Trump focuses on squabbles
President puts down critics, not N Korea
WEST PALM BEACH: The morning after North Korea launched a ballistic missile into the sea, apparently to test President Donald Trump’s resolve in his first days in office, the new commander in chief wanted to make one thing very clear to the world: Mark Cuban, the billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner, was not smart enough to have his job.
“I know Mark Cuban well,” Mr Trump said on Sunday morning on Twitter, where he has 24.7 million followers and has found an even more prominent megaphone since he became president. “He backed me big-time but I wasn’t interested in taking all of his calls. He’s not smart enough to run for president!”
It was not clear what provoked the insult, although Mr Cuban has recently been publicly critical of Mr Trump. The president might have been reacting to a report on Sunday in The New York Post that White House aides view Mr Cuban as a potential campaign rival in 2020, or to comments Mr Cuban made to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Friday warning corporate executives to be careful in their dealings with Mr Trump.
But Mr Trump’s put-down was only one in a long list of squabbles that the president has engaged in over the past week with individuals or groups that have aggrieved him. It offered a reminder three weeks into his tenure that even as he faces weighty problems, he is often preoccupied with the narrowest of gripes.
He swiped at Senator John McCain for criticising the counter-terrorism raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of a navy Seal. The raid has provoked anger in Yemen, where the government requested a review of the operation.
Mr Trump said Mr McCain’s critique “only emboldens the enemy” and, in a pair of postings on Twitter, he said that the senator, who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and was taken prisoner during the Vietnam War, has “been losing for so long he doesn’t know how to win anymore”.
The same day, the president took on Sen Richard Blumenthal for revealing that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, had called Mr Trump’s attacks on judges “demoralising” and “disheartening”. The comment was confirmed by aides who are shepherding Mr Gorsuch’s nomination, but Mr Trump quickly branded Mr Blumenthal a liar.
“Ask Senator Blumenthal about his Vietnam record that didn’t exist after years of saying it did,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to false statements that Mr Blumenthal admitted to in 2010, after they were revealed.
Mr Trump’s swing at Mr Blumenthal was itself a function of yet another feud he has pursued, often in incendiary tones, against the judicial branch as it weighs the legality of his executive order banning travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
It began this month when he called the Seattle judge who had blocked the directive a “so-called judge” who had made a “ridiculous” decision. He ratcheted up the insults during a speech to law enforcement officials from around the country, calling a hearing by a three-judge appeals court panel to review the stay “disgraceful” and comparing the intellect of the judges unfavourably with a poor student in high school.
And the president used Twitter twice last week to defend his daughter Ivanka, first targeting the department store chain Nordstrom — which had stopped carrying the apparel line bearing her name because of poor sales — for treating her “so unfairly”. Days later, Mr Trump blamed journalists in a posting in which he expressed pride in Ivanka Trump, whom he said had been “abused and treated so badly by the media”.
The White House is unapologetic about Donald Trump’s outspoken style, even when it crosses the traditional lines observed by presidents of both parties, who have tended to avoid individual attacks on sitting senators, judges or individual companies, given the powers of the office. That Mr Trump is willing, and even eager, to ignore those conventions, his aides say, is one reason his supporters adore him. “Part of the reason the president got elected is because he speaks his mind,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said last week when questioned about Mr Trump’s harsh words about members of the judicial branch. “He doesn’t hold it back. He’s authentic and he’s not going to sit back, I think, when he feels very passionately about something.”
His habit of picking public fights is likely to appeal to the roughly 40% of voters who support Mr Trump, but it may repel others whose support he will need to govern effectively and, ultimately, to win re-election.
In a post on Twitter responding to Mr Trump’s insult, Mr Cuban shared a letter he had written to the president during his campaign last year, in which he advised Mr Trump to drill down on policy specifics instead of improvising.
“I get that a big part of your base doesn’t care about issue details,” Mr Cuban wrote to Mr Trump. “But to be president, to be this close, you have to dig in and know your” facts. Mr Cuban’s initial response to the president’s sudden broadside was more concise: “Lol.”