Monday, June 05, 2017

Anybody got the net?



Nico Hines at The Daily Beast asks:  "What's the matter with Donald Trump?"

Here is the offending statement from the Mayor of London: “Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. There's no reason to be alarmed.”

This seems utterly unobjectionable. Expressions of increased vigilance and the resolve to live free from fear are what leaders do when confronted with domestic terror, following a model set by Winston Churchill during the Battle of Britain: Keep Calm and Carry On.

So why would the mayor of London be singled out for a Trump twitter attack while his city prepares to bury the dead?  It seems petty, cruel, and stupid—blaming the victim and undercutting our allies in a moment of maximum pain and peril. 

Politics, he wonders?  No, he decides.  Personal animus?  Impossible, the two men don't know each other.  Because the Mayor is Muslim?  Well, maybe....

But more likely, the answer is closer to home:

As Trump was sending his first tweet, a Fox News host asked another guest about the response of London mayor Sadiq Khan's response to the attack.

Khan had told the BBC earlier in the day that Londoners would see more police on the streets on Sunday, but explained that their presence was "no reason to be alarmed."

Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump mentioned Khan in a tweet.

"At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is 'no reason to be alarmed!'" he tweeted.

That tweet at the top, one of the latest today, is tagged to "FoxandFriends."  Trump gets his information, not from his intelligence briefings, but from cable TV news.  Not only his he pouting about the Constitutional structure that keeps him from directly appointing people to government positions, he's flailing about the Mayor of London:

What the hell is wrong with this man?  Although I'm sure Kellyanne will be on hand later today if not early tomorrow, to tell us not to pay attention.

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