To many of Trump's supporters, football is their religion and the NFL is their church. And so I would think his assault on a sport "struggling to make the game safer in light of scores of players who have been found to have severe brain damage" — oh, the irony — might have been his first, racist miscalculation. Defending white supremacists and neo-Nazis is one thing; criticizing the liturgy of football, so many of whose honored deacons are black, is quite another.
But of course my conjecture is probably misplaced. The sports site Deadspin wrote that Trump's attack on the NFL's new safety rules "demonstrated an already-evident dearth of intellect," which is also the chief characteristic of most Trump supporters. Their tolerance of presidential ignorance and its assorted corollaries appears to be infinite — so here, too, they are more likely cheering than grimacing. "[M]any fans on social media were supportive of the president" in his oddly calculated ignorance, reports the NY Times. Still, the question is out there: What percentage is "many"?
Deadspin added this to the irony of a severely brain-damaged president denouncing at least some protections against severe brain damage among the NFL's players: "[Quarterback Colin] Kaepernick is off the field due mainly if not entirely to his silent protests against police brutality" — protests which Trump, in his own infinite ignorance, has chosen to describe as disrespect for flag and country. But, as Kaepernick's mother remarked, "[It's] what most of us have come to expect from him."
What Trump's indignation against decency was really about, though, was something even more expected by now than his decades-old racism. It followed yet another presidential failure — that of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Trump's first year in office is indeed historic, as he often brags, but for a reason he must increasingly try to conceal. He has managed to transmogrify a monumental election upset into the most immense, in-office flop in American presidential history. The self-professed artful dealmaker has accomplished precisely nothing. Thus on the heels of each presidential failure he lets loose some colossally idiotic comment that is bound to swamp the headlines and airwaves.
Can he successfully sustain these transparent distractions until he's impeached, indicted, or resigns from the threat of either? Sustain them he can, no doubt, but I do harbor doubt about their successful deployments having any real effect on their staving off his ultimate destruction. Because Robert Mueller isn't distracted.