He resorts to the reliable old favorite gambits that he knows will please and distract his base.
That last verb is important. His goal is to divert attention from something Trump would prefer that people not notice.
He has a great need for such distraction now.
The response to the flooding in Texas by the president and his allies has been, at best, inept and short-sighted. People died while Trump appointees struck political poses instead of doing their jobs.
The curiosity about the nature and scope of his relationship with the late child sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein grows greater with every attempt by the president and his minions to tamp down interest in the story. This is true even among his most devout supporters.
And even his backers have noticed that he has kept none of the promises he made before and since taking office. Prices for consumer goods have not dropped, despite his campaign pledge that he would bring them down on day one. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza still rage—and, in fact, have expanded—even though he vowed he would end them in a day.
His political strength is supposed to be that his experience as a businessman would enable him to manage the economy more effectively than anyone else.
But the economy shrank during his first three months in office—in large part because he threw investors, consumers and trading partners into confusion and turmoil with his on-again, off-again threats to impose tariffs and erect other trade barriers.
Even worse for him is that he seems to have backed himself into a corner regarding tariffs. Other nations now seek markets other than the United States to sell their goods, which means he’s managed to align the world’s economic powerhouses against us.
His threats of still more new tariffs that will begin soon won’t change that. His promises that he would strike 90 new trade deals with 90 nations within 90 days grow emptier by the hour.
All these new tariffs will do is generate revenue to pay for the fresh $3.4 trillion in debt the tax cuts benefitting Trump and other billionaires that he and his allies rammed through Congress will impose on future generations.
That revenue, of course, will not come from other countries. It will come from American consumers, who will have to pay still higher prices for products so the president and other privileged souls can slip a little more cash into their pockets.
With an unbroken record of failure like that, it’s not surprising that he would want the public’s eye on anything but his bumbling incompetence.
That’s why he dialed up his ancient feud with Rosie O’Donnell. He knew saying something outrageous about her would distract attention from his many screwups.
Thus, Trump wrote, relying on his typically random system of capitalization, on his Truth Social platform:
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
As feints go, this was about as sophisticated as saying, “Hey, look, your shoe’s untied.”
But Trump returns to this stunt repeatedly because it works.
Critics arose quickly to point out—accurately—that what Trump proposed to do was patently unconstitutional.
If presidents had the power to strip Americans of their citizenship just because they disagree with what those people say, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden would have done so with Trump long ago.
But arguing the constitutional merits of Trump’s nonsense was beside the point.
This president points fingers at other people when he doesn’t want us to notice what he’s doing—or, in the case of the tragedy down in Texas, what he’s not doing.
We Americans don’t have to be Charlie Brown swallowing Lucy’s assurances that she’ll hold the football in place when we try to kick it.
Rosie O’Donnell isn’t president of the United States and never will be.
It isn’t her fault that the world is in chaos, prices haven’t come down and the U.S. economy has shrunk.
No, responsibility for all that belongs with the president.
Donald Trump.
