Donald Trump unwittingly admits he can’t win
Listen carefully. Hear that? It’s the sound of silence. It’s rare in this era, where Donald Trump’s Twitter account all but automatically lights up with garbage around sunrise each morning, making America dumber a hundred and forty characters at a time. Today is different, however. On a day when he just made one of the most defining policy decisions of his soon to be finished presidency, he’s gone completely quiet – because even he knows.
Donald Trump hasn’t tweeted anything this morning at all. Do you know how rare that is? I reluctantly have it set to I get an instant text message on my phone each time the orange buffoon tweets something new. Every day I wake up to his inane rambling. This morning? Nothing. Just as, when his decision on DACA was leaking out to the media last night, he also tweeted nothing. That’s because DACA has backed Trump into such a no-win corner that even someone with his near total lack of self awareness has been able to figure out that there’s no way he can spin this.
Trump has ultimately decided to punt on DACA. He’s letting it expire six months from now. That gives Congress plenty of time to step in and countermand him on it if he so chooses. So he’s siding with the racists for now, but he can’t step up and take credit for it because he’ll end up looking weak for having tried too hard to straddle the fence on this one. And if he tries to explain to mainstream Americans why he’s trying to ruin the lives of a bunch of innocent hard working people who came here as children, he might as well just be tweeting “I’m a racist” as many times as the 140 character limit will allow.
Because he’s totally lacking in self control, Donald Trump may end up tweeting defiantly about DACA after all. The day is still young, and eventually his ego may overrule his hesitance. But even this brief period of last night and this morning, which has seen him go completely silent instead of trying to defend or explain or deflect from such a major policy decision, tells us that even he knows he can’t win on this one.
