From The Other 98%Trump is now in a public feud with a person in an inflatable frog costume. He posted the frog's photo to attack it as a "crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor." This is the President of the United States.
He is losing a fight to a guy in a frog suit, and he started it.
Trump spent $14 million renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and dyeing it "American flag blue." It promptly filled with algae and the paint started peeling.
Rather than admit the job was botched, Trump invented a conspiracy about "vandals," sent in the National Guard, and had Park Police arrest a 67-year-old Olympian for touching a loose flap of paint.
It was already absurd. Then it went full idiocracy.
On Monday night, the President of the United States, leader of the world's largest economy and commander of its military, sat down and posted a photograph of a protester in a giant inflatable frog costume. The frog was labeled "Amphifa." It was holding a sign reading "First they came for the algae."
And Trump, apparently, could not let the frog win.
"Here is another example of a crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor," he wrote, deadly serious, before launching into a lengthy explanation of the Martin Niemoller poem the frog's sign was parodying. He took the bait so completely that he annotated the joke.
He fact-checked a frog.
Somewhere out there is an ordinary person who put on a novelty amphibian costume, made a silly sign about pond scum, and stood near a puddle. And the most powerful man on the planet saw it, felt personally threatened, and fired off an official presidential statement declaring the frog a paid agitator.
The protester won the entire exchange without saying a word. The frog didn't have to do anything. Trump did all the work himself, transforming a man in a costume into a national news story by being unable to ignore him.
A confident leader laughs at a frog. A secure man scrolls past. Trump cannot, because every joke at his expense lands like a wound, and he has to swing back at all of them, even the ones wearing inflatable green suits and standing next to an algae-filled pool he ruined himself.
The pool is still green. The paint is still peeling. And the President of the United States spent his Monday night at war with a frog. The frog is winning.
