Not the least racist person ever to serve in office

Michael Gerson on Trump’s deranged performance yesterday:

With the whir of a helicopter engine in the background, President Trump veered from topic to topic with utter confidence, alarming ignorance, minimal coherence and relentless duplicity.

President Vladimir Putin, he said, “made a living on outsmarting President Obama” — even though it is Trump who now urges a Russian return to the Group of Seven summit without any concessions on Putin’s part.

On pursuing the trade war with China, Trump called himself the “chosen one.” This came within hours of tweeting a quote that he is loved like “the second coming of God.” At some point, arrogance is so extreme and delusional that it can only be expressed in blasphemy.

Trump accused the Danish prime minister of “blowing off the United States” because she scorned his own balmy, offensive musings on the future of Greenland. “We treat countries with respect,” he said — except, presumably, the “shithole” ones.

Oh no, except all of them. He treats all of them as supplicants whom he can insult at will.

Trump’s new immigration rule, he claimed, would “do even more” to bring migrant families together — though this togetherness, he failed to mention, would come by allowing the indefinite detention of migrant families.

“I am the least racist person ever to serve in office,” said the man who is increasingly bold in his use of racist tropes.

He joked again about being in office 10 or 14 years from now — appealing to people who find overturning the constitutional order a laugh riot.

It’s every bit as funny as the “joke” about being the chosen one and the “joke” about not putting a Trump tower on the shore in Greenland.

“Our Second Amendment will remain strong,” Trump promised, while previewing an effort to overturn that portion of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Some parts of the Constitution, clearly, are more constitutional than others.

Trump pledged the return of thousands of captured Islamic State fighters to Europe, one way or another. “If Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no choice but to release them in the countries from which they came, which is Germany, France and other places.” Did the president of the United States just threaten to release dangerous terrorists on the streets of our closest allies? Evidently.

Of the wounded and grieving families Trump visited following recent mass shootings: “The love for me,” he boasted, “and my love for them was unparalleled.” And this was demonstrated by “hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor.” No one draws a bigger crowd in an intensive care unit.

After repeating an anti-Semitic trope about the disloyalty of Jews who vote Democratic, Trump insisted to a reporter, “It’s only anti-Semitic in your head.”

It’s anti-Semitic in a lot more heads than that of one reporter.

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