Other than that it went well

Like Basil Fawlty, Trump just can’t get anything right, can he.

President Trump has an uncanny knack for making a mess of simple, traditional functions every other president has managed to carry out with ease. Talk to a child about Christmas? Yikes — a “marginal” disaster. Go to Europe to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I? He skips one event rather than wilt in the rain and sulks through another. The worst anti-Semitic massacre in U.S. history? He whines about getting his hair wet and keeps campaigning. Visit the troops (finally) in Iraq? Oh boy.

What, just because he compromised their security? Picky picky.

So on his belated, first visit to a war zone, Trump once more flubbed a routine presidential task, politicizing his speech(complete with partisan attacks on Democrats on his favorite topic, the border) and even signing “Make America Great Again” hats for the troops, despite regulations prohibiting military personnel from engaging in political events.

There was also that awkward thing where he talked to some soldiers on Christmas day but instead of really talking to them he ranted about…Comey and the “witch hunt” – in other words himself. “Hi thanksforyourservice now let’s talk about me.”

To make matters worse, he lied to the military men and women in attendance about the raise they received. ABC News reports:

“Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got?” he surveyed the crowd. “Raise your hand please. Oh, I don’t see too many hands.”

He continued, citing numbers that have since been debunked and declared untrue.

“You haven’t gotten [a raise] in more than ten years,” he said. “And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.”

As the independent fact-checking site PolitiFact noted, the military has received a routine pay raise every year since at least 1961. The 2.4 percent increase that went into effect in 2018 was the largest since 2010, but they have continued apace every year.

Trump then falsely asserted that the pay increase was actually 10 percent, recounting phony conversations in which “plenty of people” tried to impose a smaller raise.

Hey, it’s called morale-boosting.

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