Donald Trump tried to get back to his roots on Twitter at the end of a long, hard week by bashing celebrities and insulting other countries on Friday morning. Bashing other lawmakers and typing all-caps messages about the Trump/Russia probe wasn’t making anything go away, so the president decided it was time for a new distraction.
Trump’s new trade policies rolled out on the same week as his staff began defecting, the Russia probe began dropping bombshells by the day, and the White House is reportedly in full panic mode. Response to his proposals on trade were met with no less drama or pushback.
‘President Donald Trump on Thursday announced he would impose steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, sparking outraged threats of reprisals from countries around the world, howls of dismay from Republican lawmakers, and fears of massive job losses across the rest of the U.S. economy.
‘Trump said after a White House meeting with steel and aluminum executives that he plans to impose next week the toughest of the three remedies proposed by the Commerce Department, a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum. The recommendations came after the department found that the underperforming U.S. steel and aluminum sector posed a threat to national security…
‘William Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve of New York, made a last-ditch appeal for free trade in a speech in Brazil early Thursday.
‘“Although protectionism can have a siren-like appeal because of its potential to provide short-term benefits to particular segments of the economy, in the longer term it would almost certainly be destructive,” he said.’
That’s Donald Trump’s plans in a nutshell, though. Short-term boosts that make him look good, such as the tax bill he promoted and saw passed as his one successful piece of legislation, have given some workers and businesses a boost (although the businesses do not seem to be sharing that boost with their workers, news that surprised absolutely no one), are good enough for Trump. If there’s a mess to be dealt with thanks to his policies in the long run, he won’t be president then and the new guy can do the work to fix it.
It was, of course, the tweet about Alec Baldwin that received the most attention. Darrell Hammond very famously and hilariously played President Bill Clinton, just as Will Ferrell played George W. Bush and Jay Pharoah played Barack Obama. Not one of those presidents threw tantrums about their portrayals or felt they should have a voice in choosing who was cast in the role. Only the thin-skinned wanna-be dictator Trump would be so triggered as to make announcements about Saturday Night Live to the American people.
Alec Baldwin received an Emmy for playing Trump, so his fellow actors seem to approve of his impression, and SNL‘s ratings are the best they’ve been in many years, so it seems viewers are enjoying the portrayal. Poor Trump never received an Emmy for The Apprentice, although he judged the show and himself better than anything that had ever been on TV in history, so it has to rankle. Therein lies the reason for Trump’s ridiculous tweet.
Twitter also weighed in on Trump’s Twitter tantrum, see some of their best responses below:
https://twitter.com/Quints133/status/969526798773096449
Featured image via Getty/Win McNamee
