A message for everyone waiting eagerly for Donald Trump to "pivot" into a competent presidency: please write your name and social security number on your torso so we can properly identify you after everything goes straight to hell.
Hurricane Harvey was the rarest of disasters to strike during the Trump presidency — a maelstrom not of Mr. Trump’s making, and one that offers him an opportunity to recapture some of the unifying power of his office he has squandered in recent weeks.
Oh, New York Times reporters. Will you never learn.
In announcing his trips, he used the dulcet, reassuring and uplifting language of prior presidents. His rhetoric was strikingly different from his much-criticized pronouncements at a news conference this month when he equated the actions of leftist protesters in Charlottesville, Va., with the violent, torch-wielding alt-right activists who hurled anti-Semitic and racist epithets.
He read a statement prepared by someone else from a piece of paper he was given. He didn't read it well. He limited his mid-speech asides and outbursts to what, for him, must seem a torturous minimum. It was in the middle of a joint press conference with the president of Finland, a man whose grasp of facts, issues, the English language, and recognizing people at a slight distance all outstripped that of our own leader during his brief appearance.
All right, let's cut to the chase:
But many of those in the president’s orbit are worried Mr. Trump will not be self-controlled enough to maximize the moment.
Indeed. And?
In addition to the as-yet-untold toll on people and property, there is the unpredictable element of Mr. Trump’s emotional weather, which can shatter the prevailing harmony in an instant, through a tweet or a taunt.
Yes. Yes, there is a danger that even when given an opportunity to not be the worst version of himself, the incompetent xenophobic narcissist with eggshell ego will not take it. That is indeed the definition of the man.
Trump's advisers have been furiously peddling, these last few days, the notion that Donald Arpaio-Pardoning Trump has been more focused and absorbed on Hurricane Harvey than outside observers would possibly believe. Evidence for this includes photographs of two presidential briefings, during each of which Trump wore hats purchasable from his campaign website, his Twitter feed, which indeed shows that the sitting president considers the storm to be worthy of a generous helping of exclamation points, and his apparent willingness to sit still for briefings on the storm despite a famous unwillingness to tolerate detailed explanations of any other issue or event.
Those same aides also perhaps unwittingly provide the reason for Trump's newfound attention span: The lifelong landlord finally has found a subject dear to his heart, and one he finally feels confident he understands. Water damage.
Mr. Trump, one aide said, was fascinated by the long-term effect of water damage on structures in the Gulf Coast, peppering FEMA and National Security Council briefers with detailed questions about the flooding in Houston and Galveston. As the extent of the projected devastation became apparent over the weekend during a meeting at Camp David, he shook his head in disbelief and compared the situation to problems he experienced when managing his family’s apartment buildings in New York. “Water damage is the worst,” he told one staff member, “tough, tough, tough.”
There you go. Fear not, America, Donald Trump may not have the slightest grasp of what his government's responsibilities in a crisis are and his statements on the storm may teeter, more often than not, into admiring the storm as disaster porn rather than reassuring the public that any specific actions will or won't be taken in response, but here is finally a man you can sit down at the bar, have a beer with, and swap stories about water damage. Oh, he has stories. He can tell you all about water damage. Sit yourself down at the Trump International, order a $100 cocktail, and let Donald Trump, landlord, tell you about the times his own properties had to deal with water damage.
The rest of us, however, are obliged to wait. In addition to projecting some bare minimum of competence, the collection of cronies, hangers-on, and virulent anti-government burn-it-downers now have to produce some. We have no other option; there is no shadow government to step in if Trump and his team are not up to the task. It will take days, then months, then years and still not be done.
Outside, however, the storm continues.