Donald Trump tries to get it right for once, still blows it
There was a moment on Tuesday, a brief one, where Donald Trump almost seemed to be doing the job correctly for once. No, not the part where he tried to use the Hurricane Harvey tragedy to sell baseball caps and pocket the money. And not the part where he retweeted ridiculous propaganda from Fox News. That was all par for the course. But there was one moment where he seemed to genuinely try to impersonate a President.
Trump stood on top of a firetruck in Texas on Tuesday, and for one brief moment, seemed to be on the verge of actually connecting with real people in a human way. For four or five shining seconds, Trump was almost doing the job correctly. Then he opened his mouth.
Because Donald Trump is Donald Trump, he couldn’t force himself to say the right things, even though they had surely been fed to him by his advisers. He couldn’t bring himself to console those who had lost their homes, their livelihoods and worse. He couldn’t dare mention the names of the victims who had died. Instead, he bragged about the size of the crowd that had shown up to hear him speak about a natural disaster.
That served as an all too timely reminder that Donald Trump is clinically incapable of doing the job correctly. Even in a moment where he had flown halfway across the country and climbed atop a firetruck and perched himself in perfect position to do the right thing for once in his miserable presidency, he still blew it. Because in his mind the presidency, just like the entirety of his narcissistic life, is all about him.
