Democrats haven’t been able to lay a glove on Donald Trump, and neither has the media. Oh, they’ve tried – accused him of just about everything under the sun – but none of it has panned out. Proof, as they say, is in the pudding…and there hasn’t been any pudding. President Trump has been blessed by his enemies and their inability to act rational, even for an hour, making anything they falsely accuse him of seem even more crazy. While his enemies have been one of his greatest assets, he’s been one of his own biggest liabilities.
I don’t have a problem with Trump tweeting, as many others do. It’s a great way to bypass a media that has been out to destroy him since he rode that escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy. But sometimes his tweets keep alive stories that otherwise would have faded or elevated others to a level they could not have attained on their own.
The latest example is the saga of Omarosa Manigault Newman. A profoundly untalented individual who “was the worst hire we ever made,” according to Al Gore’s former office administrator when she worked in the Clinton administration.
Omarosa’s new book, which you can look up yourself because I’m not going to link to it, makes all sorts of unprovable claims that, if they or any other claims of that type had been made about Barack Obama would have elicited a cold shoulder from the media or even hatred, are being sucked up by liberal journalists hoping to get something to stick to Trump. But even Entertainment Weekly described the book in their D+ review of it as “the logical next step in our collective, steep, seemingly endless descent toward disgrace.”
The problem for Trump isn’t that this walking dumpster fire wrote a book, or that the media gave it attention, it’s that he can’t just leave it alone and let it die.
The president has tweeted several times about Omarosa, adding fuel to a fire that would have nearly burned out by now. Probably not on CNN, but no one watches CNN.
Omarosa seeks attention like a pig hunts truffles, giving her any is a mistake. The smart move would have been to dismiss her as a sad individual fired from the White House for, as the audio recording she played on national television had General John Kelly explaining, severe ethical issues, that is was a mistake to hire her, and not mention her again.
If Trump had done that, interviewing Omarosa would have been less appealing. There wouldn’t have been a news hook, it would have simply been an exercise in shameless media bias. That wouldn’t have stopped all of it, NBC News and MSNBC will still be NBC News and MSNBC no matter what the news is, but the hype surrounding those interviews would have dissipated quickly. Each of those presidential tweets breathed new life into the story.
Of course, the biggest mistake was hiring an unqualified opportunist in the first place. Trump’s loyalty is laudable, but unhelpful in the White House. You can be loyal to someone without employing them or inviting them into the halls of power; an anchor is an anchor and will try to take you down no matter what you’re moored to.
While everyone with a press credential has been trying to impress their cocktail circuit friends by being the one who takes down the president, the biggest threat to Donald Trump is and has been the man in the mirror. He’s also his best advocate, so it’s a tough call to say he shouldn’t weigh in on something.
With all he’s accomplished, imagine what he could’ve done, what he could still do, if he got out of his own way.
I know President Trump is a fighter, it’s one of the things I like about him, and he never hits first, he hits back – harder. But not all swings are worth taking. There’s no need to go nuclear on a mosquito nipping at your heels. Omarosa is not Kim Jong-Un, she should not warrant the same level of Twitter-attention, or any attention at all.
The president shouldn’t dignify an attention-seeking former subordinate fired for alleged ethical violations with what she craves most. The official White House response should’ve been telling the story of why she was let go and nothing more. It’s too late for this round, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned with President Trump it’s that there’s always some other opportunist desperate for their moment in the crosshairs.
PS: Once (yet) again, I want to encourage you to order a copy of my book, “Outrage, INC: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood.” It explains the why and how of what the left does in ways that haven’t been before, and it does so with a lot of humor. Don’t take my word for it, take the words of Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, David Limbaugh, Dana Loesch, Dan Bongino, Michelle Malkin, Ben Shapiro, Kurt Schlichter, and countless others. Obviously, I have an interest in selling you a copy of the book, but they don’t. Yet they’ve all endorsed it. And, for reasons I don’t understand but am eternally grateful for, people are still buying it. You’ll love it, trust me. Thanks.