Trump has managed to suck up all the air in the room once again with his ridiculous and cryptic remarks about a "calm before the storm" yesterday. There is one thing Trump is good at, and that's playing the media like a fiddle. Here we have a stellar example of it.
In today's press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked whether or not Trump's comments were part of Trump's "madman theory" of leadership. This is the wrong question to ask, because I doubt Trump has a theory of anything. He is simply a madman, doing mad things, like threatening to blow up the Iran deal, using Twitter to start nuclear holocausts with
North Korea, and more.
Nevertheless, this was the question: "There's a theory in Washington...that the president subscribes to this madman theory, that If he makes a lot of unsettling, offputting comments that sort of throw people off, he likes to keep his adversaries guessing and that's one of the points of making the comment about the 'calm before the storm'. Anything to that?"
That was nice, giving Sarah Huckabee Sanders an opportunity to pretend Trump is anything other than a pure madman, don't you think?
Her answer was predictable, given the softball lobbed at her.
"The president has addressed this himself," she said. "He certainly doesn't want to lay out his game plan for our enemies, so if you're asking is the president trying to do that? Absolutely."
So, the press is his enemy, is that it, Sarah?
She continued, "I don't think that's -- I don't think that's a secret. I wouldn't say necessarily he's trying to throw people off but not trying to broadcast or telegraph his exact actions."
And then of course she took a shot at President Obama because why not with such a perfect opening? "We've seen what a failure it is when the administration does that and this is a president who's going to do it differently and do it better."
Mmmhm.
There is more about how the president is a Very Serious Person Grappling With Very Serious Issues, but can we please get the White House press to step up their game a bit? We do not need speculation or myriad questions about what Trump did or did not mean when he played the press like the fiddles they are.
We need more like April Ryan, who asked the question we're all wondering about.
Huckabee Sanders said she didn't think so. Of course, she never knows about them until after the press briefing, so that was a meaningless answer. We will just have to wait and see.
