What did Donald Trump do today?
He was "sarcastic" again.
This afternoon, Trump posted the following five-tweet rant.
The people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am the hardest working President in history. I don’t know about that, but I am a hard worker and have probably gotten more done in the first 3 1/2 years than any President in history. The Fake News hates it! I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work........schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean! When will all of the “reporters” who have received Noble Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes), be turning back their cherished “Nobles” so that they can be given........to the REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS who got it right. I can give the Committee a very comprehensive list. When will the Noble Committee DEMAND the Prizes back, especially since they were gotten under fraud? The reporters and Lamestream Media knew the truth all along........Lawsuits should be brought against all, including the Fake News Organizations, to rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we have any takers? When will the Noble Committee Act? Better be fast!
Trump's work habits are pretty well established at this point, as is the difficulty he has in controlling his temper. His confusion about the "Noble" prizes—he probably meant Pulitzer, not Nobel—won for covering his scandals attracted more mockery today, prompting him to declare for the second time in three days that a mental lapse was "sarcasm." (But he also deleted those tweets.)
Trump has been the subject of several Pulitzers. In 2019, the New York Times won for its exposé of the Trump family's tax evasion schemes that allowed him to illegally inherit the equivalent of $400 million free of taxes. That same year, the Wall Street Journal won for their investigation into Trump's payment of hush money to at least two women he had extramarital affairs with, for which Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen went to prison. And in 2017, David Farenthold of the Washington Post won a Pulitzer for exposing Trump's failure to follow through on flashy promises to make charitable donations. (Trump was eventually forced to pay a $2,000,000 fine and shut down his fraudulent "charity," which he was using as an illegal tax shelter and campaign slush fund.)
Trump hasn't refuted any of those Pulitzer prizewinning stories, but the one that may bother him the most is the 2018 prize won jointly by the New York Times and the Washington Post for their investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
Last week, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to endorse the intelligence services' "clear and coherent" report that the Putin regime's "historically unprecedented" and ultimately successful efforts to sabotage the election on Trump's behalf.
It's not clear if Trump is reacting to that report, or if he genuinely thinks at this point that Russia's attempts to get him elected have somehow been disproven.
Why should I care about this?
- Presidents who can't control their temper can't do the job.
- Insisting that things didn't happen doesn't change reality.
- Even by Trump's standards, this is a pretty sorry display.