Not that you asked

President Trump had a chance to have a week long victory parade, and he blew it. If he had just released the statement he gave on Monday, instead of sandwiching it between statements apologizing for the racists and Nazis, Charlottesville would not have been the center of the universe last week. Instead, we would have been talking about how Trump's tough talk had made Kim Jong Un back down.

You may have missed that bit of news, but it did happen. Here's the Cliff's Notes version. Kim says he had missiles that can hit the U.S. and threatens to fire one at Guam. Trump fires back that if he does he will be met with "fire and fury." Kim backs off of the threat to Guam.

Trump should have spent last week going from rally to rally bragging about how he made North Korea back down. Regardless of what you think of the President, that was a good thing that all of us could have celebrated. Instead, we talked about Trump's reluctance to brand the KKK and Nazis as evil.

Why?

I don't like Trump, but I don't think he is stupid, and I don't think he's a racist. I don't think that Trump judges people based on race, gender, color, or religion. I don't think he sees anyone as his equal and only really cares about people named Trump. When it comes to his wives, he's forced two of them to give the name back.

So why did he screw things up so badly last week? Why did he find it so hard to denounce the haters? Even if he agreed with them, he had to know that it wasn't smart to go easy on them. He surely wouldn't have had any trouble lying to us about what he really felt.

The only thing I can figure is, his ego got the best of him. That monstrous green giant in him that has a never-ending appetite for praise and cannot abide any slight. It controls him just as alcohol or drugs control an addict.

He just cannot stand it when people say he's wrong. He either never thinks he is wrong, or he just can't admit when he is. And people were saying that he was wrong about the protesters in Charlottesville, so he had to come out and tell them so. Boy, did he. In something not seen since Richard Nixon lost a race in 1962, Trump had a meltdown on live TV. He said things that would've warmed the hearts of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace. Even some of the folks at Fox News were uncomfortable with what he did, except for Sean Hannity, of course.

We should have been celebrating last week. Korea backed down. Trump's tough stance had worked. He should have been strutting around stages claiming to be a combination of John Wayne and Rambo. Instead, here we are debating the Civil War, while even some Republicans are beginning to wonder if Trump is up to the job (except for Sean Hannity). All because Trump can't control his inner spoiled brat.