I understand why President Donald Trump was irked at the steady and sometimes quite personal criticism he gets from MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.
Criticism can be irksome. Even I, your beloved and clear-thinking columnist, receive it from time to time.
And I understand why Trump felt the urge to lash back.
I often feel that urge myself. But I tamp it down by remembering what I have come to believe are the two most important words in the language:
Then what?
Translation:
OK, you have this impulse, this notion, this unbaked plan, this fantasy. You have an angry beast in your heart that you wish to untether. You have a dream and want to take the first steps in pursuing it. You have a prank you want to pull, an undying love you want to proclaim, an extravagant purchase you can’t seem to resist. Or you find you can’t resist the temptation to commit an illegal, immoral or unhealthy act.
So game it out for yourself. What happens next, in the hours and days after you feel that initial burst of endorphins? How do you answer the angel on your shoulder who demands, “Tell me how this story ends?”
Trump plainly has no such angel on his shoulder. In his irked state he went to Twitter and unleashed a pair of childish, churlish and dishonest broadsides at Brzezinski and Scarborough. These rejoinders certainly must have felt good to deliver in the moment, but they derailed all serious policy discussions in the nation for more than a day and further diminished Trump’s standing among all but his most ardent supporters.
What did he think would be the result? That Joe and Mika would decide to show him greater respect? That their viewers would desert “Morning Joe” for “Fox and Friends”? That his critics and the doubters of his sanity would rethink their positions?
Not likely. All the evidence suggests that Trump seldom if ever thinks such things through, tries to peek over the horizon or takes the long view. He lives and acts in the moment. This doesn’t show strength, as his defenders insist, but weakness.
It’s also the weakness of a candidate who ran for governor on a platform of platitudes and ideological notions, but then showed that he had no idea how to turn those notions into policy under divided government. It’s the weakness of legislative leaders who, when they had the supermajority to do it, chose not to extend an income tax hike in order to teach this new governor a lesson about the perils of austerity
It’s the weakness of members of Congress who caterwauled for years about how horrible Obamacare is, then when given the chance to replace it with something better, showed that their good idea cupboard was empty.
It’s the weakness of presidents who invade foreign countries in order to topple their dictators, but who don’t have a long-term occupation or exit plan.
A reluctance or inability to peer into the future is the weakness of amorous cheats, binge drinkers, infuriated motorists, impulse shoppers, intoxicated tattoo seekers and everyone who thought it would be a good idea to elect an immature, incurious bully as president of the United States.
It’s the weakness of aggrieved employees, wounded ex-lovers, prickly pundits and, seemingly, every third person on social media, where regret is always up in the rafters preparing to drop its anvil.
Then what?
I wish I’d discovered these magic words earlier in life. I wish I was always heeding them instead of occasionally giving in to the “Go for it!” devil on the opposite shoulder.
And I wish that someone had drilled them into Trump’s thick skull many years ago.
Re: Tweets
I’m not surprised that online readers selected this as the funniest tweet of the week in the Change of Subject poll: “Is a rivalry between two vegetarians still called a beef?” by @LoverOfComics94. Though I would have used “dispute” or “argument” rather than “rivalry,” I see why this one rose to the top in a field of eight finalists.
But I’m shocked and disappointed that, for the first time in the history of this poll, my favorite finalist came in dead last: “‘I did it my way,’ Frank Sinatra. ‘I fail to see what business it is of yours how I did it,’ Secretive Sinatra,” by @OKeating.
Twitter @EricZorn
