Donald Trump just screwed up and accidentally endorsed one of his opponents for president
There’s really never been a point in time when Donald Trump came off as sharp in his speeches or his tweets. But over the past few months there has appeared to be a quiet yet steady decline in his cognitive abilities. He often can’t get through a sentence. His mouth sometimes does odd things. And he’s making even less sense than ever.
So when Donald Trump screwed up and accidentally endorsed one of his opponents for president today, there’s reason to worry that it may not merely have been a careless screw-up, and that it may be a sign of something larger going on here. It all started when conservative pundit Eric Bolling posted this tweet:
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To be honest.. Iโm ๐ฏ @realDonaldTrump all the way.
But… if I had to live in an America with one of the Dems as Potus at this point I believe it would be @PeteButtigieg.He seems smart, even tempered and as moderate as any on the stage.
Holds his own with career pols.— ๐บ๐ธ ERIC BOLLING ๐บ๐ธ (@ericbolling) February 26, 2020
We don’t know or care what Eric Bolling might be trying to accomplish with his weird bet-hedging tweet. What made it relevant is that Donald Trump retweeted it, and added this: “Eric, I can live with that!” That’s right, Trump just said that he can live with Pete Buttigieg being president.
We think Donald Trump may have mistakenly thought Bolling was pushing for Pete Buttigieg to be the Democratic nominee, and Trump was saying that he’d be happy with facing Buttigieg as an opponent. But Bolling’s tweet read rather clearly, and Trump accidentally ended up endorsing Buttigieg for president in the process. Oops. The real kicker is that Trump just unwittingly told his own followers that a prominent conservative columnist is just fine with a Democrat beating Trump. Double oops.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report