Donald Trump makes a point of reminding us how thoroughly he doesn’t get America

| 12:28 pm EDT October 3, 2017
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Over the weekend, Donald Trump reminded us of just how much he doesn’t want this job. He attacked Puerto Ricans after they asked for his help. He attacked NFL players just to remind us that he only cares about his own racist base. Then the Las Vegas shooting happened, and we’re briefly seeing a different side of him. Now he’s marginally trying to fake leadership – and it’s a reminder of just how thoroughly he doesn’t get America.

In the hours after the shooting yesterday, Trump weirdly tweeted his “warmest condolences” to the victims, posted generic moment of silence video, and then disappeared for the rest of the day. This was Trump mailing it in, which is the best we can hope for in times like this. But today things shifted a bit, as he woke up and decided to try to at least pretend to play the role of a leader. However, this merely resulted in him tweeting “I am so proud of our great Country. God bless America!” Wait, what?

On nearly any other day, this would have been a refreshingly non-toxic tweet for once. But in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, Americans find themselves running the emotional gamut from fear to grief to uncertainty about what comes next. Many Americans are feeling ashamed that they’ve collectively allowed this shooting to happen, having done nothing to solve the ongoing and worsening gun violence epidemic. This was the weirdest day Trump could ever have thought of to finally decide that he’s “proud” of America.

The sad part is that we all know he’s bound to shift his mindset again, and make things much worse. If it turns out the Las Vegas shooter was a Trump supporter, we have to worry that Trump will begin viciously attacking the victims in the hope of distracting from it. If it turns out the shooter voted against Trump, we know he’ll spin that as well. Soon enough he’ll be back to his toxic self. But on this day, even when he’s briefly sort of trying to get it, he’s merely reminding us that he never will.