Ten times harder
The more I think about it the more staggering – and yet all too predictable – it is that Melania Trump’s people think it’s fine to justify his vulgar sexist vicious tweets by saying: “As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder.”
In fact you could read that as a captive Melania signaling to the rest of us. “I keep telling you – he’s an authoritarian bully who thinks he’s the only important person in the world.”
But you can also read it more straightforwardly as his wife dutifully saying what he would say: nobody has any right to criticize The Great and Awesome Donald Trump, and if anyone does dare to criticize him, he will retaliate not with an equivalent response but with ten times more venom. You criticize him, he will tear you into pieces and feed you to the alligators.
He has everything backward. He’s ignoring the fact that taking the job of head of state means having to put up with endless criticism and dissent and indeed mockery. He thinks it works the other way – that once you’re head of state you have the power to force people to say you’re awesome.
Not yet you don’t, Donnie. Not yet.
Strange how he didn’t treat Obama the same way he is now demanding to be treated himself.
Re my comment on the previous post: I think Donnie truly believes no president has ever had to suffer this sort of “abuse” (read: criticism). I think he truly believes that it was just a love fest for Obama and Bill Clinton, and no one in the other party ever challenged them or questioned them, but just nodded their heads graciously and said “yes sir, no sir”. He may even believe that about Dubya Bush.
That’s more an indictment of his ability to remember yesterday, as well as his ability to realize that the shit happening to Obama was really happening (he did some of it himself). It wasn’t just “truth-telling”; it was making up lies about a sitting president (long-form birth certificate, anyone?). As for the Trump bloodied head (I don’t actually approve of that, but I think the hyperventilation that followed was extremely overwrought) – does no one remember this:
http://dingo.care2.com/pictures/causes/2950/2949696.large.jpg
This is just one more indication of how Trump is first, last, and always just about Donald Trump. That’s bad enough as a citizen of a diverse country; it is absolutely horrendous in a president of a diverse country (in other words, any country that contains anyone else in addition to Trump)
In a way it’s true that much of the criticism of Trump is unprecedented – but that’s not because the press is suddenly randomly Unfair to Trump – it’s because Trump is UNIQUELY HORRIBLE. It’s that simple. We haven’t before had a president who did things like singling out female journalists and commentators for ugly sexist abuse on Twitter; naturally the reporting is different from previous reporting.
If Hillary Clinton had become president, and her press secretary lied about the size of the inauguration crowd, the media — and not just Fox News — would still be running that story 24/7 today, months after the fact. The Republican Congress would be holding hearings into Inauguration-Gate: Did the press secretary act alone, or was she ordered to lie by the president? Was the National Park Service pressured to fudge its numbers? Can we blame Susan Rice for this somehow? Chris Cilliza would be writing a 30-part series on this.
In this reality, it was a story for about a week and then everyone moved on. Trump lied, big deal, he lies about everything. Forget it, America, it’s Trumptown.
Screechy, Hillary didn’t even win, and I am still seeing endless articles about: e-mails, basket of deplorables, Benghazi, Bill talking to people…on and on and on and on. Nearly every magazine I pick up has some article analyzing why Clinton didn’t win, and it is always something that is wrong with Clinton…she just isn’t nice enough, she ran a bad campaign, she didn’t this or didn’t that or said this or said that…
The press and the populace have been obsessed with Hillary since 1990. They cannot leave her alone.