Mr. Trump, your insecurities are showing
But after responding with alarm to past Trump Twitter tantrums, I have learned from experience to react with a question of my own: From what is he trying to distract us?
Trump's ability to maintain Twitter silence at the right moments, such as during the recent congressional testimony of James Comey, the FBI director he fired, tells me that his impulses are not completely out of control.
Could his "Morning Joe" tirade come in response to the hosts' on-air chatter about whether the president's engagement with his own agenda is, at best, deeper than a coat of suntan lotion.
In an MSNBC video clip on the show, a reporter asks Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) whether he had "confidence that the president understands the details and complexities" of the Senate's stalled ACA repeal-and-replace bill. McCain, who was still undecided on the measure, replied with less than a ringing endorsement: "I don't know if he does or not."
That soundbite followed a New York Times story a day earlier, headlined "On Senate Health Bill, Trump Falters in the Closer's Role." The story quoted an unnamed Republican senator as saying the president "did not have a grasp of some basic elements" of the GOP's health care plan.
When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked by reporters whether the president "had command of the details of the negotiations," the Times reported, "McConnell ignored the question and smiled blandly."
A report in Kristol's conservative magazine quoted "several" Senate Republicans who found Trump had "little apparent understanding of the basic principles of the reforms and virtually no understanding of the details."
Presidential spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders resolutely pushed back at her boss' critics, telling reporters, "I think the president would love for us all to focus on the legislative agenda a whole lot more." But who believes that when he so casually scuttles chances for his agenda to be enacted?
With Republicans deeply divided over how best to overhaul the nation's health care system, presidential leadership could go a long way to build a consensus. Unfortunately, Trump is not much into the business of bridge building.
Feuds with media stars may come and go, but Trump's self-defeating lack of interest in details or impulse control appear to be here to stay as long as he does.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
