Jonathan Chait: “Why has Trump chosen to inflict this wound upon himself? A Trump ally suggests to Politico that the president, like many young children, is expressing what some might call oppositional defiant disorder: ‘POTUS doesn’t like to be told what to do or give Dems a win, so he’s been fighting it.’ This theory might make more sense if releasing the Epstein files hadn’t been Trump’s own idea before he abruptly reversed course earlier this year.”
“Trump’s own responses to this very question are even less reassuring.”
“Asked on Air Force One last Friday why he won’t just release the files, Trump snapped at a female reporter, ‘Quiet, piggy.’ As a longtime married man, I have seen enough rom-coms to recognize the trope where Mr. Wrong, after having maintained a thin veneer of suitability for 90 percent of the movie while misbehaving just enough to make the audience root against him, suddenly rips off the mask and delivers a crass or entitled speech that makes the heroine snap out of her infatuation. A set piece in which the bad guy, under suspicion of misogynistic conduct and consorting with a trafficker of teenage girls, launches a sexist attack on an inquisitive female journalist would be too ham-handed even for the writers at the Hallmark Channel.”
