Losing is winning! Racism and violence are totally acceptable “principles” as long as they are held by winners! Up is down, night is day, yadda yadda. Donald Trump’s Wednesday press conference was so full of preposterous moments that it’s hard to pick one to demonstrate that our president should never, ever be taken seriously.
Hard, but not impossible.
Trump kicked things off with a sequence that may very well be unprecedented in White House history, openly insulting the Republican candidates who lost their midterm elections because they did not align themselves with him enough. He bagged on Barbara Comstock, Peter Roskam, and Erik Paulsen. But the worst was his flip dismissal of Utah Rep. Mia Love:
“Mia Love gave me no love and she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that Mia.”
Love is the poster child for the American dream and the kind of candidate—a charismatic young minority woman, the child of immigrants, capable of winning in a very conservative, very white state—that the GOP should be supporting wholeheartedly both on the merits and for selfish political reasons.
But Trump’s crass criticism of Love was made even more idiotic later in the press conference, when someone asked him what he was doing on the pro-life front and the president implied that he had some master plan to solve abortion:
“I will not be able to explain it to you,” he said “Because it is an issue that is a very divisive, polarizing issue. But there is a solution; I think that I have that solution.”
Did you hear that? He’s going to fix abortion, people. Thoughtful, nuanced people of good will on both sides have debated and reasoned with each other for decades to no avail trying to solve an issue that pits women’s autonomy against the needs and the rights of the most vulnerable. But Donald Trump has got it all figured out. Eighteen-dimensional chess.
A president who was actually serious about finding a “solution” to the abortion stalemate—whatever that means—might wish to have an ambassador for the cause who was passionate and eloquent and thoughtful and could present herself as a good-faith voice for those who might not have been born.
Which brings us back to Mia Love. Love’s parents came to the United States from Haiti in 1976, leaving behind their two older children so they could make a better life for them. And then they found themselves expecting another child. Oh, let’s just let Mia tell the story herself. It’s beautiful.
Yes, yes. It’s obvious that Trump isn’t going to do anything about abortion. Five minutes after his press conference, he fired Jeff Sessions. On Thursday, he’ll be tweeting about something else.
The sad thing is, there are people who have—or had—meaningful agendas and the seriousness of mind to work toward accomplishing them. But they are fewer and farther between than ever in the Republican party. And Trump, instead of lamenting their loss, celebrates it. Because he has no agenda other than himself.
