Over the past 48 hours there have been dozens of news stories trying to inject President Donald Trump into the London Bridge attacks: “World leaders call for unity after London attack. Trump tweets the complete opposite.” And “With his London tweets Trump embarrasses himself—and America—once again.” And: “Trump responds to London terror by stoking fear and renewing feud with mayor.” And those are just from the Washington Post.
Over on CNN there’s “The London terror tweets prove Donald Trump is never going to be ‘presidential’.” The New York Times has “Trump’s off-the-cuff tweets strain foreign ties.” The Atlantic ran an essay about the attacks that was really about Trump, slugged “The Panic President.” (It’s a pretty good piece, tbh.) There have been scores of pieces from real news outlets all trying to shoehorn Trump into the London story and attempt to make it All About Him while telling us What It All Means.
This is crazy.
After he learned about the attacks in London, Donald Trump tweeted something stupid. Yes, this really happened, but it is not real. No resources were deployed or denied because of it. It changed nothing—nothing—in the world around us. Now, on the one hand, it’s depressing to have a president who sees himself as the world’s foremost internet commenter. But on the other hand, this is the news equivalent of vaporware.
The London Bridge terror attacks, on the other hand, are very real. There was a coordinated attack, in London, and people were killed. This is a real situation and it is a real news story.
In the near future we’re going to know: who the terrorists were, how they pulled it off, why they weren’t detected, who helped them, and a dozen other things that actually matter in the real world.
And then we’re going to have an election in the United Kingdom where citizens are going to have to vote in the specter of two spectacular attacks in the span of two weeks and they’re going to choose between Theresa May and the British Bernie Sanders and their choice will tell us quite a lot about the mood of Europe.
And after that Britain will either start making some serious policy changes about security—which will be a story. Or they’ll make Potemkin moves—which will also be a story.
Here’s what’s not a story at the moment: Anything Donald Trump has to say right now. On this matter he is utterly inconsequential. (The exception that proves the rule is this piece from Politico, explaining how “Trump’s sluggish hiring could hamper anti-terror plans.” That’s a real, honest-to-goodness, story.)
It’s fine to criticize Trump for doing and/or saying foolish and/or deleterious things. Seventy-two hours from now he’ll have issued some new nugget of idiocy. And the media can pile on then.
But to the extent it exists, Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t about a pathological need to criticize the president. It’s about the pathological need to make him the focal point of every story, even when he’s irrelevant and the story itself is important.
