When it comes to the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, there are many things we know to be true. We know that he is by no means a traditional politician, we know he is a proven racist and sexist, we know he hates the idea of the rich being downgraded to the slightly less rich and we know that its highly likely he actually wanted nothing to do with the presidency, just more views for the then failing reality show "The Apprentice." We also know that in high school, The Donald was voted "most likely to get away with date-rape." Okay, maybe I made that one up but you get it.
He is not only the worst and most divisive president in modern history, but also (unfortunately) an incredibly consequential one. The acts of his administration will be felt long after he is gone (which I'm actually high-key scared will never happen but that's for another article.)
So if we know all of these things to be true about Donald Trump, then can someone please explain to me why we freak the fuck out whenever he tweets something racist, sexist or xenophobic? Trump should be held accountable for his words, absolutely, but don't we ever wonder at what point that becomes an issue for the historians and not us?
What I think we miss out on when we angrily and obsessively react to the president is that we are giving him not only what he wants but the same things that got him to the highest position in the country in the first place, attention. During the 2016 election, Trump got more airtime than any other candidate because he was outlandish and said all the things other scumbags like him were thinking but didn't feel comfortable being vocal about (which like hello, they should've stayed feeling that way, their thoughts are gross and inhumane.)
What Donald Trump is trying to achieve in starting a brawl with "The Squad" is getting all that airtime to embolden his base between now and the 2020 election. "The Squad" as the Internet has dubbed them is a group composed of congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley who are notorious for calling it as they see it, especially in regard to the human health and safety crisis that is the Trump administration.
While I fully support the endeavors of these women in congress, I think all of us in the media and on Twitter should maybe let them handle it. When we explosively react to every tweet or when CNN is spending a full days news coverage talking about Trump saying things no sitting president should say and having pundits weigh in on the President's sanity instead of focusing on hard investigative journalism about the border camp crisis killing innocent women and children, we play right into Trump's hand.
Regardless of how we feel about the President has to say, we have to stop giving him all of this damned attention. All it's really doing is amplifying our sense of hopelessness and giving his base all the dissension they are looking for to incite a race war. Let's stop focusing so much on the stupid shit he says and instead focus on how his policies and actions are impacting our country for years to come.
