Trump’s excuses are comical
Opinion by
Columnist
July 27, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. CDT
No one
outside the White House (and not even everyone in it) could honestly believe
President Trump’s latest excuse for not showing up for a previously announced
event. Trump tweeted on Sunday:
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 15th. We will make it later in the season!
Yet he
finds time for golf, insulting political opponents and watching gobs of TV
news?
Perhaps he would rather not go to Yankee Stadium because he might not be
able to throw the 60 feet and 6 inches from the mound to home plate (certainly
the climb down the 10-inch mound is not as treacherous as the West Point ramp).
Maybe he shied away because he would have found himself at an event where the
players all “take a knee," which has been a regular and warmly received
feature in the new and abbreviated season. Whatever the reason, in refusing to
go, he is avoiding a place where he’s likely to be confronted by those outside
his bubble and be widely mocked.
Trump
is not a courageous man, as we saw from his flight to the White House bunker
during a Black Lives Matter demonstration (and before that, by his
unwillingness to sit down with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III). He managed to get out of fighting in
Vietnam five times, claiming “bone spurs” for one of them.
His new
tactic, it appears, is to accept an invitation suggesting that he is welcome in
America and then to cancel with a lame excuse. After the disastrous Tulsa rally
in June, he promised to go to New Hampshire for another event. He begged off at
the last minute, claiming bad weather.
(It turned out to be a sunny day.) He’ll be
back, he promised! (Before or after he throws out a pitch at Yankee Stadium, do
you think?)
Trump
generally avoids TV interviews other than with Fox News. (After the debacle
with Chris Wallace, he might have to further refine his list of acceptable
questioners.) He is not courageous enough to leave the cozy confines of “state
TV” for a grilling from independent-minded news interviewers. He sure appears
to fear showing up where he cannot control the ground rules, determine the
person he will sit down with and be confident he can avoid pesky questions.
(Disclosure: I am an MSNBC contributor.)
That
brings us to the presidential debates. Do we think he will show up to the three
presidential debates set by the Commission on Presidential Debates? The
moderators must be agreed to by both sides, and unless the Democrats want to
consent to a Sean Hannity or a Tucker Carlson, they might just have difficulty
coming up with someone mutually acceptable. Trump will likely avoid making a
decision for as long as possible (as he did with Mueller), then claim it is
“rigged” if he cannot bring himself to show up.
He
might be wise to beg off. It is hard to believe he could stick to whatever time
limits are imposed for his debate answers rather than resort to filibustering.
He would be in grave peril of getting called out for not answering questions,
being fact-checked in real time and finding no place to hide when asked about
his serial failures (especially the tens of thousands of Americans who died
during the pandemic). He might be asked about any number of scandals. How
much did you make from foreigners staying at your hotels? Did you commute Roger
Stone’s sentence to keep him from incriminating you?
On
those rare occasions when Trump has stepped outside the Fox News cocoon, the
results have not been pretty. In his interview last year with ABC News
chief anchor George Stephanopoulos, who asked Trump whether he would accept
foreign help in the next election. Trump’s response ended up being used at his
impeachment trial. He simply cannot refrain from damaging himself.
I’d put
the chances of Trump ducking the debates at about 50-50. I think he would
rather throw that pitch before he’d subject himself to debates.