In unusually personal and vulgar terms
The Times on Trump’s vulgar attack on a woman tv host:
President Trump assailed the television host Mika Brzezinski on Thursday in unusually personal and vulgar terms, the latest of a string of escalating attacks by the president on the national news media.
And women. There’s more than one pattern here. There’s Trump’s loathing and disgust at women as well as his hatred of independent journalism.
The graphic nature of the president’s suggestion that Ms. Brzezinski had undergone plastic surgery was met with immediate criticism on social media. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, wrote on Twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And a spokesman for NBC News, Mark Kornblau, wrote on Twitter: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’ ”
In a statement Thursday morning, MSNBC said, “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”
Ms. Sanders, in an interview on Fox News, defended Mr. Trump’s tweets.
“I don’t think that the president has ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” she told the Fox anchor Bill Hemmer. “This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media, and the liberal elites within the media.”
No, this is not a president who fights fire with fire. It’s a president who fights criticism with vulgar sexist trashy personal insults.
President Trump lashed out at the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in two vicious tweets on Thursday morning, calling Mika Brzezinski “I.Q. Crazy” and claiming that she had a facelift late last year.
Even by President Trump’s standards, these tweets were shocking.
On Thursday morning, while MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was on the air, Trump posted a pair of hateful tweets about co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
…
Trump claimed that Scarborough and Brzezinski courted him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago around the New Year’s Eve holiday.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the president wrote.
He actually said yes, according to accounts of their meeting. Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski mingled with guests and had a private chat.
For the record, photos from Mar-a-Lago do not show any blood or bandages on Brzezinski’s face.
Imagine my surprise to learn it was a lie as well as a vulgar trashy insult.
Stunned commenters on social media noted that Trump targeted both hosts with his barbed tweets, but only opined on the physical appearance of the woman involved.
Democratic commentator Maria Cardona, speaking on CNN, said it was part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior by Trump.
And not what you’d call a subtle or stealthy one.
Melania Trump is fine with it though.
First lady Melania Trump is standing by President Donald Trump’s Thursday morning tweets criticizing MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski.
No no no – don’t normalize it. He wasn’t “criticizing” them.
“As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” the first lady’s communications director Stephanie Grisham said in a statement to CNN when asked about the tweets.
Er…? That’s the definition of a bully.
Also, it’s wholly inappropriate for an elected head of state. We’re allowed to criticize him, indeed it’s our civic duty to criticize him if he’s wrong or incompetent or a vulgar trashy misogynist bully.
We’re living in a sewer in this country. A sewer.
Supposedly he wanted to officiate their wedding and has had dinner with both of them…
And when we criticize them, if we are wrong (or he believes we are wrong), the correct response is a polite, dignified rebuttal, pointing out the evidence that demonstrates that we are wrong, not a personal attack on someone’s appearance.
The problem with Melania’s defense is that he did not get punched; he gets rebuked by the press. And every single president ever has had to deal with that. Obama got some of the most ugly commentary of any president in my lifetime, and never, ever, ever, ever responded in such a grotesque, inappropriate manner. Of course, I’m sure in Trumpworld, that translates as “Obama was a weak sissy who throws like a girl” – in short, the exact sort of ‘rebuttal’ we are getting accustomed to from this schoolyard bully with a limited vocabulary.
How is FLOTUS’s anti-bullying campaign going?
“As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder.”
Sadly, I suspect this is literally true and the First Lady knows it from first-hand experience.
One issue with Brian Stellar’s bit up there–I’m long past the point where anything Trump does ‘shocks’ me, and I wish that word would be retired with respect to the vile cretin. I may be appalled, outraged and disgusted, but he’s lost the power to be shocking to me, and the same should be true for anyone paying attention for the last few months.