The president of the United States is either (a) genetically incapable of saying the right things in the moment of national grief or (b) willfully ignores the impulse to offer comfort and surrenders to the urge to politicize these events.

I truly am baffled. I cannot make the call.

A lunatic drove a truck into a crowd in New York City, killing eight people; he injured many others. An NYC police officer shot and wounded him. It turns out the suspect is a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan who reportedly shouted “Allah Akbar!” before driving the truck into the crowd.

What does Donald Trump do? He starts leveling blame on Democrats. He calls our nation’s justice system a “laughingstock” and a “joke.” He announces plans to immediately revoke the immigration policy that enabled the suspect to enter the national legally in 2010.

Oh sure. He called the suspect an “animal.” Indeed, if the young man is convicted of the crime for which he’s being accused, he will deserve the maximum punishment allowed under the law.

It’s the politicization that is most bothersome. The president simply appears ill-equipped to offer anything approaching words of comfort and support. He needs to reach out to the loved ones of those who died. He needs to speak of the heroism of the first responders, such as the officer who stopped the man accused of the shooting.

Trump needs to provide some semblance of actual leadership, rather than blasting out those damn tweets. The president’s one-time good buddy, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has it right when he blasts the president for failing to lead the nation that is troubled once again by an act of terror.

I’m not smart enough to do a lot of things. One of them is to reach any conclusion about whether the president just isn’t wired to offer high-minded words of comfort or whether he just chooses willingly to take the low road.

Whatever it is, the president of the United States keeps falling far short of performing the tasks he inherited when he took the oath of office.