I should not be surprised – yet I am – by the myopic and tone-deaf nature of the Trump administration.
It seems like at least once a week, Trump or one of his sycophants says or does something so clearly stupid, hypocritical, or bumbling that could have been avoided entirely if someone with just half a brain had weighed in on the decision.
There are the well known moments, of course, like referring to the coronavirus as a hoax, suggesting that ingesting bleach might be a cure for COVID-19, assuring the American people that the coronavirus would be gone by April, drawing on a weather map with a Sharpie rather than admitting a mistake, referring to Nazis as “very fine people,” caging small children on the border, and his traitorous remarks in Helsinki in 2018 while standing beside Putin.
All easily avoidable.
Just last week, Trump cleared a park of peaceful protesters by gassing them and using flash-bang grenades and police in body armor so that he could pose for a bizarre photo shoot with a Bible.
It shocks me that someone in the White House isn’t saying, “That is just a stupid, stupid, stupid idea for so many reasons.”
Or at least mitigating the disaster by saying, “If you’re going to do this stupid thing, let me at least show you how to hold a Bible. And maybe don’t assault the Australian journalists on camera as you clear the park.”
The list is honestly endless.
Remember when Trump’s first official portrait on Inauguration Day had a typo? Or when he lied for weeks about the size of his Inauguration crowd? Or the time he thought Frederick Douglass was still alive?
Seems so long ago.
Just last week, Trump added an additional layer of fencing around the White House, which was another stupid idea. Had he consulted me, I would not have taken his call, of course. I don’t make it a habit of speaking to men who sexually assault women.
But in an alternate universe, where perhaps some terrible version of myself thinks that rapists and racists are cool, I might’ve warned Trump about three things that would result from this new fencing:
- It will remind Americans that you still haven’t built your stupid, Mexico-funded wall, and wall jokes are going to be everywhere.
- It will remind people that during the height of the protests last week, you were hiding in your bunker, which you so clearly want to disavow.
- Protesters are going to turn that wall into Black Lives Matter art by plastering it with their posters.
These consequences seemed so obvious, yet the fencing was added anyway. The jokes, the reminders, and the art quickly ensued.
Is there really no one with any foresight in this administration?
This weekend, Ivanka Trump delivered a college commencement speech to no one after Wichita State University uninvited her from their graduation ceremonies. Citing the divisiveness of an administration in which Ivanka serves as a senior adviser, university officials thought better than to subject their graduates to Ivanka’s meaningless platitudes.
But tone-deaf sycophant Ivanka Trump released her speech anyway, which struck a painful tone of attention-seeking desperation, but get this:
Just three days after her father tear-gassed peaceful protesters in Layette Park, Ivanka released a speech that includes a reference to the tears the graduates of Wichita State likely shed during their college career.
Just imagine:
Not one single advisor in the White House said, “Hey! Maybe don’t mention tears at the moment since your lunatic father just tear-gassed innocent Americans so he could hold a Bible like a deli ticket for a photo op?”
Trump’s advisors are either absolutely stupid or despise Ivanka Trump. There is no other explanation for including a reference to tears in her speech.
The result?
This video, which went viral on Twitter and has been viewed well over one million times.
By contrast, Ivanka’s actual speech has been viewed less than 50,000 times, and at least three-quarters of those views were likely the combination of hate-watching and comedians who need to watch the speech in order to make fun of the speech.
But it turns out that there is no need to make fun of the speech. The combination of the words she speaks and her utterly bizarre delivery of those words is hilarious enough.
The Trump administration is a disaster in so many ways. It is led by a racist, sexist, incompetent moron who only seeks to serve himself. But the number of times that Trump and his administration shoot themselves in the foot still astounds me. It does not bode well for our country when our leaders cannot avoid simple, self-inflicted wounds.
Then again, we have an impeached President who has never achieved an approval rating of 50%, 111,000 Americans dead from a disease that he referred to as a hoax, and 40 million Americans without a job.
Self inflicted wounds should not be so surprising after all.
