President Donald Trump, noted white supremacist, waves after answering a question from the media as he arrives at the White House yesterday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump is awake, angry, and tweeting. So it’s pretty much like any given Friday. Except for the fact that there was a terrorist attack at a London tube station this morning that has left 18 people injured. And Trump has taken the opportunity to propose new restrictions on the internet, said that he’d like America’s Muslim travel ban to be “far larger,” and said that he wants to get “nasty” in the fight against ISIS. Oh, and he also wants an apology from ESPN. Because he’s a big baby.
President Trump’s first tweet of the morning was actually about the US Senate’s filibuster rule, a pet peeve of his that hasn’t actually derailed any of his major legislation yet.
In reality, all of the Republicans’ legislative failures have come after they couldn’t get a simple majority for things like the repeal and replace of Obamacare. But for some reason Trump is obsessed with having a filibuster-proof majority anyway. It’s almost as if he just craves power for power’s sake. There’s a name for that, I believe.
But it wasn’t long before the president turned his attention to this morning’s terrorist attack in London. An improvised explosive device was found at the Parsons Green Tube station in southwest London, though it’s unclear if it detonated as intended. It’s suspected that most of the people were injured in the chaos as people scrambled to flee the train.
A photo of an unexploded bucket has been making the rounds on social media and it doesn’t appear that the improvised bomb exploded.
Video of the flaming bucket was posted to Twitter, again showing that there doesn’t appear to be any actual large explosion on the train.
President Trump’s claim that the terrorist or terrorists who were behind this attack were “in the sights of Scotland Yard” hasn’t been reported elsewhere, so there’s some speculation that perhaps the president was tweeting out information he had received from classified sources.
As the UK’s Sun newspaper explained:
It is not clear whether Trump was referring to intelligence he had received from the US intelligence community or if he was speculating that Scotland Yard knew who the bombers were.
If Trump was divulging sensitive information, it wouldn’t be the first time that he played fast and loose with US intelligence.
Update, 8:32am: London police have now commented on Trump’s tweeting, telling CNN that the president’s comment is “pure speculation given we don’t know who is involved. Any speculation is unhelpful.”
The president then said that the “travel ban,” which the White House has previously insisted wasn’t a “ban,” should be “far larger” and tougher” than it is today. The ban targets people from majority-Muslim countries and is commonly known as the Muslim ban. The US Supreme Court has temporarily allowed the ban to continue before the case is heard next month.
President Trump then proceeded to claim that his regime has made “more progress in the last nine months” against ISIS than Obama did in 8 years. He then insisted that America needed to be “proactive and nasty,” though it’s unclear what is meant by either of those words.
By 7:20am Eastern time, Trump had pivoted to talking about the recent controversy surrounding ESPN and SportsCenter host Jemele Hill. The host had called President Trump a white supremacist, something that is objectively true.
Yes, the president is now demanding an apology for being called a white supremacist shortly after White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that Hill should be fired for her remarks. It would all be a pretty incredible spectacle during any previous administration. But it seems to be par for the course with Trump.
Again, it’s objectively true that President Trump is a white supremacist, and he even doubled down on his absurd equivocating to neo-Nazis on Air Force One yesterday.
“We had a great talk yesterday,” Trump said of his discussion with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. “I think especially in light of the advent of antifa, if you look at what’s going on there. You have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also and essentially that’s what I said.”
To be clear, antifa stands for anti-fascist. The “other side” that President Trump is talking about is anti-fascist, which would make his side that of the fascists. So at least we know the score now.
We’ll update this post if President Trump lets out any more tweet diarrhea this morning. Hope everybody has a good Friday! Try not to let our garbage president and his garbage policies get you down!