By Michelle Cottle:
For a guy who largely treats words as meaningless, Trump is notably fixated on the ritual value of apologies––from other people, that is. He and his team are constantly calling on this person or that group to express contrition for some perceived offense. Trump isn’t much concerned about the sincerity of a mea culpa or the spirit in which it is offered. If anything, a grudging, coerced apology seems to delight him even more than a wholly voluntary one.
For Trump, apologies aren’t about resolving conflict or fostering relationships or even setting the record straight. Like so much of what he does, they are about besting someone. Trump expresses his displeasure at how he has been treated; the offending party feels compelled to make amends. An apology that requires threats or twitter trolls to extract only highlights Trump’s superior strength all the more. Your criticisms of Trump may not have been wrong. You may not feel one bit bad about them. You may loathe and disdain him even more after apologizing. What matters to him is that you have had to publicly ask for his forgiveness. Which proves you are a total loser.
Just last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was all over Senator John McCain to apologize for saying that the January 28 raid in Yemen that Trump ordered––which resulted in the death of one Navy SEAL, the wounding of three others, the loss of a $70 million helicopter, and multiple civilian casualties—was not a success. For some reason, McCain irritably declined.
Not infrequently, Trump, in one of his signature Twitter fits, will call for an apology on behalf of a third party. He memorably demanded that the cast of Hamilton apologize for booing Mike Pence, that MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski apologize to a Trump supporter with whom she clashed on air, and that Pakistan apologize to the U.S. for harboring Osama bin Laden all those years.
Far more often, though, Trump is seeking an apology for Trump. The legions he has called on for apologies include, but are by no means limited to, CNN’s Jim Acosta, the New York Times, the intelligence community, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Wall Street Journal, Megyn Kelly, Fox News, National Review’s Rich Lowry, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, Carly Fiorina, Univision, ABC’s Tom Llamas, and Hillary Clinton. At this point, pretty much all of the mainstream media has a standing order from the White House to apologize for everything it does.
The Full Story (February 13, 2017)
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