President Donald Trump’s friends and advisors have reportedly told him to use social media less frequently. Even the Wall Street Journal has a new editorial out about how Trump has undermined his own presidency with Twitter. So let’s take a look at what’s going on in Trumpland this morning:
Oh dear. First off, it’s hard to argue that the “FAKE MSM” (we’re going to guess that MSM stands for “mainstream media”) doesn’t want Trump to use social media. In fact, they love getting his direct thoughts more than anyone else.
If anyone hates Trump’s use of social media, it’s consistently his own supporters, not to mention his staff. That “unfiltered message” has done a lot of damage to Trump’s own twisted agenda. And he clearly has no plans of stopping, despite the fact that he puts his own people in the awkward position of directly contradicting what he’ll say later.
News outlets like the Wall Street Journal have no issue with things like the Muslim ban. In fact, the WSJ editorial board explicitly supports it in its latest editorial, which appeared in this morning’s print edition of the paper:
If this pattern continues, Mr. Trump may find himself running an Administration with no one but his family and the Breitbart staff. People of talent and integrity won’t work for a boss who undermines them in public without thinking about the consequences. And whatever happened to the buck stops here?
Mr. Trump is also sabotaging the legitimate legal basis for the travel ban, and the stakes are bigger than the ban itself, which we think is counterproductive and unnecessary. He is exercising core presidential powers over foreign affairs that the courts may restrict if Mr. Trump keeps daring them to do so.
You’ll notice that the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board thinks that there’s still a “legitimate legal basis for the travel ban” despite the fact that Trump’s own words are contradicting his lawyers. It doesn’t get much more desperate than that. At least until you get to the last two paragraphs of the editorial:
Two appellate courts have ignored the order’s text and cited legally irrelevant campaign statements to rule that the ban is really intended to discriminate against Muslims. And now President Trump has given liberal judges Twitter evidence to conclude that his motives may be suspect. At the very least he is making it harder to corral a Supreme Court majority.
In other words, in 140-character increments, Mr. Trump diminished his own standing by causing a minor international incident, demonstrated that the loyalty he demands of the people who work for him isn’t reciprocal, set back his policy goals and wasted time that he could have devoted to health care, tax reform or “infrastructure week.” Mark it all down as further evidence that the most effective opponent of the Trump Presidency is Donald J. Trump.
Yes, Trump is his own worst enemy. But you have to do some pretty twisted mental gymnastics to claim that Trump both issued the ban without any intention to discriminate against Muslims, while he continues to tell you otherwise.
But I suppose the Wall Street Journal needs to get their tax cuts before they can completely abandon this presidency. For the time being they’re stuck with an angry, incoherent president that will make it hard for them to get any of their other bullshit done. It just so happens that President Trump tweeted about that other bullshit this morning...
...but good luck with that, guys.