Trump Cannot Redeem Himself: Saturday was the real Trump. Today's version was pure artifice.

[riversedge]

howard wolfson‏Verified account @howiewolf 5h5 hours ago

. @FrankBruni on the President: Saturday was the real Trump. Today's version was pure artifice.

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President Trump Cannot Redeem Himself

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/opinion/president-trump-charlottesville.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Frank Bruni
5-6 minutes
Tom Brenner/The New York Times

We saw Donald Trump’s true colors on Saturday, when he was given the chance — a ready-made moment for presidential grace — to denounce the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., and instead found wrongdoing “on many sides.” That was Trump minus the pressure and the planning. That was his initial instinct, his first impulse.

We saw a different palette at a lectern in the White House on early Monday afternoon, but it was pure artifice, and muted and unpersuasive because of that.

Sure, he got some of the brush strokes right: the succinct assertion that “racism is evil”; the specific callout of the “K.K.K.” and “white supremacists”; the remembrance — finally — of Heather Heyer, who died as a consequence of the precise hatred that it took him more than two days to name.

But we should note that just hours before he stepped up to that lectern, supposedly to make things right, he used that infernal Twitter account of his to taunt a black chief executive, Kenneth Frazier, for resigning from an administration advisory board. That was unscripted Trump. And he was peeved and hostile, not penitential and healing.

We should also note that he began his brief statement on Monday by congratulating himself on the American economy and implicitly taking credit for what he said were a million new jobs. This is what our self-consumed, ungenerous president prefers to do — brag. He thumps his chest when he should be on his knees........................

[Docreed2003]

1. Yep...and he practically admitted as much himself

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[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. An excellent commentary.

"He thumps his chest when he should be on his knees."