Republicans haven’t found their bottom yet, so hang on for this ride.
Who’s fault is it that President Trump took petty digs at London Mayor Sadiq Khan in the wake of the brutal terrorist attacks on his city? If you guessed Donald Trump’s fault, you’re not doing this right. It’s never Donald Trump’s fault. It’s your fault for reading his tweets and holding him accountable for them, and it’s the media’s fault for reporting what the President says.
And today, it’s the Mayor’s fault because….
He “started” it, according to Republican Rep. Collins (R-NY).
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“I could argue the mayor started it months ago,” Rep. Chris Collins told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” Tuesday. “Let’s just say they are not friends. They are, you know, adversaries to the standpoint of jabbing at each other.”
“One thing we know about President Trump is he does jab back,” CNN reports Collins adding.
So the defense is that Donald Trump is a child, and so when someone starts something with him, he jabs back.
Presuming you’re okay with this incredibly low standard of behavior for the leader of the free world, there are additional rungs of the bar you must lower in order to absolve Trump of responsibility for his behavior.
1. President Trump can’t control himself, so he “jabs back” moments after a terrorist attack on our ally. He can’t even wait a few days, he has no impulse control. This is on everyone else to accept and deal with and accommodate, not on Trump.
2. If someone starts a feud, they have no right to complain when Trump pulls their hair, because Donald Trump is just this way. He is just a jerk with no impulse control, how dare you hold him accountable for this.
3. Donald Trump is operating at about a 3-4 year old level, and you’re his Mommy. You have to love him and think everything he does is okay, and it’s always the other kid’s fault. You owe Donald Trump this, for reasons not explained.
4. There is something that the Mayor of London did that justifies what Trump did in the shock filled moments after a terrorist attack. (This is akin to the Mayor mocking former President George W. Bush for 9/11 right after it happened, in public. There isn’t a feud that would make that okay.)
Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
Here’s the feud. The Mayor disagreed with Donald Trump’s ideas. As people who are in opposing schools of thought are wont to do, the Mayor disagreed with the way Trump was running his campaign. Did he attack Trump personally or wait until a terror attack hit to take Trump’s words out of context in order to portray him as downplaying terrorism?
No. The Mayor had the unmitigated gall to say he preferred people to run on “hope” when asked about Trump’s remarks on Muslims and what he meant by “using a Donald Trump playbook.”
“Hope, I think, is a good way of persuading people to vote for you, energize and enthuse people. I think to try and look for differences, to try and turn communities against each other is not conducive to living successfully and amicably,” Khan said in an interview with Time in May of 2016.
So the gist of the Republican argument here is: Donald Trump is not responsible for the things he said about Muslims or the campaign he ran; It is unacceptable for the Mayor to disagree with Trump’s political strategy of divisiveness and dangerous rhetoric; It is okay for Trump to say whatever he wants and no one is allowed to hold him responsible for it, because his tweets are just Donald being Donald; To disagree with the way Trump ran his campaign is to start a feud that earns the Mayor being blamed for a terrorist attack on his people.
In summation, the man Republicans are defending can say or do anything and it doesn’t count, but if you call him on it he’ll point to his victim and cry, “He started it!”
It’s time for Republicans to stop holding up this dangerously inept and impulse control impaired child as president.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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