the-night radio broadcasts in which he spouted crazy conspiracy theories and maligned American allies?
Had those great presidents done such things, we would not now think of them as being so great. It also would have been big news in any era if the president of the United States carried on any mode of spontaneous communication in which he showed himself bereft of good judgment, oblivious to facts and seething with personal grudges.
That being the case, it is now bizarre and pathetic that various spokesmen for the current resident of the White House are excoriating the news media for taking note of Donald Trump’s tweets. Monday on the “Today” show, Trump’s indefatigable defender, Kellyanne Conway, condemned the media’s “obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little what he does as president.”
Leave aside the reality that newspapers and television news are immersed in coverage of what Trump does, Conway evades the truth that a president’s personal pronouncements — especially those that are not vetted by a communications team — are always news because they have a real world impact.
Oddly, that point was reinforced later on Monday by none other than Conway’s husband, George Conway, a successful attorney who had, just days before, turned down a big job running the civil division of Trump’s Justice Department. While carefully expressing support for his wife and her boss, Conway sent out a series of tweets saying Trump was undermining his own lawyers by tweeting about the executive order barring travel from certain Muslim countries that is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court.
At 3:25 Monday morning (why is he up at that hour?), Trump tweeted: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”
Four and a half hours later, Conway responded: “These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won’t help [the solicitor general] get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad.” A couple of hours later, he followed up, tweeting that it “cannot be stressed enough” that tweeting on legal matters jeopardizes the president’s own agenda.
It is unlikely this warning will be taken to heart by Trump. He seems incapable of reining himself in, even when it does not serve him well. As the investigations into alleged ties between his presidential campaign and Russian spies have been ramping up, he has tossed off tweets that have contradicted messages from his White House communications team and bordered on admissions of obstructing justice.
Trump’s most appalling tweets, however, are those he unleashed against the mayor of London in the last few days. In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack Saturday night on London Bridge and at the nearby Borough Market, Mayor Sadiq Khan issued a statement saying Londoners had “no reason to be alarmed” by the heavy police presence. Trump chose to ignore the context of Khan’s words and tweeted: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”
Immediately, British leaders of all political stripes rose to Khan’s defense. The news media made clear the intent of the mayor’s full statement. Yet, in spite of the reaction (perhaps because of the reaction and because Trump can never ever admit he is wrong), Trump followed up with another tweet: “Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his ‘no reason to be alarmed’ statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!”
Is Trump incapable of reasoned thought? Has he no sense of decency? Was he childishly indulging a personal grudge against Khan who, during the presidential election, had shown disfavor for Trump? Does he not understand that, in the midst of a human tragedy in the capital of America’s closest ally, it is a truly disgusting thing to be spouting peevish insults?
Kellyanne Conway is wrong. Paying attention to Trump’s tweets is very important. Those little bursts of uncensored thought provide the clearest window into the mind of the strange man who represents us all to the world.
Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
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