The Winningest Winner in All of Winningtown

The two months between Independence Day and Labor Day offered a fresh and vivid portrait of the president as seen by Trump’s critics — incompetent, indecisive, intolerant and ineffective.

White House officials promote the summer of 2019 as one of historic achievement for Trump, offering up a list of more than two dozen accomplishments. But privately, many of the president’s advisers and outside allies bemoan what they consider to be a period of missed opportunity and self-sabotage.

In the final lull before the 2020 campaign starts to intensify this fall, Trump could have worked strategically to solidify his position and broaden his appeal. Instead, his words and actions this summer served to further divide the country and to harden public opinion about the ever-polarizing president.

In a public rebuttal of this characterization of Trump’s terrible summer, the White House on Wednesday released a video titled, “The Summer of Winning.” It is as ridiculous as you might imagine:

As CNN’s Chris Cillizza explains, much of the “winning” in this video could be easily characterized in a completely different manner. For example:

*Footage of Trump visiting a hospital in El Paso, Texas, following the mass shootings there last month. But that trip should hardly be described as a “win.” His boast that he got a large crowd the last time he was in El Paso and the infamous photo of Trump giving the thumbs up in a picture with a baby whose parents were murdered in the shootings are the two most memorable moments of that visit. (Not to mention Trump’s falsehood that doctors were running out of operating rooms to greet him when he toured the hospital.) Plus, even if the El Paso visit had gone well, is comforting victims of a mass shooting really something that fits into a video on “winning?” [Pols emphasis]

*There’s a series of quick cuts of Trump meeting with various world leaders — from Qatar, Mongolia, Pakistan and Poland among others. Claiming those meetings as wins is like me claiming that answering emails every day is a win. It’s just part of the job. Every president meets with foreign leaders. Claiming those meetings as wins is like telling your kid he’s the big winner because he got the attendance award at school. [Pols emphasis]

We look forward to the inevitable parody videos. Unfortunately for all of us, the new season of “Saturday Night Live” doesn’t kick off until September 28.