Trump Locates the Most Important Person in This Whole Roseanne Scandal: Himself

Ever since Roseanne Barr said an insanely racist thing about Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, we have all been waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of President Donald Trump entering the already-grim conversation and making the entire situation about him and maybe the size of the audience at his inauguration or something.

Well, that moment finally came today, and it is more vainglorious than I could have ever imagined.

As Barr doubles down on her Jarrett comments by retweeting other people’s defense of her indefensible racism, the president of the United States is comparing being held accountable for his words and actions by journalists to being subjected to racial slurs by an enormously racist celebrity.

Notice that Trump does not criticize or distance himself at all from Barr’s comments—presumably because he sees nothing to criticize. He also appears to have extended the same reductive “both sides” logic to ABC that he appallingly applied after the Charlottesville riot. Only our white supremacist president could make an already exhausting situation even worse.

Update, 3:18 p.m.: At the White House press briefing on Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued Trump’s theme by reading a prepared statement containing specific ABC personalities whom the White House thinks need to apologize to Trump:

Sanders also said that “no one’s defending” Barr’s comments, but made clear that the real issue for the White House was elsewhere.