TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump has mastered the art of the swaggering politician, but when tragedy strikes, he has struggled to find his footing.
By projecting the persona of a chin-out American leader eager to punch first and deal with the consequences later, Trump is missing the softer touch that past presidents have effectively used to bring the country together in times of crisis.
The same cycle played out again amid a weekend of violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump stated Saturday that ‘many sides’ were to blame for the protests that rocked the college town, and he took to the familiar confines of Twitter to offer his condolences to the families of three people killed over the weekend. ‘So sad!’ the president wrote at the end of one of his weekend social media posts, where he also wished ‘best regards to all those injured.’
But it wasn’t until Monday — some 48 hours after the deadly events — that Trump made a bid to assume the role of ’empathizer-in-chief,’ reading out publicly the names of those who had died while directly condemning the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Trump’s initial wavering was seen by critics as a political nod to a base of supporters who helped lift the Republican last November to the White House. It also reflected something seen throughout Trump’s presidency: His natural instinct has been to respond with force to terrible events, saving the compassion for his surrogates or private interactions…
Trump’s difficulty in dealing with national tragedies — particularly those that are racially charged — is not new. He was uncharacteristically silent in the immediate aftermath of the February killing of an Indian immigrant in Kansas that was investigated as a hate crime, as well as the fatal stabbing in May of two men defending a Muslim woman riding a commuter train in Portland, Oregon.”
-Darren Samuelson and Matthew Nussbaum, “Trump’s ‘John Wayne’ presidency struggles with tragedy,” Politico, Aug. 14, 2017 06:02pm