Impeached president Donald Trump is wallowing in depths of narcissism this week that is astounding even for him. And the Wall Street Journal exposes it all in an interview released Thursday. For example, he "allowed for the possibility that some Americans wore facial coverings not as a preventative measure but as a way to signal disapproval of him." In the sense that we are all wearing masks to save our lives and have the side benefit of a greater chance of outliving him, perhaps. But where he really descends into profoundly stupid and racist pathology is on Juneteenth.
"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous," he said "It's actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it." Kinda like Frederick Douglass. Trump told the WSJ that he had polled many people in the White House after a Black Secret Service agent told him about the meaning of the date, and none of them had ever heard of it. He then interrupted the interview to ask an aide who was sitting in on it to ask if she'd ever heard of Juneteenth. She "pointed out that the White House had issued a statement last year commemorating the day," as it has every Juneteenth during his term. "Oh really? We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out a statement?" Mr. Trump said. "Okay, okay. Good."
No one had ever heard of Juneteenth, he says, so how could his original intent to "reopen" his political rallies on Juneteenth, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, (which is a whole other story) be so controversial? Nope, no megaphone to the white supremacist MAGA crowd in that one, not at all. Somebody in Team Trump knew how racist this move was and how racist he still is. He's still planning his official renomination to be held in Jacksonville, Florida, on the anniversary of that city's Ax Handle Saturday. That they could talk him out of postponing this one is a minor miracle.
For the record, Juneteenth has been a state holiday in Texas since 1980. The WSJ notes that 47 states and the District of Columbia, where Trump lives, commemorate the day, or observe it as a holiday. The last three holdouts are North Dakota, South Dakota, and Hawaii.
Like most racists, Trump is also an ignoramus. And like most racist ignoramuses, he believes everybody thinks like him and thus he is absolutely right. That's profoundly dangerous, made much more so by the fact that he's got the whole Republican Senate (minus Mitt Romney) backing him up.