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Mr. Trump, your insecurities are showing

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

It started out like any other normal day in the White House.

President Donald Trump had a big energy policy speech to deliver. He had a meeting to attend with South Korea's president on North Korea's nuclear plans. On Capitol Hill, he had "Trumpcare," as critics were calling the Grand Old Party's push to repeal and replace President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

But first, before the president would face these earth-shaking issues, his advisers and allies had to cross their fingers, hoping the day's agenda would not be derailed by an early morning Twitter tantrum.

This was not their lucky day.

This was to be a morning in which the president would blast two tweets that would seize the day's political conversations. Aimed at MSNBC "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, they were unusually gross, even by this president's juvenile standards.

Combined, they read: "I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"

 

After those tweets instantly went around the world, you could forget about the serious matters that we expect serious presidents to tackle. Instead, we have Donald Trump, who still sounds astonished that he won the job. (On that, he's not alone.)

I was prepared to blast our president's stupid behavior, but an abundance of prominent Republicans and other sane conservatives beat me to it -- with gusto.

Winner for brevity: commentator Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of the conservative Weekly Standard: "Dear @realDonaldTrump, You are a pig. Sincerely, Bill Kristol."

A bit more elegantly, presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted a distinguished voice from the past: "George Washington wrote John Adams in 1789 that a President of the United States must 'maintain the dignity of Office.' " Good idea. I wonder what's happened to it.

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(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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