A Self-Inflicted National Embarrassment

This guy played baseball?

Donald Trump is such a pathetic loser. When he heard that Anthony Fauci was throwing the first pitch at a Nationals game, he became insanely jealous, and said this:

“Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees,” Mr. Trump, referring to the president of the baseball team, told reporters on Thursday as Dr. Fauci was preparing to take the mound. “And he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I’m doing that on Aug. 15 at Yankee Stadium.”

There was one problem: Mr. Trump had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees, according to one person with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s schedule. His announcement surprised both Yankees officials and the White House staff.

But Mr. Trump had been so annoyed by Dr. Fauci’s turn in the limelight, an official familiar with his reaction said, that he had directed his aides to call Yankees officials and make good on a longtime standing offer from Mr. Levine to throw out an opening pitch. No date was ever finalized.

So, to no one's surprise, Trump was just talking through his MAGA hat, and his stooges had to walk the claim back:

After the president’s announcement, White House aides scrambled to let the team know that he was actually booked on Aug. 15, although they have not said what he plans to do. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump officially canceled.

“Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday, using a racist name for the coronavirus. “We will make it later in the season!”

Hah. Trump spends all his time watching Fox News and playing golf, and thinks that the coronavirus would just go away if only those damned doctors would stop testing people.

And it only gets worse. On Tuesday Trump devolved into whining self pity on the national stage:

Just over a week after he began a rebooted effort, driven by rising infection rates and sinking poll numbers, to talk about the virus in terms more in line with medical consensus, Mr. Trump was again making unfounded claims and defending discredited medical experts. It was the sort of eccentric, science-deficient performance that many of his aides believe unnerved the public during the spring and has come to gravely threaten his re-election prospects.

Noting that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Deborah L. Birx, his administration’s top coronavirus coordinator, have high approval ratings even as his own have sagged, Mr. Trump added, “And yet, they’re highly thought of — but nobody likes me.”

“It can only be my personality,” he concluded.

It's not just his personality, though his constant whining, lying, jealousy, selfishness, callousness, racism, misogyny, vengefulness and narcissism certainly make it impossible for anyone to actually like him. They only toady up to him out of fear, greed or ambition, or "like" him because they find his toxic tirades against liberals entertaining or his racist rants confirming their own predilections. But no one is actually fond of him as a person.

But they also don't like him because of his incompetence, incoherence, inconsistency and ignorance, as perfectly illustrated by what happened next:

When reporters pressed him on a viral video he had retweeted on Monday night that included doctors falsely claiming that hydroxychloroquine was a “cure” for the virus and that masks were unnecessary, Mr. Trump responded: “They’re very respected doctors. There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it, and she’s had tremendous success with it.’’ 

When a reporter noted that the physician who spoke of “a cure,” Dr. Stella Immanuel of Houston, also “made videos saying that doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens,” Mr. Trump responded, “I know nothing about her,” and abruptly ended the briefing moments later.

First Trump says this "doctor" is spectacular and then mere seconds later says he knows nothing about her. This is the same "doctor" who also says that endometriosis is caused by having sex with demons.

This is not how a "strong and powerful" leader behaves. This is how a thirteen-year-old girl acts. Just ask Roseanne Barr, (formerly?) a big Trump supporter, who says that Trump is the first woman president.

How much more evidence do we need to see that Trump is completely unqualified to be president? In a nationally televised news conference intended to calm American's nerves in the midst of a pandemic he says something in the most confident terms and when confronted with reality just throws up his hands and runs away to pout.

The man is just a demented huckster with the most tenuous grasp on reality, trying to sell snake oil to a country that is in desperate need of real leaders, real doctors and real scientists, not fake presidents like Trump and religious quacks like Immanuel.