I’ve been thinking about this sequence of events all day—and it’s a disturbing one, albeit in an amusing and harmless context:
- The President saw a single line of an article on a television show.
- He tweeted that single line with apparently no idea who the author was or what the publication was, and indeed without reading the rest of the article.
- Nobody in the White House vetted the tweet to discover the readily apparent fact that the article in question sharply criticized the President and supported the decision about which he was angrily complaining.
- Nobody warned the President that the article was written by an author who had written numerous other articles ungraced by pleasant words about him—indeed, an author who has been calling him a threat to national security for nearly a year.
- Nobody warned the President that the site he was about to praise has had a great deal of such writing by other writers as well.
It is a portrait in inconsequential and comical miniature of the incompetence and dysfunction we’ve been seeing since day one of the Trump Administration.
From: Thoughts on a Strange Day—and a Very Strange Presidential Tweet – Lawfare
