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The most unnerving thing about an actual article investigating what Donald Trump is seeing in his own Twitter feed on a given morning is that it is an entirely legitimate news story. It's not fluff or a strained exercise in Kremlinology: Donald Trump is an information-starved man who demonstrably gets much of his news from partisan and conspiracy-minded sources, is a Twitter fanatic, and is widely reported to thrive or wilt based on how much adulation he is getting from the people he craves attention from.
So asking what Donald Trump is personally seeing on his own personalized, only-good-news-allowed internet and television programs is not petty distraction, but a predictive look into how he believes he's being perceived and what he's likely to do next. Surprise! When it comes to firing the current FBI director, aka the person leading the investigation into Russian hacking efforts and their potential intersection with Trump's own campaign and staff, it turns out the people Donald Trump follows on Twitter have nothing but praise for his bold actions!
That was quickly followed, however, by a tweet from Sean Hannity, "Comey Fired!!! Finally." And that's where the long list of affirmations begin. [...]
Trump once followed MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinksi but unfollowed them in March. Had he still been following them, he would have seen a slew of tweets from Scarborough describing Comey's firing as an "abuse of power" [...]
Why did he unfollow them? Because they said things critical of him, and he didn't like it. Period. He stopped watching Joe Scarborough's show, and switched over to the lead paint of news, aka Fox and Friends.
As morning came, the team at Fox and Friends began tweeting. "Williams: Firing Comey 'important way of FBI regaining credibility,'" one read. "Former DC Attorney: 'Out of control' Comey 'acted like he was attorney general,'" read another.
Of the 30 or so tweets sent from the account, only two portrayed Trump's move as anything but positive.
You'd usually have to pay Russian hookers to come to your hotel room to get service like that, but Fox and Friends will do it for free.
So what does this mean? It means that Donald Trump is, as usual, primarily basking in the adoration of only those voices that tell him he did right. And this, as usual, is likely a big part of why Trump was caught so flat-footed by the notion that Democrats, pundits, and the press would be genuinely alarmed by the Comey firing. He operates in a bubble in which he can do no wrong, and anyone who thinks he might have done wrong is immediately fired or otherwise dispatched with. He has no more idea of how his actions will play to the rest of the non-frothing nation than he knows about particle physics. It's just him and Fox and Friends, forever locked in self-affirmation.
And that means he's all but certain to continue down this same extraordinary path.
Here’s a little trip down memory lane, though: surely you've been wondering what Bill O'Reilly has been up to, now that he's left Fox News to spend more time being creepy at home. You'll be happy to know he's continuing his on-air rants from the luxurious confines of … his car.
At 9 p.m., Bill O'Reilly, formerly of Fox News, tweeted audio of "instant analysis" from his car. He said he was "going out to a nice dinner here in Manhattan." O'Reilly reserved his judgment but warned his listeners to be wary of "partisan garbage" suggesting that Comey was fired because of the Russia investigation.
If you ever feel like you've hit rock bottom, at least remind yourself you're not yelling into a recorder while tooling down the freeway, impatiently awaiting the moment you can get home and upload it to the internets. Eh, who are we kidding? He probably uploaded it from the carpool lane.