Donald Trump’s response to the terror attacks in London over the weekend provided yet another reminder to the media, to the American people, and to the world at large that he is fundamentally incapable of understanding his role as the president. His response to an unfolding tragedy was a mixture of speculation, self-promotion, and petty grudge-counting—all the sort of thing we have come to expect from him, but no less shocking as a result. In spite of all our fears of normalizing his most odious qualities, it is still amazing to see him able to be cajoled into action by whichever of his handlers speaks to him last, and to still dictate the country’s policies and responses via whatever shit he comes across on Twitter. The Associated Press’s fact-checking bureau has even been forced to issue a statement denouncing his spread of misinformation. That is a bad thing to have to do to a sitting U.S. President.
One of those extremely presidential tweets from this weekend was mocked up as an official White House press release by the writer and former Obama staffer Pat Cunnane. The result draws into relief how infantile Trump’s demeanor is given the height of his office:
The coder and activist Russel Neiss has since created a bot called Real Press Sec. that reissues all of the president’s tweets as, instead, official statements. It’s a good follow.
They serve as a helpful reminder that even while something like “covfefe” is entertaining for its ineptitude, and even as Sean Spicer and other surrogates are forced to constantly backtrack these assertions or circuitously answer for them, our president is still essentially a Twitter egg, firing off whichever thought enters his head as soon as it gets there. He is used to not having to answer to anything, but, with luck, he is starting to.