Seems Like the President Forgot to Ask the Yankees If He Could Throw Their Ball Around

Last week, coincidentally just an hour before America’s sweetheart Anthony Fauci threw the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game, Donald Trump abruptly announced that he too would be throwing out a ball—his big moment occurring at a New York Yankee’s game. Just as abruptly, on Sunday Trump announced that he was too busy to throw out that ball, writing in a rather racist tweet that “[b]ecause of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else,” he would unfortunately not be able to make it to Yankee Stadium on August 15.

Now we find out that Trump just made that invitation up! According to the New York Times, he “had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees” and “[h]is announcement surprised both Yankees officials and the White House staff.” The reason for his lie? He was “so annoyed” that Fauci had been asked to throw the first pitch at the Nationals game.

Trump’s presidency has been full of dark absurdities mixed with horrifying cruelty and death—so it doesn’t come as much of a shock that he is lying about something incredibly dumb because he’s upset that someone else is in the limelight, in the midst of a pandemic he has horrifically bungled as well as a growing protest movement that he has responded to with the only type of action he understands, brute force. Trump’s every action revolves around his vanity and his ego and his masculinity, and his pathological need to puff himself up with lies and deception. Remember that time in 1996 that he crashed a benefit for a nursery school for children with HIV/AIDS, stayed for a photo op, and then never cut the school a check? More recently, he repeated a lie that he had been booed at a fundraising gala in 2015, an event that he didn’t even attend, but it’s a story that lets him paint himself as a victim, so he tells it.

I would laugh if I weren’t so tired and demoralized. Trump’s a joke, but the joke is, as always, on us.