Name: Trump Is Still in the Bunker
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Trump Is Still in the Bunker

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AdvertisementAdvertisementNationwide protests over police brutality and racism … an active pandemic … the highest unemployment rate in 80 years … let’s check in on what the president of the country is doing about this stuff!Needless to say, he’s just tweeting. (There were 12 posted messages between 10:15 p.m. Wednesday night and 2:30 p.m. Thursday, including one at 11:38 p.m. and one at 8:49 a.m. Rise and grind!) But what is he tweeting about, and what bearing do his tweets have on potential executive action? Let’s look at four from Thursday morning, which cover the topics the president is most concerned with at the moment, to find out.The Federal Reserve is wrong so often. I see the numbers also, and do MUCH better than they do. We will have a very good Third Quarter, a great Fourth Quarter, and one of our best ever years in 2021. We will also soon have a Vaccine &amp; Therapeutics/Cure. That’s my opinion. WATCH!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Fed predicted on Wednesday that the U.S. economy will struggle , which seems like a fair guess, given the aforementioned “worst unemployment since people were wearing barrels instead of clothes in black-and-white pictures” factor. But the central bank has already cut interest rates to zero and engaged in large-scale , which means there is little more it can do to stimulate the economy. Congress and the executive branch, by contrast, could be working on an additional stimulus bill, but the Trump administration has stopped pursuing that possibility because of ideological and political concerns about spending. In essence, then, Trump’s tweet is just a complaint that the Fed (which is independent by design) is not cooperating with his reelection message about an imminent recovery. It has no relation to any possible constructive action.THOSE THAT DENY THEIR HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThis message suggests that advocates of statue removal would like to prevent Americans from learning about and feeling ashamed about the Confederacy, which has been the actual opposite of their campaign in both intent and effect. Also, regardless of one’s opinions about the merits of taking the statues down, the matter is one that local governments, not the federal government, are responsible for. Again, this tweet has no discoverable nexus to a matter of executive branch activity. Administratively speaking, it is yelling at a television. (Update: While this post was being written Trump sent a objecting to a proposal to rename U.S. military bases that are currently named after Confederate generals, which does at least bear on a federal subject.)Sleepy Joe Biden refuses to leave his basement “sanctuary” and tell his Radical Left BOSSES that they are heading in the wrong direction. Tell them to get out of Seattle now. Liberal Governor is looking “the fool”. LAW &amp; ORDER!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs always, it is astounding to see a message this opaque and syntactically clipped and imagine the median U.S. voter trying to figure out what it means. But here is an explanation, as far as one is possible: Protesters in Seattle have established a so-called in one of the city’s neighborhoods after police decided to vacate a precinct there in an effort to defuse tensions. Members of the community say they are taking it upon themselves to maintain order and safety, and while this is certainly an unorthodox arrangement, city officials are at this point choosing to allow the experiment to continue rather than moving police back in violently. Fox News gave the subject on its Wednesday-night prime-time shows, which is likely why Trump has become attuned to it; in this and other tweets he’s hectored Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to move protesters out immediately, which, again, is not a strategy that the president of the U.S. would typically have a role in ordering. Biden’s name is tossed in because Trump is trying to persuade voters that his presidential campaign is controlled by radical anarchists.Our great National Guard Troops who took care of the area around the White House could hardly believe how easy it was. “A walk in the park”, one said. The protesters, agitators, anarchists (ANTIFA), and others, were handled VERY easily by the Guard, D.C. Police, &amp; S.S. GREAT JOB!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWe’re going increasingly off the rails here, in terms of coherence. As written, the tweet could suggest that the National Guard and police “S.S.” (presumably the Secret Service, not the Nazi —but you never know!) have completely cleared protesters out of the Lafayette Park area near the White House. Since they have not actually done that—protests continue near the park—one might then guess Trump is referring to the instantly infamous which cleared the area in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church on H Street NW. But a careful reconstruction in the indicates that the violence during the incident was perpetrated primarily by federal parks police, while the Times has reported at least one guardsman in the area had that it was going to take place. In sum it appears that the president had the intent of taunting protesters for being weak (!) and boasting about his control of the nation’s military, but, failing the existence of any evidence that would clearly demonstrate such command, he fudged some together.AdvertisementElsewhere on Thursday, in fact, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley for having created the perception of military intervention in domestic affairs by appearing with Trump at St. John’s—which is, if we will allow the deployment of an expression that is otherwise overused in these times, truly an extraordinary rebuke, given that Milley reports to Trump and that news reports have said the military presence in recent weeks resulted from the commander in chief’s expressed wishes.AdvertisementAdvertisementABC, meanwhile, that “multiple” Trump aides&nbsp;have “opted to turn off notifications for ’@realDonaldTrump,’ the president’s personal Twitter account,” on the grounds that Trump’s Twitter activity is not germane to their work. This is, weirdly, justifiable: The president’s outbursts, while nearly always upsetting and demagogic, have in the past usually had some bearing on a discernible and plausible political goal. Now they are about implausibly portraying Joe Biden as being an anarchist, celebrating a crackdown so odious it embarrassed the administration’s own top general, and insisting that a self-evidently awful economy is actually perfectly poised, in the near term, to create mass prosperity.There is a trope in movies and TV in which ill-fated characters, who don’t want to acknowledge the disappointing reality to which they have been consigned, drift into a dream world in which they are beloved and self-actualized. It always used to seem far-fetched!For more of Slate’s politics coverage, listen to The Political Gabfest.AdvertisementAdvertisement

AdvertisementAdvertisementNationwide protests over police brutality and racism … an active pandemic … the highest unemployment rate in 80 years … let’s check in on what the president of the country is doing about this stuff!Needless to say, he’s just tweeting. (There were 12 posted messages between 10:15 p.m. Wednesday night and 2:30 p.m. Thursday, including one at 11:38 p.m. and one at 8:49 a.m. Rise and grind!) But what is he tweeting about, and what bearing do his tweets have on potential executive action? Let’s look at four from Thursday morning, which cover the topics the president is...

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Ben Mathis

Ben Mathis-Lilley

A daily magazine on the web. Listen to Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade, @ApplePodcasts  Show of the Year 2022.

Trump Is Still in the Bunker

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