Trump's new excuse for attacking protesters is a 'rambling mess': Ex-RNC official

In a column for the conservative Bulwark, former Republican National Committee spokesperson Tim Miller said that an interview Donald Trump took part in with the founder of Barstool Sports on Thursday showed a president whose answers were nothing less than incoherent and out of touch with reality.

Describing Barstool Sports as "a sports blog and podcast network tailored to the frat-bro demographic," Miller explained that president was served up softball questions by Dave Portnoy and managed to whiff badly when given a chance to moderate his attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters by someone who is not exactly in their corner himself.

As Miller explained it, Portnoy getting a sit-down with Trump likely won't please women, "given that the president’s poll numbers with women are tumbling below the Mendoza Line, maybe palling around with the guy who said that women 'kind of deserve to be raped if they’re a size 6 and wear skinny jeans' and 'subtle sexual harassment is fine and dandy' isn’t putting his tiny finger on the pulse of what women want."

Miller explained that Portnoy went of his way in an interview "that even Portnoy’s business partner said contained 'no hard questions,'" but that didn't keep the president from being "stumped" by one particular query.

According to the ex-RNC official, "Portnoy prefaces the question saying that at first he was against Colin Kaepernick’s protest, but that over the years, he’s come around to the view that it’s better than violent protest and asks Trump what he would suggest as an alternative."

Instead, the president gave the following answer:

Trump: Well, I mean, you can always say you run for office, right? You become successful. You could run for a lower office, you can do things. But there are ways. You get groups together and they can be very friendly ways of doing it. Very successful. I mean, you’re going to have rebounds, negative rebounds, if it keeps up the way it is. Like, as an example, Portland, this is crazy—51 days, you know, we sent in very powerful, uh, not military, but very strong people. Uh, the police are good, but they were told not to do anything, you know, by the radical left mayor. No, you have to go out and you have to say and speak your mind is good. I think speaking your mind is good, but you have to do it fairly. Uh, we are for justice, but we’re for law and order, it’s gotta be law and order. And there is law and order. Uh, I put something out when they were starting to rip down statues. I went out, I found an old law, an old bill. You couldn’t get it passed today. You get 10 years in jail, 10 years and no games. And we have a lot of people in jail right now. If you rip down a statue, a federal statue, because the states have to take care of their own, unfortunately, cause I’d do that too. But you rip down a federal statute, you get 10 years in jail. 10 years. No, you know, three months. And nothing’s happened since then. It was amazing. I signed it. I had a news conference. I said, if you do it, and we were supposed to have thousands of people march on Washington that day. Nobody showed up."

As Miller wrote, Trump's answer was pure "incoherence."

Saying even Portnoy admitted there is a problem that needs a solution, Miller wrote, "Our stubborn, childish, grievance-lugging, cosplay president just can’t bring himself to get there. The result? The Queens Confederate finds himself in an anti-Black Lives Matter box so small that not even a toady Barstool bro fits in it."

Miller then went to explain, "Voters aren’t asking Donald Trump to head out to Nats Park and kneel next to the players. They aren’t asking him to defund the police. They are simply looking for a president to show the bare minimum interest in their cause, in racial justice, in uniting the country. They are looking for a president who merely recognizes that in this country silent protest is welcome. That everyone, all races, all creeds get the chance to say their piece," before adding Trump still doesn't get it.

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