Maybe WaPo needs to revisit this analysis. Trying to be fair and balanced, it achieves a kind of weird stasis in which all are to blame except: WaPo!. First, the story from Politico on Trump's visit to Texas, round one:
It was a presidential trip to a deluged state where the president didn't meet a single storm victim, see an inch of rain or get near a flooded street.
But the day-long visit, during which President Donald Trump spent far more time in the air than on the ground, gave the optics-obsessed president some of the visuals he wanted, as he checked in on the government apparatus working on relief efforts and was buoyed by a roaring crowd of locals.
Which is pretty much what happened, but let's consider the story from the White House's preferred viewpoint, shall we Christian Science Monitor?
In visiting Texas on Tuesday, Trump's goal was to engage with events but not interfere with rescue and relief. Presidential travel always entails massive security, including involvement of local law enforcement. He and his wife did not travel to Houston, but instead visited Corpus Christi, where Harvey made landfall last Friday, and the state capital, Austin, for briefings with state leaders.
That was before the visit to Houston, which AP helpfully informed us was Trump's second visit to the city, because Houston=Corpus Christi/Austin=Texas, right?* Same state, close enough. But then, too, as Josh Marshall noted about Trump's visit to the shelter at NRG Center:
In addition to the basic body language he keeps saying things like “Have a Good Time!” to people stranded in a shelter. Or, ‘it’s going great‘ to people who’ve just lost everything. Or, look at this huge turnout to people who … well, you get the idea. When it comes to acting human or compassionate it’s like the part of his brain governing that species of behavior has been removed. It’s like watching a person who has profound social awkwardness in a meet and greet situation at a cocktail party. It’s painful. But again, with Trump it’s not social awkwardness. It’s a basic, seemingly fundamental inability not only to experience but even to fake the experience of empathy or human concern.
Which, it seems to me, was apparent from the way Trump acted while in Houston, up to and including his inability to give a pick-up truck driver a load of relief supplies.
Trump really hasn't done anything except to say how great the response to the storm is, and to brag about a recovery that isn't even yet underway as if it were already over. And his anticipation of Irma was so in line with what JMM noted it makes him seem clinically damaged:
I'm sure he wore himself out passing out those hot dogs; and now he might have to do it again?!Watching Hurricane closely. My team, which has done, and is doing, such a good job in Texas, is already in Florida. No rest for the weary!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017
Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017
Isn't that cause for concern, not excitement?
WaPo ends by citing approvingly a Daily Mail report on Trump which WaPo thinks is delivered without "praise or criticism." Or, as looking at that article highlights, any reference (in WaPo or the DM article) to Trump's buffoonish tweets about the calamity (here and here), or any mention of his clownish statements in Houston (well, to be fair, that hadn't happened yet). But that's the thing about reporting on Trump: simply report what he says, and it's hard not to take it as criticism; except it's simply the facts, ma'am.
*and yeah, it's still out there:
“What a crowd! What a turnout!” [Trump] said to a small gathering of Houstonians as 50 inches of rainfall submerged their city.
No, that was Corpus Christi, 200 miles south of Houston. But hey, right state, so close enough, eh?
and telling them to 'have a good day.' the idiot
ReplyDelete