Can we please stop giving Donald Trump more credit than he's actually due?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Some people insist every move of his is a carefully calculated distraction from something else.

Using x to distract from y only is effective if x is exponentially better than y. If x is as bad or worse than y, it doesn’t distract from anything. It only amplifies y.

So, no, Donald Trump did not walk Melania in a jacket reading “I really don’t care” when she’s about to meet with immigrant kids in order to distract from his horrible policies on immigrant kids. In no way does that change the conversation at all. It only makes them look worse to the people who actually care about immigrant kids.

Trump was not trying to distract from anything here, or if he was, he’s even stupider than we all thought.

[stonecutter357]

1. K&R !

[JenniferJuniper]

2. Why on earth would a First Lady wear a jacket like that?

On a visit like this one?

She's no better than he is. I well remember her racist birtherism.

[monmouth4]

8. I'm sure the entire episode was his idea. It was a msg. to his base in case they were upset

that he caved..She either wore that damned jacket or she would end back in the hospital again, IMO.

[AlexSFCA]

9. absolutely

melania is dark horse to the public we dont really know if she has conscience. This was merely to get media to focus on the jacket while RW media ignore the subject and blames CNN, etc....

[JI7]

3. How i see the jacket was it may not purposely have been intended as being about

someone specific.

But the fact she wore it shows they don't care.

[RockRaven]

4. If something can be explained by Trump or 1 of his family members simply being an asshole

That's probably all there is to it. On their end anyway.

I do believe that people around Trump try to exploit his assholery with machinations of their own, but he's so unreliable and mercurial that them succeeding in their schemes is pretty much down to chance.

[Anon-C]

5. I respectfully disagree, Tom.

It was to troll, its what bullies do. They want you to ascribe their moves and motives to chance...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Trump isn't playing 5D chess. He can't even handle Chutes and Ladders.

He's completely reactive. He sees something he doesn't like and fires off deranged tweets about it, no matter what else might be going on. Melania wears a jacket with a message that might have been intended as a fuck-you to the immigrants or to us snowflake liberals. Or maybe she just thought it was cool and trendy and was too tone-deaf to recognize that the message came across as really awful under the circumstances. I definitely don't think Trump made her wear it as a fuck-you message because he was too busy sending out his own, much more direct fuck-you tweets. He tries to create distractions after the fact, but it's pretty clear that he doesn't plan them ahead of time.

[Hoyt]

7. He can't think beyond his next self-aggrandizing tweet or comment.

[rock]

10. I believe that's an impossible task

If you give Donald any credit for anything, it's too much!

[Tipperary]

11. Spot on.

K and r!