Donald John Trump Sr. put himself on full display earlier this week.
His ignorance and arrogance were supremely evident when he declared “both sides” were responsible for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va., and when he attached a form of moral equivalence between the hate groups who marched and those who protested them.
Then, after his astonishing improv routine in the Trump Tower lobby, he walked away from the microphone and fielded a reporter’s question: Are you going to go to Charlottesville, Mr. President?
His answer was equally jaw-dropping. He didn’t speak about healing the community. He didn’t talk about the victims of the mayhem that erupted. He didn’t say a word about healing a nation in shock.
Oh, no. The braggart in chief talked about a winery he said he owns in Charlottesville. He called it the “largest winery” in the area, maybe in the state … hell, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
The point is that the man’s penchant for self-aggrandizement presented itself in full glory at the most inopportune time imaginable.
Try to fathom for a moment how we would react if Bill Clinton had done such a thing after Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City; or if George W. Bush had refused to stand on the pile of rubble after the 9/11 attack; or if Barack Obama had not comforted the parents of the children slaughtered in Newtown, Conn., or not gone to the church in Charleston, S.C., and led the congregation in singing “Amazing Grace” after that hideous massacre.
Donald Trump should have suspended his vacation and flown immediately to Charlottesville to lend comfort to a community in absolute shock over the mayhem that erupted.
He didn’t do that. When given a chance to answer a direct question about how he intended to reach out to a community in distress, the idiot in chief talked about a winery.
Yep, he’s just “telling it like it is.”