What did Donald Trump do today?

He got very emotional about the performing arts, and how much better he is than the people who do them.

On Wednesday, organizers for the "Great American State Fair" announced the headliners for a series of concerts scheduled to take place in Washington next month. The event is part of Trump's attempts to capitalize on the 250th anniversary of American independence, which also include a UFC cage match on the grounds of the White House. The announcement also revealed that Trump would be personally appearing at the concerts.

Immediately, the musicians on the schedule began pulling out. By Friday, all but two of the nine headliners had canceled their appearance. All of the performers who dropped out issued statements saying the same thing: that they had been misled into thinking that this wasn't a partisan political event.

 

Trump responded emotionally today on social media. His first impulse was to fantasize about "performing" himself: 

Artists are getting “the yips” having to do with their performance on Wednesday, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate “Artists,” and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!

In reality, Trump often struggles to draw crowds to his rallies, which have limited appeal beyond the very core of his base. He's often not even the real draw at events he headlines: crowds routinely get up to leave and beat the traffic during his long-winded and often bitter speeches. It's a sensitive subject for Trump, who as a sitting president once boasted about getting one million ticket requests for a rally in Oklahoma where 6,200 people actually showed up. ("Elvis in his prime" once played to more than 60,000 people, filling one of the largest stadiums in existence at the time.)

Within a few hours, though, Trump had decided to give up entirely, saying in a separate post that the whole event should be canceled. He then launched into another emotional tirade against the judge who ordered his name taken off of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
 

Why does this matter?

• This kind of tantrum from the President of the United States doesn't get any less embarrassing just because it happens all the time. 

• There are more important things for a president to worry about right now than micromanaging event planning.