Christine wrote up the basics earlier, but this juvenile flare-up has dominated social media all day so far, so I supposed we have to discuss it a little further. The dynamics are exhaustingly familiar: Someone attacks the president, the president responds inappropriately, opponents of the president recoil in horror, and supporters of the president cheer him on for "fighting back." To be clear, under the rules of playground justice, MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski "started it" this morning by mocking Trump's fragile ego and remarking upon his "teensy" hands:
.@morningmika: "he's covering his hands here [on the fake Time mag cover] because they're teensy."
— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) June 29, 2017
More:https://t.co/YJ5WBO6DlJ
3/3 pic.twitter.com/88svCDoj2W
Trump -- who, I'll remind you, is the President of the United States of America -- responded as any president would: With a sad shake of the head, and a note to an aide about emailing Morning Joe producers lamenting petty attacks. Just kidding, he did 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..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017
...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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017
I do enjoy the conceit that he doesn't watch the show anymore, even though he's clearly reacting viscerally to something that was said about him on the show this morning. Also, it looks like he made up the whole face-lift thing, or at least the 'badly bleeding' part:
For the record, this is a picture of @MorningMika at Mar-a-Lago at the time Trump is claiming she was "bleeding badly." pic.twitter.com/NJgioOD3Va
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 29, 2017
Apparently determined to keep the childish feud alive, news anchor returned to physical appearance-related
To Mika tweet, the spokeswoman for First Lady Melania Trump says: "When her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder."
— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) June 29, 2017
And a White House spokesperson defended her boss by framing his tweets as 'pushing back' against attacks, or something. My interpretation of that spin is below:
@SarahHuckabee told @BillHemmer: "I don't think that the President has ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn't push back." pic.twitter.com/jR2pubyTQd
— America's Newsroom (@AmericaNewsroom) June 29, 2017
Translation: "The president lacks the dignity, self-assurance and self-restraint to transcend barbs from the peanut gallery." SAD! https://t.co/JbqdDKcX5d
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 29, 2017
Some elected Republicans have taken to Twitter to scold Trump over his undignified conduct, while even some devoted allies expressed frustration that he was derailing his own messaging on other important issues:
MESSAGE DISCIPLINE! Today ALL comms coming out of WH shd be focused on #KatesLaw and #NoSanctuaryforCriminalsAct -- not cable TV hosts.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 29, 2017
Honestly, if Mika Brzezinski had taken cheap potshots at private citizen/celebrity Donald Trump, his response would have been par for the course. Not laudable behavior, mind you, but expected, given Trump's approach to life. And holding up Brzezinski as some sort of victim here, after beckoning the president down into the gutter, is silly. She did start it. But Trump isn't in second grade; he is the president. Unfortunately, it is painfully obvious that he is temperamentally incapable of picking battles and transcending the noise. That's not going to change. This is who he is. He clearly doesn't understand the details of the healthcare bill he's asking the Senate to pass, yet when it comes to lobbing plastic surgery bombs at critical cable news hosts, he's all over it. This is the man we've elected.
If you want to defend him because you like his style, fine. But you have no standing to complain about standards of dignity, decorum or comportment in our political system ever again. For some, impulsive boorishness is a feature, not a bug. For others, this will be framed as a brilliant tactical move, deliberately designed to distract the media from [fill in the blank]. I recognize that this is often a popular theory, but I don't buy it. Trump isn't playing eight-dimensional chess, gang. He's playing checkers, and when he gets mad, he overturns the board. He's not terribly hard
Trump vs the Media is the worst rap battle of all time
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 29, 2017
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