Donald Trump’s handlers are desperately trying to cheer him up as Robert Mueller arrests his pals
By now it’s extraordinarily difficult to imagine that Donald Trump hasn’t learned of Friday night’s news that Robert Mueller has filed Trump-Russia criminal charges. Even as thoroughly as Trump is cut off from real news sources, he’s surely heard directly from his pals who fear they’re about to get arrested. In what looks to be an attempt at keeping up his spirits, or keeping him distracted from the impending doom, Trump’s handlers are desperately feeding him positive news that they think he’ll like.
Take a look at Donald Trump’s timeline since the news broke. This morning he tweeted “Just read the nice remarks by President Jimmy Carter about me and how badly I am treated by the press (Fake News). Thank you Mr. President!” Carter did make a negative remark about the media’s coverage of Trump, and Trump doesn’t quite have the story correct here, but it’s clearly the kind of news Trump would enjoy hearing. The tricky part: Carter made his comments a full week ago, yet Trump says he’s just now hearing about it.
Then Trump tweeted: “While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!” Again, this is the kind of news that Trump likes. But the announcement about Moore’s show closing came several days ago. Again, Trump appears to be just now hearing about this. Trump’s handlers are feeding him old stories that they think might cheer him up, presumably to keep him from completely melting down. There’s another strange angle here.
Donald Trump’s tweets on Saturday don’t even come close to reading like something he would write. “While not at all presidential I must point out…” is not within a country mile of Trump’s typical sentence construction. It suggests that not only are Trump’s handlers feeding him a steady diet of old positive news to keep him from erupting, they may also be writing his tweets while trying to match the sentiment of what he’s saying to them. This would suggest they’ve taken his phone from him, for fear he’ll go nuclear on Twitter.
