Newsletter: Surprise: Trump is the same narcissist we elected

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, the Los Angeles Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, July 1. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti begins his second term (an extra-long one of five and a half years) today. Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.

Abandon hope, all Trump voters who convinced themselves that holding a job as monumental and humbling as the American presidency would tame the brash businessman’s worst instincts. Donald Trump may be in his sixth month as commander in chief, but he still tweets as if the petty battles of reality TV, which might be good for ratings, are worth fighting as president.

On The Times’ Opinion L.A. blog, Doyle McManus breaks down President Trump’s latest vulgar tweetstorm, directed at “Morning Joe” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, and all the ways it ought to trouble those who hoped a 71-year-old man will mature into his role as the world’s most powerful person:

Note the gratuitous cruelty, which Brzezinski presumably earned by daring to criticize Trump’s policies. Note the scarcely veiled misogyny; Brzezinski is no dummy, but to Trump, she’s just another low-IQ blonde.

Note, above all, the self-absorption. Doesn’t the president of the United States have more important things to think about than the chatter on a morning show?

Apparently not.

This is, alas, the same Trump who mocked Republican campaign rivals with childish insults, who raged over crowd estimates on Inauguration Day and who made his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s television ratings.

When this president rises every morning, he doesn’t think first about making America great again or helping the struggling voters who put him into office. He thinks mostly about himself.

And then he tweets, his self-obsession untempered by self-restraint.

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“Folks, it’s official. Donald Trump is the most insecure man in America.” Cassady Rosenblum notes that Trump’s insults of Brzezinski sound familiar to many women who have crossed powerful men: I didn’t want her, she wanted me. She’s dumb (self-projection, anyone?). And, ew, blood. Trump likes to portray himself as a tough, ruthless counterpuncher, but his feud with “Morning Joe” reveals more about his crippling self-doubt. L.A. Times

Your desire to drive fast endangers cyclists and pedestrians. Manhattan Beach resident Peter Flax, who commutes by bike, has listened to his fellow South Bay denizens gripe about their slightly slower drives along the newly “road dieted” Vista del Mar west of Los Angeles International Airport long enough. The city of Los Angeles’ decision to remove lanes of vehicle traffic along the routes preferred by local commuters is about making our streets less dangerous for humans, he says, not sticking it to drivers. L.A. Times

We were warned: Gorsuch is turning out to be the new Scalia. Usually, new justices show restraint in their opinions while getting used to the awesome power of their job, writes UC Irvine law professor Richard L. Hasen. But not now: “The early signs from Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the Court in April, show that he will hew to the late Justice Scalia’s brand of jurisprudence, both in his conservatism and his boldness.” L.A. Times

Elon Musk is digging a small tunnel on property he owns, and it’s being hailed as a transportation breakthrough. Never mind a century’s worth of utility lines and existing subterranean infrastructure that would have to be thoroughly reworked to accommodate a buried freeway system or the fact that building a single five-mile tunnel to finish a local interstate met fierce opposition. If Elon Musk throws it out there, people (and by people, I mean some journalists) marvel. Vanity Fair

Stop saying the Trumpcare tax cuts will be funded by Medicaid “blood money.” Columnist Jonah Goldberg think’s we’re at a “particularly dumb political moment” because Democrats are casting Republicans as borderline homicidal for trying to roll back President Obama’s Medicaid expansion. “Taken literally, such rhetoric means that entitlement reform is impossible, because any attempt to get our fiscal house in order would require some people, somewhere, to lose some benefits,” Goldberg writes. L.A. Times

Reach me at paul.thornton@latimes.com.