Out, suddenly
This White House has a playbook for scandal: Always double down, never apologize, and above all attack, attack, attack. So it was nothing less than shocking yesterday when the administration—after two days of utterly shameless lies about the killing of Alex Pretti—slammed on the brakes in an attempt to pivot to a more normie-
palatable[acceptable] narrative.Out, suddenly, were statements like Stephen Miller’s, who called Pretti “a domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement,” or Kristi Noem’s, who called it a “fact” that Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” No longer, apparently, was it the Department of Homeland Security’s position, as the official DHS account tweeted Saturday and Border Patrol mook Greg Bovino later repeated, that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt conspicuously declined yesterday to defend any of these obscene statements. Instead, she reached for a pair of new, less noxious lies: that President Trump was mourning Pretti’s death as a tragedy, and that DHS would conduct a full and fair investigation.
Hmm. Is it really less noxious to claim that Trump is mourning Pretti’s murder? I for one think it’s highly noxious to pretend that Trump would ever mourn anyone’s murder, let alone that of a guy like Pretti. Here’s why: Trump does not care about other people.
“Nobody here at the White House, including the president of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed,” Leavitt said, adding that “we mourn for the parents—as a mother myself, of course, I cannot imagine the loss of life, especially losing one’s child.”
Trump has said nothing that could be construed as “mourning.” His sole commentary on the shooting was to tweet out a picture of Pretti’s pistol, which he described as “loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go,” before pivoting back to his usual pack of grievances against Minnesota.
Trump might mourn for a BigMac that fell into a mud puddle, but for a person, no.
I know some people here watch that amusing animation “Futurama”.
People still hoping Donald Trump might still find a sense of empathy remind me of this scene involving a resurrected former President:
Not only is this true, but I believe Trump does not expect other people to care about themselves more than they do about him; he believes he is the most important individual to every one of us, and that we are either acting like the sycophants we should, or we are opposing him, but those opposing him are not only losers, they are opposing him because he is so tough and smart.