Tweet of the Day

By all rights, the tweet from Dan Scavino, White House Director of Social Media, would not only be the Tweet of the Day, it would be a contender for the Most Bizarre Tweet of the Trump administration.  But then it's topped by Trump's reply.  I guess perhaps we have to make them a twofer, since they tell such a remarkable story together.

It starts with a graphic meme that someone posted online critical of Trump when news was reported on Sunday that he was playing golf during the coronavirus health pandemic.  You'll see that original tweet below, but that's not the story.  The story is what happened next, after it was posted.

What must have happened next is that Scavino didn't understand the very obvious allusion being made in the graphic, thought it was talking about how great and inevitable a second Trump term would be, and so he retweeted it.  And making things worse, retweeting a graphic made it looked as if Scavino himself had posted it initially himself.  This was the result --

pic.twitter.com/rnCGpR2v7p

— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 8, 2020

I mean, seriously, this is just utterly bizarre -- the head of White House social media tweeting an allusion to Nero fiddling while Rome burns...with a graphic of Trump fiddling during the pandemic!

The only thing I can imagine is that Scavino didn't actually know this allusion to Nero and that "what's coming" is the coronavirus spreading around the world. But not knowing about Nero fiddling is scary weird.  You don't have to have studied history to know it.  It's just a basic expression used to point out someone being so callous and uncaring about something while they're in charge.

That said, big thanks to Scavino for posting it.

But that's not the end of it.  Because Trump, of course, saw it.  And I don't know if this will stun you -- or if you'll figure, "Well, sure, this is Trump.  He's ignorant."  Because this was his response --

Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me! https://t.co/rQVA4ER0PV

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2020

No, really.

I mean -- really.  As in "Really."  Honest.

This is big-time scary on two levels.

First, and most of all, there's the chilling, total ignorance that Trump also doesn't know the allusion to Nero fiddling while Rome burns (accompanied by a graphic of him fiddling during the pandemic, the day he spent on the golf course)!  A man who touts himself as being naturally brilliant.  So brilliant he doesn't need anyone else's advice.  Doesn't need the advice of generals, he knows more than than.  So brilliant that he was able to grasp the medical science of the coronavirus so deeply that "all" the doctors he spoke to were in awe of him.  Him -- a very stable genius. 

And he didn't know about Nero fiddling while Rome burned.  Eesh.  Yipes.

And second, it's overwhelmingly scary that a president -- the most power man in the world, called on to synthesize mounds of information covering a range of topics on a daily basis, from the mundane to those at a crisis level , and make a decision of action -- not only didn't know what it meant...but said, hey, it I don't know what that means, but it sounds good anyway, I'm going to retweet it.

In the words of Republican strategist the other day -- "We are all going to die."

What I wonder is when Trump learns what the graphic meme that his Director of Social Media retweeted actually meant -- Nero fiddling while Rome burned and that it alluded to Trump playing golf during a pandemic -- we may see a new Director of Social Media.  I suspect that the only thing that will save Scavino's job is no one will tell Trump.

And that no one in the administration seems to tell Trump bad news or when he's wrong, that in the end may be the scariest thing of all.

​A very stable genius.