While outrage fatigue appears to be at an all-time high, it doesn’t take much to get Washington journalists collectively embarrassed by President Donald Trump. It also takes nothing for him to break from presidential protocol.
Like getting into a Twitter fight with a Hollywood actress while hobnobbing in London.
While finishing up his royal state visit, Trump walloped actress Bette Midler for misquoting him. She apologized for fake newsing him, saying the quote she attributed to him about Republicans being the “dumbest group of voters in the country” just sounded like something he’d say. But not before she urged him to get his dick stuck in a door.
“Ah yes, the great presidential tradition of fighting with Bette Midler while traveling abroad,” cracked New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi.
NYT‘s Chief White House correspondent Peter Baker stated the president’s act as a matter of White House business. But the underlying question came through loud and clear: What the hell is he doing?
“It’s 1:34 am in London and the president of the United States is awake and tweeting about an actress who offended him,” he wrote.
Midler, who sharply mocks Trump several times a week, made fun of the president while he was in London. The topic she chose is one that has been known to get under his skin. That would be crowd size.
“Trump said he was greeted by thousands in the UK, but they were actually thousands of protesters,” the actress who starred in Beaches tweeted. “How does he always hear the opposite of the truth? Donald, if you’re reading this you SHOULD NOT slam your dick in a door!”
Trump’s early Wednesday tweet: “Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really bad.”
Roland Martin, a lefty who hosts Roland Martin Unfiltered, also reprimanded POTUS. “Today is the 75th anniversary of #DDay, and the man y’all call President is whining and bitching about the media,” he wrote. “He has no class. No respect for the military. Maybe his bone spurs were acting up this morning.”
“The president seems to be in a good mood,” remarked The Daily Beast‘s Sam Stein in reaction to Trump lambasting the actress.
Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas also had criticism for Trump. “Trump has now had harsher criticism for Bette Midler, Meryl Streep, and Nordstrom than he has for Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin,” he tweeted.
Veteran national security correspondent Jeff Stein, who writes a column for SpyTalk, was concerned about Trump’s anti-Midler behavior. So he pulled a CNN’s Brian Stelter and questioned the president’s mental fitness and suggested that he might be in need of an intervention.
“Another sign of @POTUS psychological decline as he tweets insults at Bette Middler [sic] late into the night amid state visit to London. #intervention,” he wrote.
CNN contributor Amanda Carpenter, who is no fan of Trump’s, threw this out there amid the fury. “You all know it’s gonna be weird when Trump is no longer President and he can rage tweet around the clock without having to take breaks for state dinners and stuff, right?” she asked.
To be fair to Midler, she isn’t a wallflower about insulting Democrats either. “Nancy Pelosi put her foot so far up Trump’s ass today I have to send her a new pair of pumps!” she tweeted in December of 2018.
In March, she dug into Trump’s psyche and lost the wind beneath her wings.
“Donald Trump has forced us to live through war as a nation for the last two years; he has caused depression, despair, confusion and death,” she wrote. “We’re not just sick at heart, but literally sick from him; from uncontrollable rage at the thought that he will get away with his crimes.”
On Wednesday morning, Midler thanked her fans for sticking up for her after Trump called her a “washed up psycho.”
“I want to thank everyone who came to my defense last night during my personal Battle of the Bulge with he who must not be named,” she wrote. “Your wit and good nature really lifted my spirits; as a newly washed up psycho, I am very grateful for your thoughts and prayers.”