America’s Laziest President: Trump Admits to Delegating His Job to the Media That He Hates

The first two and a half years of Donald Trump’s presidency has been marked by his spectacularly underdeveloped work ethic. The only things he has demonstrated an interest in are his devotion to golf, tweeting, holding cult rallies, and watching Fox News. He has done virtually nothing else. Consequently, he has racked up a record of unparalleled failure, unable to achieve the vast majority of his campaign promises.

Donald Trump

[UPDATE: The sloth-like behavior of Trump is horrifically magnified on days like this when it’s being reported that as many as twenty people were slaughtered in an El Paso, Texas mall. The gunman is being described as a Trump-supporting, 21 year old white male, who has posted virulently hateful screeds against immigrants on social media.

Trump took three hours to react with a typically useless offering of “thoughts and prayers.” Then only twelve minutes later he was tweeting about a UFC fighter who idolizes Trump. That was followed by three posts about a MAGA-loving black “pastor.” And true to form, nothing was said about any potential solution to this epidemic of gun violence. Meanwhile, Fox News was baselessly speculating about an ISIS connection to the shooter.]

Among the presidential duties that Trump has neglected are the appointments to key White House positions. His nominees comprise an assembly of dimwits, donors, and utterly unqualified bootlickers. That played out in an epic disintegration of Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe. From the start there was bipartisan recognition that Ratcliffe was a political plant with no relevant experience for the job that Trump wanted him to fill. The only reason he got the nod was because Trump had just seen him on TV smearing special counsel Robert Mueller.

In less than a week Trump threw Ratcliffe overboard, but not without making some of the most asinine and transparently false excuses for another embarrassing misstep by a president known for being unable to walk a straight line. During a segment of Trump’s Reality TV show, “Lying on the White House Lawn,” Trump replied to a reporter’s question about the state of his vetting process saying that “I like when you vet.” He continued (video below):

“I think the White House has a great vetting process. You vet for me. When I give a name, I give it out to the press, and you vet for me. A lot of times you do a very good job. Not always. I mean if you take a look at it, the vetting process for the White House is very good.

But you’re part of the vetting process, you know. I give out a name to the press and they vet for me. We save a lot of money that way. But in the case of John, I really believe that he was being treated very harshly and very unfairly.”

This is totally deranged on so many levels. First of all, it isn’t the job of the media to vet critical national security personnel. They can analyze a president’s nominee and do background checks, but the commander-in-chief should be making these decisions. The fact that Trump is comfortable letting others vet for him is baltant dereliction of duty. It can hardly be called a “great vetting process.” Where else is Trump abdicating his responsibilities, and to whom?

What’s more, Trump is delegating this profoundly vital task to the media that he often maligns as “the enemy of the people.” But for some reason he now regards them as competent to evaluate one of the most pivotal positions in the U.S. government. What sane leader would assign such a task to people that he routinely disparages as being dishonest, corrupt, and even treasonous?

Then, after handing off the vetting process to the media that he hates, Trump accuses them of harshly mistreating his nominee. Never mind that he doesn’t offer any examples of that alleged mistreatment. Trump just wants you to take his word for it that the press was out to get him. But even after condemning the media’s vetting of Ratcliffe, Trump still takes their advice and nixes the nomination.

Finally, Trump fails to mention during any of this rant that the real reason Ratcliffe went down was because Republican senators told Trump that the nomination of this unqualified hack would likely not be confirmed. So while Trump sought to blame the media for doing what he says he asked them to do, he is really just covering up for the senate GOP and his own incompetence. And sadly, Trump is even incompetent at that.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.