Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan is acting like a very badly disguised editorial writer again. On the front of Friday's Style section, she attacked Trump's fashions in Texas under the headline "Fashion crisis at the border." The headline after the article jumped inside to page C2 was "Trump's choice of attire was a disaster."
Liberals love pretending that Obama's only scandal was he once wore a tan suit. But criticizing how this president dresses is easy, low-hanging fruit. It's a yawn. So Givhan has to dress up the fashion chatter with screeds about Trump's fact-mangling and fear-mongering.
Just a week ago, Givhan was aglow at the fashions of the new liberal/socialist Democrat women in Congress. The partisan contrast is like almost everything else in the Washington Post: blatant and shameless.
A look at the actual outfit shows a pretty generic presidential jacket and white shirt with a white hat (with MAGA on it). How that's "disastrous" is a mystery. But away she goes:
But when Trump looked into his closet for Thursday’s uniform, he didn’t choose the suit and tie that speaks of white-collar management or the sport jacket that remains a favorite of the business casual set. Trump selected the uniform that announces: Unplanned mayhem, danger and destruction ahead! [Italics in the original.]
In Trump’s battle over the border, facts have disappeared, been misstated or been so mangled that they’ve been rendered unrecognizable. His concrete border wall has been rebranded as steel slats, see-through barricades, a fancy fence or simply border security. Mexico will pay for it; Mexico is already paying for it. The families seeking asylum have been transformed into violent hordes toting drugs and scaling the barriers that already exist. The story of the border has become a made-up drama with real-life consequences. And Trump was costumed as the hero in the narrative that he has studiously crafted.
What this little screed had to do with the president's choice of MAGA hats is anyone's guess. But she wasn't done, describing how every presidential visit is symbolic:
They’re an opportunity for the public to see the president get hands-on with a town’s recovery. They give the president a few moments to reassure those in dire straits that their government, at its highest level, sees and hears them. And the importance of each word of his and each handshake is freighted with meaning. Tossing paper towels into a crowd of displaced U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico, which the president did in October 2017, reads like an inhumane nose-thumbing at their plight. Arriving at the U.S. border with Mexico dressed like he’s headed to the periphery of a raging firestorm is in itself a form of heated rhetoric.
The president chose not to wear a suit jacket, which would have suggested that this is not a situation that requires a declaration of national emergency — that no great waves of terrorists and pestilence are crashing over the border. Instead, it would have been a nod toward the faintest possibility of civil discourse. A suit would have suggested that perhaps now, he was getting down to business.
Instead, his attire blared that he had come to inspect the damage. And certainly there is damage. Widespread wreckage. But there’s nothing natural about it.
She reprised her conclusion on Twitter:
