Remember this horrible, horrible pig-feces-lagoon of a tweet from three days ago in which the actual president of the United States suggested protesters should be shot by the police and/or the government because, unlike the protesters carrying assault weapons to state capitols to fight for their right to eat an entire Chili’s Awesome Blossom in one sitting, these protesters (who are merely fighting for their right not to be randomly killed in the street) are THUGS?

….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

Yeah, you remember it.

Well, according to the pr*sident’s national security adviser, this is an example of the pr*sident being pr*sidential.

National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien appeared on CNN’s State of the Union this morning to defend the indefensible. And that he did. Or tried to do, anyway.

After host Jake Tapper asked him about the above tweet, the gaslighting began in earnest.

On CNN, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien says Trump's tweets calling protesters "thugs" and threatening to shoot them are meant to "deescalate." #UpIsDown pic.twitter.com/hy8fyqQDr8 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 31, 2020

TAPPER: “That’s a comment that Sen. Cory Booker called racist. The governor of Minnesota, Gov. Walz, and the governor of Maryland, Gov. Hogan, suggested that the president’s language was inflammatory. The president had also invoked vicious dogs and ominous weapons being wielded against protesters outside the White House. Do you think messages like that are helping to unite the country and calm fears?” O’BRIEN: “I think what the president said, and he spoke about that tweet when some of those comments were made, and he said, look, I don’t … he was trying to deescalate. He didn’t want violence. He was trying to stop the violence that we saw that took place overnight. And the message to, and it’s a strong message, that we want law and order in this country. We want peaceful protesters who have real concerns about brutality and racism, they need to be able to go to the city hall, they need to be able to petition their government and let their voices be heard, and they can’t be highjacked by these left-wing antifa militants who are burning down, primarily communities in the African American sections and the Hispanic sections of our city, where immigrants and hardworking folks are trying to get a leg up and they’re having their businesses burned by these radicals, many of whom are imported from Seattle or Portland, or who knows where they come from?

So we’re just going to ignore all the credible reports of white nationalists fomenting violence at these protests? Sure, why not?

The important part to remember, though, is that Donald Trump is trying to calm the situation — by invoking George Wallace and Bull Connor during the middle of a nationwide civil rights protest.

Well done.

(For the record, I don’t think Trump was deliberately invoking George Wallace and Bull Connor, because while he’s incredibly racist, he’s also too lazy to learn anything about the history of racial animus in this country. He’s just going with his rotten gut, which tells him to be maximally racist at all times. Ergo, the calls for vicious dogs and killing protesters in the streets.)

So there you go. Up is down, the sky is green, and Donald Trump is a calm, steady force in times of crisis.

So three and a half years into Trump’s tenure, thousands of people are dying every week from a pandemic, the economy has cratered, and the streets are burning.

About what I expected, sadly. But that doesn’t make it any less awful.

“This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry.” — Bette Midler on Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, via Twitter. Find out what made dear Bette break up. Dear Fcking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump and its boffo sequels Dear Prsident A**clown: 101 More Rude Letters to Donald Trump and Dear F*cking Moron: 101 More Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing are now available for a song! Click those links, yo!