This week, President Donald Trump and his allies continued their campaign to discredit the mainstream media. This time, they lashed out over a CNN segment in which panelists pointed out the clearly documented ineptitude of the current administration and some of its supporters. In a freakout that can’t exactly be detached from the racism implications considering Trump’s past of relentlessly targeting people of color who dare to oppose him, on Monday night, President Donald Trump himself freaked out over that segment and called host Don Lemon (who is black) “the dumbest man on television,” an insult that Trump has used for the host before.
Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!). https://t.co/iQXCc7lvCt
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2020
The original segment was focused on the report that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had an expletive-ridden meltdown targeting NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly after she asked him for his response to some of the latest developments in the scandal of Trump’s attempted bribery of Ukraine. Apparently, Pompeo abruptly produced a blank world map and demanded that the reporter point out Ukraine, and CNN panelist and ardent Trump critic Rick Wilson had an idea for what drove Pompeo to that point.
He commented, discussing Pompeo:
‘He also knows deep within his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so that’s partly him playing to the base and playing to their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump.’
That last part, from which Wilson launched into a mocking impression of Trump voters, is what has driven the criticism that the segment has received.
However, in reality — the Trump administration’s own incompetence is well-documented. For example, there’s the infamous occasion when Trump couldn’t admit that he made a mistake while discussing a weather forecast so his team trotted out a forecast map that had been altered with a Sharpie to include the area he’d wrongfully claimed would be affected. And more recently, there’s the public gaffe when Trump wrongfully identified the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan as a leader of Syria’s Kurds. Iraq and Syria are, of course, two different countries — and no one tipped Trump off.
No self-righteous posturing from the Trump team will change that incompetence.
EMBARRASSING, Trump thinks president of Iraq Kurdistan @IKRPresident is the commander of Syrian SDF @MazloumAbdi! These two are completely different
Trumps says things have turn out great with Turkey in Syria and mistakenly thanks Barzani for keeping “my safe zone” safe. Watch: pic.twitter.com/Xze0s3ZgXF
— Abdulla Hawez (@abdullahawez) January 22, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response…
