If for some strange and masochistic reason you ever find yourself wanting to feel a smidgen of pity for Donald Trump, consider the fact that the president and his administration are now so surrounded by scandals and controversies on all sides, coming from all directions, that he resembles a lumbering, dull-witted, slow-moving giant swatting uselessly at a swarm of hornets that are attacking him from every direction.
Then, to keep the metaphor going, you can realize that Trump himself was entirely responsible for the hive-disturbing acts that led to the assault by the angry and vengeful insects, so you can ignore any compassion his plight may inspire in you.
With so many offenses to respond to, Donald Trump’s Twitter feed is forced to jump from scandal to scandal, denying this accusation and the next, blaming his favorite targets — Democrats and the media — for recognizing his actions as the atrocities that they are, offering false narratives as excuses, and inventing distractions to turn attention away from what he doesn’t want the public to see or know.
Trump’s most serious problem right now is the intelligence community whistleblower’s revelation that he allegedly sought to blackmail the Ukranian government into assisting him in his reelection campaign by withholding military and foreign aid from the country unless they delivered helpful dirt on one of the main Democratic contenders in the 2020 election, Joe Biden. It is an allegation that sounds suspiciously identical to the type of help he sought from Russia in his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.
So to help take the heat off this most current controversy, the president has decided to try to focus attention back to last week’s more manageable outrage, the resurfacing of allegations of perjury and sexual assault by the now-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Sprinkled among the torrent of tweets about the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and retweets of messages of support from his bootlicking Republican enablers, Trump tried to change the conversation from his own impeachable acts to those of the beer and indecent exposure-loving judge — once again attacking The New York Times for their reporting which exposed the credible existence of yet another drunken dorm party incident involving Kavanaugh’s penis and an unwilling female participant.
The Times account has led to renewed calls for a proper investigation into whether the Justice lied at his confirmation hearings, an investigation that would hopefully be unlike the sham, truncated FBI probe that was severely limited by the White House when it was hastily arranged at the time of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
Trump’s tweets about the Supreme Court Justice today began with a quote from his favorite Southern sycophantic Senator, Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
“They are trying to destroy and influence Justice Kavanaugh, a very good man.” @LindseyGrahamSC 100% correct, and they should be fully exposed for what they are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2019
While neither Graham nor Trump specifies exactly which “they” are being vilified in their comments, in Trumplandia everyone knows that it means anyone who opposes the president and his agenda. It’s the amorphous “they” that includes, in the president’s parlance, the “FAKE NEWS” media, the “DEEP STATE,” and the Democrats, and every person outraged by his corruption and lies.
Trump got more specific with his blame in his next tweet.
“The @nytimes is trying to make someone (Justice Kavanaugh) into an evil person when they don’t have the information to back it up. It is a false hoax.” @MZHemingway @MediaBuzzFNC Zero people were fired at the Times. Why?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2019
Perhaps no one was fired at The New York Times because accurately reporting on interviews with eyewitnesses is not a fireable offense, and, unlike on his former reality show, firings are not done for program ratings and to advance the cheesy plot.
He fails to mention that the Fox News contributor whose quote he tweets has is a senior editor at The Federalist and has written a laudatory book about the Kavanaugh confirmation process. She has been described as “a reliably pro-Trump commentator” by Politico.
The president was not finished with his topic-changing tweets about Kavanaugh, however. In an unintentionally hilarious post, he offers his unsolicited legal advice to the Supreme Court Justice who presumably — in between bouts of swilling copious quantities of beer — earned enough of a legal education to advance through the jurisprudence system to the pinnacle he was so desperately and expeditiously rammed through Congress to achieve.
Justice Kavanaugh should sue The Failing New York Times for all they are worth!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2019
This strategic legal advice that the president is suggesting to Kavanaugh is pure Trump bluster — sound and fury signifying nothing.
It says more about the president’s pugnacious personality than anything about the legitimacy of any potential legal action.
It is the fact that Trump was willing to revive awareness of a story that was already fading in the news cycle — overtaken by the impeachable offenses alleged in the Ukraine scandal — that indicates how desperate the president is to change the conversation, even if it’s to an equally reprehensible, if less personally damaging outrage.
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