Two Sick WTF Trump Moments That the Media Completely Ignored

A pair of President Donald Trump’s most revealing “WTF” moments were completely ignored by a news media that has become too numb or too afraid to give them the attention they deserve.

In the expanse of Trump’s lifetime of WTF-isms, there are categories within categories. With the focus on his dead pal Jeffrey Epstein, the creepy-pervy subcategory has gotten a lot of attention this year —  but not nearly enough from the mainstream media.

And he low-key did at least one of those this week by riffing on the “machine gun” lips of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

But there’s another category that I have a hard time describing because I want to take care to avoid the pitfall of diagnosing Trump. Mental illness is too serious and important to be trivialized into a hot take — or any other temperature of take. Because whatever makes Trump this way, it can’t be chalked up to mental illness.

For the sake of conversation, let’s call this category “Demented Trump WTF-isms” — but not in the clinical sense. I mean demented in the twisted sense of villains throughout culture who lack the character and decency common to most human beings.

This subcategory is probably best typified by his infamous patter on 9/11, just hours after the first attack.

“Forty Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan,” Trump said, adding, “and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest, and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest. And now it’s the tallest.”

As ghastly as that boast was, it was also — shockingly — not true.

There were two examples this week that stood out to some — but got no attention in the media.

The first was this exchange with Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy on Air Force One as it traveled home from a Middle East swing to celebrate the Israel-Hamas deal and the return of all the living October 7 hostages.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. So this was really a historic day, to put it mildly. Wasn’t it amazing? Even that last meeting, when you see the heads of those countries, those serious countries, I thought it was fantastic.

And seeing, I mean the so-called hostages with those kids come back home the way their parents just went crazy —

Your father would not be that way. He’d be okay, but he wouldn’t be like that.

FOX NEWS’S PETER DOOCY: I would get a hug.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: A hug? A minor hug, okay. I woulda been — “Let’s go!” No, he woulda been — I’m only kidding.

So, how are you doing? Everybody okay? Are we good?

DASHA BURNS: How are you feeling?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Feel good. I mean, it’s a long day, right? It’s a long day. And we did a couple of big ones. That first one was getting great reviews. There’s a lot of beat in there. They’re dissecting it and just playing it all night long. It’s been very good. And I think it’s very, it is a very important day because nobody thought this was possible. And the press has been very respectful for a change. Doesn’t happen often.

At first blush it just seems like a weird and ham-handed attempt at chop busting. Even at that level, it is a WTF moment. Hey, your father would not be excited if you were released from life-threatening captivity, ha ha ha?

What kind of person even thinks like that? Even the most hardened Unbookables comic wouldn’t conjure up that comic premise because it’s just so alien.

But in the context of the moment, it becomes almost downright monstrous. This is a man who has just witnessed heart, wrenching reunions. Then when presented with his friend Peter Doocy, the first thing he decides to do is ref on how his friend’s father doesn’t love him enough to care that much if he got released. Who could witness such a thing and then think of this kind of a joke?

The easy resistance answer is maybe somebody who doesn’t love his own children enough to break down like that under such a circumstance, or somebody who imagines his own father didn’t love him enough.

But I think this is Trump’s way of processing emotions he can’t imagine ever having. He has even essentially said as much in the seemingly dozens of times, he has told the story of his amazement that the parents of hostages who were killed would place such a high priority on the return of their remains.

The story has even evolved to include what I hope is a made up a bit of dialogue that sounds like a macabre Abbott and Costello routine with the parent of a dead hostage.

In one telling, he added a new element, saying that this amazing shocking desire on the part of this woman to retrieve the remains of her son, even though he’s dead, was even more important to her than if he were still alive.

I was — I met with parents that were, it was so sad. “Uh, sir, please get my son back.” “How is your son doing?” “Well, he’s dead, but they have his body and it’s so important.” It, it’s impor-, more important. It’s almost like more, but it’s as important as if the child were living. These people were, uh, I mean, they’re devastated.

I’m going to give Trump and his staff credit that he wouldn’t meet the mother of a hostage without knowing her son was dead, and just assume he’s lying about this bit of dialogue just to hammer home the point that it’s a zany twist that a person would care this much about this.

The second example got a lot of attention on social media this week but again, nothing from the mainstream media.

On Tuesday, the President spoke at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, during which he riffed about the gunshot wound that he survived:

They’ve rammed vehicles into federal law enforcement, fired sniper rifles at ICE agents — and me.

You know, I made a turn at a good time. I made a turn at a good time. I turned to the right.

Charlie couldn’t believe it, actually — (CHUCKLES)

He said, “How the hell did you make that turn?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

There was no shortage of Trump critics slamming that moment, the unkindest interpretation of which is that he was essentially taunting his dead friend for not dodging the bullet like Trump did.

But what gets me is that chuckle.

Again, not trying to get into Trump‘s head, but the most generous interpretation of that chuckle is that Trump feels some sense of irony that a pious individual like Kirk was killed while an amoral blob of orange makeup and combover like him was spared. That’s actually not my opinion, it is an admittedly ungenerous paraphrase of something Trump himself said during the ceremony:

Charlie testified to the greatness of America and to the glory of our Savior, with whom he now rests in heaven. And he is going to make heaven. I said, I’m not sure I could make it, but he’s going to make it. He’s there. He’s looking down on us right now.

Trump has been musing a lot lately about not going to heaven, a phenomenon that is simple to decipher. He doesn’t think he’s going to heaven because he doesn’t believe in heaven. What he’s really saying is that Kirk wasted all that effort trying to get into a make-believe place while Trump escaped death and gets to do whatever he wants.

Or maybe not, who knows? Maybe both Corinthians came to him in a dream.

But the fact remains that he chuckled. He is the kind of person who could chuckle in that situation.

Watch above via The White House.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.