Last weekend
Donald Trump stuck to some of his favourite themes. Only one thing will work with North Korea, he tweeted, and it isn’t negotiating. Late-night TV hosts are biased against him … maybe Republicans “(and me)” should get “equal time” on their shows. NBC News is inaccurate. GOP senator Bob Corker, a former supporter who has lately become a critic, “begged” unsuccessfully for an endorsement and for the job of secretary of state, and is to blame for the Iran nuclear deal. Nobody appreciates the great job he is doing dealing with the hurricane damage in Puerto Rico.
In a strange sequence of events on Sunday, Vice-President Mike Pence walked out of a football game after some players kneeled in protest against police brutality and racism during the national anthem. Trump quickly leapt on to Twitter to make it clear that the stunt was all his idea. It soon emerged Pence had never been scheduled to take in the whole game anyway.
Monday
It’s true that Trump has ripped up the rulebook of PR, and he clearly feels that responding to every piece of criticism with an aggressive personal attack was vindicated by his election victory. But that approach doesn’t work for everyone and it may not have been a good idea for his wife to hit back at a joke by his ex-wife Ivana – who quipped that because she was Trump’s first wife she was first lady – by accusing her of “attention-seeking and self-serving noise”. “Trump wives at war,” cried the New York Daily News. “Why are Ivana and Melania fighting over that dead pigeon Trump anyway?” asked Sarah Ditum in the Independent. “Riled by imprudent remark, a current White House wife turns on a predecessor,” the New York Times wrote. Only joking.
Melania wasn’t the only one rising to the bait, after Corker responded to Trump’s weekend insults by tweeting memorably that the White House had become an “adult day care center” where “someone obviously missed their shift this morning”, then denied Trump’s claim about his endorsement and told the New York Times Trump might lead the US into “world war three”. A White House source responded, telling CNN threateningly that Trump was not finished with Corker yet.
Tuesday
On Tuesday it became clear what exactly that meant. Trump had been working on a devastating new nickname for the outgoing senator ... “Liddle’ [sic] Bob Corker”.
It didn’t quite have the ring of secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s alleged diss of Trump himself – “moron”, later upgraded to “fucking moron” – but the president had an answer for that too. If it was true, he and Tillerson could “compare IQ tests”, he said. “At this point I’m not sure Donald Trump could finish the maze on the back of a Denny’s kids’ menu,” remarked TV host Jimmy Kimmel.
Wednesday
No doubt aware that nothing distracts the press like talking about itself, Trump ramped up his attacks on the media with a confusing suggestion that TV networks’ licences should be “challenged” and the later comment: “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.” The first amendment to the US constitution guarantees a free press and in the oath of office each president swears to “preserve, protect and defend” the constitution. But, to be fair to Trump, only “to the best of my ability”.
An illuminating Vanity Fair article presented Trump as having been alarmed by his inability to ensure Luther Strange’s victory in the recent Alabama primary, and gave his response to former chief strategist Steve Bannon’s warning that he could be removed via the 25th Amendment: “What’s that?”
Thursday
Puerto Rico was hit by two hurricanes last month but, come on, that was ages ago, and emergency relief workers can’t be expected to stay there for ever, Trump tweeted on Thursday. This seemed slightly different to the kinds of things the president said when hurricanes hit Texas – “we are with you today, we are with you tomorrow, and we will be with you EVERY SINGLE DAY AFTER” – and Florida – “We are there for you 100%” – but there must be some reason for that.
Also on Thursday, Trump took two steps to undo his predecessor’s signature healthcare law, approving measures that could fatally damage Obamacare and health coverage for millions of people.
Friday
Trump’s longstanding threats to “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran” over its nuclear capacity came to a head with a fiercely worded speech in which the president … didn’t dismantle the deal. Instead he put the ball in Congress’s court while reserving the right to cancel the agreement if the legislature fails to toughen its conditions. In a separate speech, he also told an audience of religious conservatives that “in America, we don’t worship government - we worship God”.
The first amendment to the US constitution also guarantees freedom of religion, and in the oath of office each president swears to “preserve, protect and defend” the constitution. But, remember, only “to the best of my ability”.
