Kidding Kidders Who Kid (Kiddingly)
So, Daniel Dale reported an unusual line from Donald Trump's appearance in Pittsburgh:
The obvious question this prompts is "Did he seriously believe Colorado was a border state, or did he just misspeak?" I think "seriously believe" is overstating the case... he was just saying the names of states and Colorado fell out.
Why not? It has a Spanish name.
But the odd mention of Kansas near the end would provide him an obvious out for the flub: he was mentioning non-border states in order to show how everyone benefits from his wall, and he just slipped up and said Colorado too early, and mangled the line because he had meant to start with border states.
It happens. It could happen to anybody. We all make slips of the tongue, right?
Well...
The thing about Donald Trump is he not only can't admit a mistake to save his life, he can't even admit a mistake to save face. He’ll just make things more and more awkward until everyone else leaves the room, metaphorically or otherwise.
When admitting to a simple mistake might make him seem more relatable and make it easy to claim that the left-wing media is beating up on him for a silly reason (giving the GOP their own "tan suit" rebuttal, maybe), he instead doubles down and insists that the mistake was deliberate and clever.
Remember Tim Apple?
Margaret Pepperidge Farm remembers:
This tendency goes beyond slips of the tongue. What is the most widely mocked thing about Donald Trump, over the decades of life in the public eye? It's got to be his hair, right? Which is not a wig, nor is it anything so mundane as a combover in the traditional sense. What it is -- and this has been verified by people who have seen it done, and is also obvious if you look at those weather-beaten pictures of him -- is, he is bald on top but grows his hair long like Riff-Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, on the sides where it will grow, and then the sides are combed back towards the center and then up and over, and the whole thing cemented in place with a bunch of product.
It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous affectation that doesn't fool anyone, even if most people guess wrong about what is going on, it's brought him so much mockery over the years, and it means he cannot appear in public in high winds or rain, which just creates more mockery.
So why does he do it?
Because he believes that if he were bald, he would look ridiculous. If he were bald, no one would take him seriously. He will cower from rain, because he believes if he were bald then no one would think him manly anymore.
This vainglorious stubbornness extends far past simple vanity. It's why the TV tycoon who tried to trademark "You're Fired!" and whose regime has been rocked by record turnover prefers to push people out rather than firing them, and why when asked if he regretted making Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III his first attorney general, his answer was he regretted that Sessions had recused himself.
It's why even when he was still actively courting the Evangelical vote, he not only couldn't name any sin he'd sought forgiveness for, he denied he'd had any. When that didn't cost him their vote, it basically meant he could stop trying. A would-be leader who promised an end to war while claiming to be without sin should have sounded some alarm bells, but they took it without blinking. Dr. James Dobson went so far as to lie and say Donald confessed his sins in private to cover for him, a lie that Trump never ratified because it would be completely against his nature to say he asked forgiveness for anything.
It's why when he used to say that he's fine with negative press coverage as long as it's fair and true, he couldn't come up with one example of such a story even for the sake of form. Not one "tough but fair" criticism that he could point to, in order to say, "See? It's not about positive or negative, it's about the truth."
Donald Trump could have said "oops, I misspoke" about the Colorado border wall and moved on, but instead he says it was said "(Kiddingly)", and so it's going to remain in the news and the public eye, and he looks worse and more ridiculous than he did when he made the initial mistake, and he’ll just carry on despite the negative press covfefe
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