President Trump says he's not a racist; he only sounds like one
I love us Americans. When we're not arguing about politics, we argue about people who are arguing about politics.
I woke up Friday morning to a Twitterstorm from President Donald Trump, whom I follow so you don't have to.
After firing away at such obligatory topics as the Islamic State, North Korea's nukes and what he called "another attack in London by a loser terrorist," he got to something really important. He slammed ESPN for allowing SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill to be mean to him.
"ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!"
Oh, boo hoo! That's our Donald. When a news company fails to show enough appreciation for his wonderfulness, well, they just must be "failing" (his favorite label for The New York Times or "lying" (CNN).
For a commander-in-chief who constantly gripes about "politically correct" liberals, Trump's inner snowflake -- a mocking conservative label for people perceived to be overly sensitive and fragile -- is on a hair trigger, even when he would be better served by his own silence.
Earlier in the week, Hill apologized for a series of Monday tweets in which she called the president a "white supremacist" who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists. She did not retract her sentiments, which were tweeted on her own time and Twitter account, but she did say she was sorry that her comments "painted ESPN in an unfair light."
For the record, I don't call President Trump a white supremacist. I agree with humorist Andy Borowitz' line in The New Yorker: "No one has done more than Trump to prove white people are not superior."
The dust-up was in danger of dying out when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders brought it back to life. Responding to a reporter's question in Wednesday's press briefing, she said Hill's criticism of the president should be "a fireable offense by ESPN."
That triggered a response from, among others, the Democratic Coalition, an anti-Trump super PAC that filed an ethics complaint against Sanders with the Office of Government Ethics for essentially calling for Hill to be fired. Too bad. As a spokesperson for Trump, she was probably just doing her job. Unfortunately, her boss is not a model of restraint.
...continued
(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
