Donald Trump doubles down on a hand he can’t win

Donald Trump really only does one thing consistently well in politics . Whenever his scandals and failures are in danger of eating him alive, he goes and creates another more superficial controversy in order to distract the media and the public. That controversy is brief enough not to cause him any damage, but wipes the slate clean when it comes to his existing scandals. The trouble for Trump is that he’s becoming so frustrated with his mounting losses, he’s turning his distractions into scandals of their own.

Last week Donald Trump lost his 2020 census battle, lost his Secretary of Labor, saw his Jeffrey Epstein scandal explode, and saw his immigrant concentration camp scandal get worse. To distract us from all this, he woke up yesterday and told four nonwhite Democratic Congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from. It was arguably the most racist thing he’s ever said – and considering that three out of the four of them were born in the United States, one of the most stupid things he’s said. But as a distraction, it worked.

This morning’s headlines were all about Trump’s racist eruption. Those headlines were all negative, but everyone already knows he’s a racist, so it was going to be forgotten halfway through the day. It’s how a strategic distraction is supposed to work. But Trump couldn’t leave well enough alone, so this morning he decided to double down on it.

Donald Trump woke up today and tweeted “When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said. So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!” Wait, what’s he even talking about? This will just create a narrative about how foulmouthed he is, and how unsuitable he is for the Office of the President.

If Trump had just moved on today, the media would have spent half a day condemning his original tweet, before letting the whole thing go, and losing track of his existing scandals in the process. But because Trump couldn’t help himself and had to double down on a losing hand, this will remain in the headlines long enough to give real momentum to the narrative that something must be done about Trump’s racism.