Tweeter-in-chief should have thought — at least once

Even Donald Trump’s strongest supporters will seldom make a case for any evidence of a laser-like attention span. But in the wake of the latest terrorist attack in London, could the president have at least read, or more likely heard, more than one line of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s response to the tragedy? As tweeter-in-chief, Trump attacked the mayor not once but twice, and called Khan’s statement “pathetic.”

The acting U.S. ambassador to Britain, the U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, and British newspapers all endorsed Mayor Khan’s verbal and security responses to the attack. As usual when he is under attack, Trump lurched into spin-and-whine mode and blamed the Democrats for holding up his nomination for a new U.K. ambassador. Nonsequiturs are a Trump specialty. And, oops, Trump apparently forgot that in obsessing on Twitter (1) he has yet to formally send his pick for ambassador, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, to the Senate, and (2) his fellow Republicans control the Senate nomination committee for ambassadors.

As the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal just noted, “The most effective opponent of the Trump Presidency is Donald J. Trump.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2017 at 12:40 PM with the headline "Tweeter-in-chief should have thought — at least once."