Petulant toddler tantrum in the wake of two mass killings

Having pledged to spend the trip [to El Paso and Dayton] unifying the nation, President Donald Trump opted to comfort the grieving by attacking Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley for misrepresenting his reception at a hospital in Dayton, something neither of them actually did. He also spent Wednesday morning tweeting conspiracy theories about the Dayton shooter.

[...]

The cherry bomb on top was a photo from first lady Melania Trump’s Twitter account that appeared to feature a grinning president with a 2-month-old infant who was orphaned during the El Paso shooting. The baby’s parents were both killed trying to protect him.

Five of the eight El Paso victims who were still in the hospital reportedly declined to meet with the president, and three were physically unable to. It appears baby Paul was brought back to the hospital by White House staff for the photo-op.

That’s the president, grinning and giving a thumbs-up, as the orphaned child is held out like a trophy. If words weren’t inclined to fail, ghoulish and surreal might serve. This child has no parents because a shooter spouting Trumpist talking points about foreign “invaders” went to El Paso to kill them. And while the president refused to speak to reporters, who were scolded by the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, in a statement saying that the visits were all “about the victims” and not a “photo op,” hours later, Trump released a campaign-style video of his triumphal comforting tour.

It is clearly a horrifying spectacle of degradation when even consummate soulless showman Anthony Scaramucci is forced to say that the trip proved to be a “catastrophe” for the president, who was incapable of demonstrating the requisite quantum of “compassion” and “empathy” to win the reality show seal of approval.

[...]

Take him out from behind the oceans of fawning MAGA hats and put him next to a real survivor of sexual violence, and all the grinning and preening tricks fail him. Put him next to actual heads of state discussing actual international policy, and he sulks and mopes. Oh, he can pull off the photo-op; this is a man made of photo-ops. But time and time again, when he is called on to deal with real people—not glassy superfans but genuine human beings whom he allegedly serves as president—he fails to meet the occasion.

[...]

It’s not simply that an injured baby had to be returned to a hospital so that a grinning president could throw a Fonzie-style thumbs-up for the Twitter fans—that’s gross, yes, but it misses the point. [...] The “catastrophe,” with all due respect to the unparalleled wisdom of Scaramucci, is not that he failed to show the requisite “compassion” or “empathy” for the cameras. Neither Donald Trump, nor his wife, nor his handlers and enablers, will ever understand that the real catastrophe isn’t how he appeared on television or Twitter. The real catastrophe is that Americans are dead and dying and their president is mass-producing a television show about his presidency, with their personal tragedy as a set choice.

  Slate

Perhaps because his wife, his handlers and enablers are as sociopathic as he is.

Trump cannot function in reality. He lives in a hall of mirrors with his made-for-TV family, as the national security apparatus, the national intelligence apparatus, the foreign service, and foreign policy detonate all around him. And on the rare occasion on which he is called to step out from behind the glass panopticon that he has built, he fails, spectacularly.

[...]

[T]he photo-op with the orphaned baby is proof positive that Trump’s is not a big life, or a real life. It’s just smallness, refracted a million times over, which is nevertheless impossibly small.

Sadly, it affects the entire world and is capable of reducing the earth to ashes.

President Trump grew angry with aides on Air Force One on Wednesday for failing to allow cameras to record his visits to hospitals treating the victims from two mass shootings, complaining that he was not receiving credit for the trips and his foes were dominating television news.

[...]

The weekend shootings left 31 dead and dozens injured.

[...]

But a video that surfaced Thursday of Trump’s visit to an El Paso hospital shows him talking to medical staff about the crowd sizes that he and former congressman Beto O’Rourke drew at political rallies earlier in the year.

[...]

“That was some crowd,” Trump says of his event. “We had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot, and they said his crowd was wonderful.”

The video shows no one responding to Trump’s assertion before convening for group photos.

[...]

Inside the White House, the trip was generally seen as “not ideal,” in the words of one senior administration official, as the president spent much of the day attacking his foes and complaining via Twitter as he traveled to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso.

[...]

Trump, complaining loudly on Air Force One, wanted pictures and video released immediately, according to people with knowledge of what happened, and asked aides to defend him. Trump has complained to allies since the shooting that he has not gotten enough credit for his response, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations.

[...]

Separately, [Trump] bragged that people showed him and the office of the presidency great respect, and a top adviser, Dan Scavino, wrote that he was greeted as a “ROCK STAR.”

[...]

Reporters traveling with Trump during his visits Wednesday were not permitted to witness his visits with hospital staff, first responders and others impacted by the shootings. While the media was kept at bay, Trump later tweeted two video montages documenting the visits.

[...]

While the president’s aides explained to reporters that cameras were kept out of the hospital because of logistical and privacy concerns, two White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there were concerns that they could capture an impolitic moment or the president making an insensitive comment.

  WaPo

Seriously, what were the chances?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.