Donald Trump’s handlers swing and miss at covering for his worsening mental incompetence
Even the ever-delusional Donald Trump must know by now that he’s not winning. His trade war has failed, the stock market is tanking as a result, and his odds of reelection are taking a major hit. But if he cancels his tariffs, he’ll be admitting to voters that the current downturn really is his fault, and so he keeps ratcheting up his tariffs to an even more extreme level.
Even as Donald Trump digs himself a deeper tariff hole with no clear way out, he flat out admitted to reporters that he regretted his trade war. It was a rare moment of honesty for him, and frankly, he sounded defeated by it. The trouble is, Trump should know that he can’t publicly admit his tariffs are a bad idea even as he’s ratcheting up the tariffs further. It was a moment of mental incompetence to say the least.
That’s why Donald Trump’s handlers felt compelled to try to walk it all back, even though doing so required the kind of verbal gymnastics that are startling even for this full-of-crap regime. Trump’s new White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who is performing even fewer of the job duties than her predecessor, claimed that what Trump really meant is that he regretted not having gone with even bigger tariffs.
There is no possible way that this is what Donald Trump meant. He slipped up and admitted that he’s now knowingly tanking the economy by doubling down on his tariffs, because he knows he can’t simply walk away from his initial tariff mistake. Of course this is the same guy who spent the week claiming that he’s the messiah while speaking more incoherently than ever, so no one should be surprised by any of this.
