Hours after his campaign manager Corey Landowski was arrested for allegedly assaulting former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields in March, Trump has finally hit on a counternarrative: Fields was asking for it and also truth is just a construct, man.
First of all, it’s pretty obvious that’s an iPhone in one hand. If Trump is talking about what’s in her other hand, it’s a pen. But that’s mostly beside the point, because this is such a characteristic moment in a campaign that says whatever it wants to justify its positions. Trump’s argument is that Fields somehow deserved getting grabbed because she might have touched him—perhaps with something scary in her hand!—as if grabbing was a proportional or appropriate response.
In other tweets, Trump has argued that, because Fields’s initial report doesn’t perfectly sync up with the video recording, she shouldn’t be trusted—a point that conveniently ignores that Trump spent weeks denying that Lewandowski grabbed Fields until the video surfaced. Trump is the one changing his story, not Fields. (Also, what is going on with this font?)