Yes, President Donald Trump acted more like a cartoon bear that had been hit in the head with a frying pan than the Leader of the Semi-Free World at his coronavirus press conference on Wednesday. But it was just as bad at another event he held the next day. It was a meeting with African American "leaders" in the Cabinet Room of the White House, and its purpose was to show that Trump could be in a room with multiple black people and that multiple black people could be in a room with him. The level of batshittery there was astonishing, and that's not even counting Diamond and Silk.
Trump started the event by bragging that polls show he has rising African American support, or, as he put it, "I could say 'black,' I could say 'African American,' or I could say both." That was a weird aside since he pretty much settled on "black" for the rest of the thing. "I won’t be satisfied until I get 100 percent, because nobody has done more for black people than I have," he explained. "Nobody has done more." Putting aside, say, Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson and, well, Martin Luther King, Trump's essentially saying, "Goddamn, I'm so fucking needy. Love me. Please love me."
Fortunately, the rest of the event was a series of vigorous blow jobs from the gathered black leaders. It was the typical thing Trump does where he goes around the table and demands that those present work the shaft and the balls. And, man, they did. A few said he was "the greatest President since Abraham Lincoln."
Some of the praise was really just stupidly wrong. Stacy Washington, host of the podcast Stacy on the Right, said, "You are the first President since I’ve been an adult...who’s ever said we need to bring our troops home from Afghanistan." I don't know how long Washington's been an adult, but Barack Obama said we need to bring the troops home, and, after the surge to 100,000 in 2010, he reduced the number to 8400 when he left office. Trump has reduced that number to (checks notes) over 12,000, with a plan to leave 8600 there. But, of course, Trump took credit for doing nothing, responding, "And we’re doing it. We’re doing it."
After more sucking and gag reflex suppression, things just got weird, with Bruce Lavell, executive director of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, saying, "Guys, he’s losing money. He is the only President that comes to the — and loses money. Everybody else that serves makes money. He loses money. And everyone knows that, sir." He went on to say that Trump doesn't owe anyone because he doesn't take money from anyone, which is utter fucking bullshit since Trump doesn't self-fund his campaigns, probably because he's both a greedy prick and not a fuckin' billionaire.
Trump commented, "I will say this: I do lose a fortune being President — (applause - yes, applause) — because we’re doing very important work. But it is — and, you know, something I don’t talk about but I give my salary — it’s $450,000. I give it. And surprisingly, it — now, it may be back in George Washington’s day, but they don’t think any other President has ever given the salary. It’s $450,000." I love the idea that Trump believes no one could possibly have that super-secret knowledge about other presidents. Except "they" know the reality: that both John F. Kennedy and Herbert Hoover donated their salaries to charity. Kennedy did it even when he was in Congress.
There was honestly one moment of clarity in Trump's thinking the entire time, one of those brief windows where the clouds part and he is able to have a second or two of real self-reflection. Talking about the media, in the midst of his usual railing against it, he said, "We have tremendous media in this room. We have tremendous media no matter where I go, I guess. And I can honestly say that’s been true before I was President too, so I don’t know what it is. Someday, somebody will explain that to me, but that’s what it’s been." And then the crystallization happened: "I guess that’s how I got to be President, to a certain extent." You think, motherfucker? You think the fact that you exploited the mass media who groveled like starving curs to get one nugget of word kibble from you and kept you at the top of the news heap for the entire election helped you win?
However, then he was off on the incoherent highway, leaping from subject to subject like a morbidly obese lemur on meth, lurching from branch to branch so that to most of us it simply looks like he's falling. Seriously, he went from crowd sizes (with a slam at Warren) to how great he says he's making the country to Democrats hating him to his handling of the coronavirus outbreak to Joe Biden's gaffes to his press conference the day before to well, this peak of Trumpian echolalia:
"I got criticized because I said $2.5 billion. That’s a lot of money. See, $2.5 billion is a lot of money. And the Democrats said, 'How dare he only ask for $2.5 billion?' But this never happened to me before. Usually, I ask for $2.5 billion, and they said, 'We’re going to give you 10 cents.' And I asked for $2.5 billion. My people came, 'This is what we need: $2.5 billion.' And I said, 'That’s a lot. That’s a lot of money.' Because, you know, if you’re in business and you say, '$2.5 billion,' — what I can build for $2.5 billion — what I can do for that."
What the Jesus-humping fuck?
It kept going, to the China deal and back to how amazing he is for black people and then to an attack on NBC because their reporter left the rambling nightmare that everyone was stuck in. He returned to his line to black Americans, "What the hell do you have to lose?" and Van Jones crying to him and how much he hates CNN and how he's so much better for black people than Obama and then to his legal fees for impeachment to how much money he's losing (billions, apparently, sure) to "If a man from an Arab country goes into one of my hotels, they say, 'Trump is getting rich.' They don’t realize I don’t even take foreign — if somebody gets in, you lose billions of dollars, but if a person rents a hotel room for 300 bucks, it’s like a major event. These are very dishonest people." What about when the Secret Service has to pay $650 for a room?
And then they all prayed for him when they should have been praying for all of us.
(Oh, and Diamond and Silk were there because, of course, they were. Man, I really hope it's all an act and that they go home and laugh their idiot asses off at how much they've tricked these white assholes into making them rich.)
