After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Good earlier this month, Donald Trump responded in a decidedly Trumpian way: The president blamed the victim, peddled conspiracy theories and described video footage of the incident in ways that were plainly at odds with what the public could see with their own collective eyes.
Seventeen days later, federal immigration officers shot and killed an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight, at which point Trump did what he always does: He tried to change the subject, lashed out at his political foes and twice suggested that the deadly incident was part of a “cover-up.”
I haven’t the foggiest idea what he meant when he alleged a “cover-up,” and when a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to clarify, she dodged the question.
But as Pretti’s slaying dominated headlines, renewed a public conversation and jolted American politics, the president decided to shift his attention to other matters of greater apparent concern. On Sunday morning, for example, he published a 448-word screed to his social media platform (the missive was a little longer than his official health care “plan”) about his beloved White House ballroom vanity project. The Washington Post summarized:
President Donald Trump on Sunday insisted his proposed ballroom is a done deal — even as Justice Department lawyers in court present the plans as flexible and subject to federal reviews.
In a lengthy post to his Truth Social platform, Trump said the project could not realistically be reversed because key materials have been lined up, writing that ‘there is no practical or reasonable way to go back’ and declaring: ‘IT IS TOO LATE!’
The president’s online comments, the Post added, were at odds with his own position in federal court, where just three days earlier, Justice Department lawyers “told a judge that the ballroom plans can be modified and that the White House intends to wait for two federal advisory panels to review the project before beginning aboveground construction in April.”
The previous evening, the president attended a private White House screening of the documentary about his wife, first lady Melania Trump, which Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million to produce.
Around this time a year ago, The New York Times’ David French noted that Trump “is not a man who is ready to meet important and dangerous moments.” The truth of the quote lingers for obvious reasons.
