Another Good Story for the Enough-About-Politics-and-Trump’s-Clear-Mental-Derangement-Let’s-Stick-to-Sports Readers Out There

Katie Rogers and Noah Weiland, reporting for The New York Times:

An hour before Dr. Anthony S. Fauci threw the first pitch at the season opener between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals, President Trump stood on the briefing room stage at the White House and declared that he, too, had been invited to throw out his own opening pitch.

“Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees,” Mr. Trump, referring to the president of the baseball team, told reporters on Thursday as Dr. Fauci was preparing to take the mound. “And he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I’m doing that on Aug. 15 at Yankee Stadium.”

There was one problem: Mr. Trump had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees, according to one person with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s schedule. His announcement surprised both Yankees officials and the White House staff.

But Mr. Trump had been so annoyed by Dr. Fauci’s turn in the limelight, an official familiar with his reaction said, that he had directed his aides to call Yankees officials and make good on a longtime standing offer from Mr. Levine to throw out an opening pitch. No date was ever finalized.

As a sidenote to a story that clearly shows Trump’s raging narcissism, compulsion to bullshit, and inability to read the room, the photo that accompanies the story is really quite a thing. The man, for one brief moment in this 4-years-and-counting hellish inferno, looks genuinely happy.

★ Tuesday, 28 July 2020