Thread by @AlexandraErin

So, talk about Narcissus and Echo... Donald is caught in a feedback loop because the press feels bound to report everything he says.

Normally this works in his favor, but on his Alabama gaffe -- every time they report what he says, he gets mad all over again.

I know some people are asking "Why is this a story?" and "Why are we still talking about it?"

I honestly think he's burning a surprising amount of political capital spinning his wheels on this.

You know the saying "the cover-up is worse than the crime?" Any crime here is marginal - altering a forecast, sure, but at the point he altered it, it wasn't even a forecast anymore. No one's going to prosecute that one, ever. Even from a rule of law standpoint.

But we -- his enemies, his allies, his supporters, his enablers -- are watching him mount a cover-up for a mistaken tweet that could have been fixed in five seconds. And watching him spend his time and energy howling at the moon over it. And dragging in government officials.

More and more, I have this feeling, this prickly feeling on the back of my neck, and it's hard to quantify or explain, but it feels like things are starting to matter more. Like things are starting to get some transaction, like the teflon is coming off.

Stories coming out about military flights being diverted to lodge in his resorts coming on the heels of Pence's glaringly obvious tribute-paying in Ireland. It's not exactly *new* news that he's raiding FEMA and military families to pay for his spiked fence, but.

I have been the one saying from day 1 that this is not going to be over quickly, that the progress towards totalitarianism will happen as fast as we let it but any solution is going to come slowly.

So I don't think it's almost over, not by any stretch. I still think midterms were about halfway out of the dark. And if we get complacent, we'll just sit in the tunnel until the train hits us.

I think you are exactly right on the money here. Many times he or his closest mouthpieces have done the "okay but you said [thing] and I mentioned [thing] so this means I was right." explanation to talk around his mistakes.

https://twitter.com/everyfan3417/status/1170549846387957762

So he's sure he's right and more than that he's sure he can't be wrong, it would be like going bald or needing glasses, the beginning of the end if the world could see him like that.

So he won't shut up about it - can't shut up about it. And the press is just as locked in as him

So he'll talk, the press will report in a pretty neutral and bland way that he's still lying about the weather seven, soon to be eight days in, and he'll get so mad he'll repeat if not escalate, and they'll report that...

Now, the presence of Alabama in his now famous tweet has overshadowed something else I find even more interesting about it, which is that he said it would hit those states "probably harder than expected."

He was not, in that moment, alluding to some new updates he had been given from the weather service. He was saying that the forecast was probably wrong, because, as is always the case when he has his say, "the real number, probably, is much higher."

I have pointed out this tic of his before: he'll refer to some number or report supposedly from one of his government agencies, but often made up or inflated to begin with, and immediately after presenting it, he'll say it's wrong, the real number is bigger.

With that in mind, I think it's possible that he just listed all the different states he could remember having been mentioned at all as possibilities. Because whatever the official forecast is, he has to hype it up.

So today he posted some petulant tweets about how the media "has to have the last word" (again, they will report whatever he tweets or says, he trained them to do that themselves), which would guarantee at least another day where he has to hear about it... but then... then...

...then he tweeted a video someone made of a cat chasing a laser pointer in front of the altered hurricane map while Yakkety Sax plays.

And tomorrow is Sunday, which means Sunday morning news shows.

So the media is going to talk about this, and he'll get mad about it, and say something ridiculous... and they'll talk about that.

If this were to go on long enough, I think we'd be in full-on Madness of King George territory. I don't think he can break the cycle and I think it unlikely the press will, if only because "the press" isn't a unified entity and someone will have something to say each time.

But I don't think it *will* go on forever, because something will happen that distracts him long enough for the echoes to die away.

Still, it's kind of breathtaking and terrifying to realize he would sit there shouting at the sound of his own voice echoing back at him, like a man locked in a staring contest with his own reflection, if nothing happened to interrupt him.