Earlier today, Donald Trump sent a typical Trump tweet that went off the rails. What makes it noteworthy? This one got a lot weirder than usual. Let's unpack all 280 characters.
Trump slammed Vanity Fair for apologising about publishing a video about Hillary Clinton that many people deemed sexist. "Vanity Fair, which looks like it is on its last legs, is bending over backwards in apologizing for the minor hit they took at Crooked H," he wrote.
Yesterday, the magazine said it regrets the "Six New Year’s Resolutions for Hillary Clinton" video (it's still live, though), in which a staffer suggested new hobbies for the former presidential candidate, including "volunteer work, knitting, improv comedy — literally anything that will keep you from running again." In a statement, a rep from the publication said, "It was an attempt at humor and we regret that it missed the mark." The video prompted an outcry on Twitter, with many saying they're canceling their subscriptions and posting the hashtag #CancelVanityFair.
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Vanity Fair, which looks like it is on its last legs, is bending over backwards in apologizing for the minor hit they took at Crooked H. Anna Wintour, who was all set to be Amb to Court of St James’s & a big fundraiser for CH, is beside herself in grief & begging for forgiveness!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2017
It makes sense that Trump would criticise the magazine for walking back its controversial video — an understandable PR move given the thousands of complaints. He's not much of an apologiser himself, and he's not particularly known for questioning or analysing his own motives.
One of the only on-the-record apologies we can find from Trump, which came after he made comments about sexual assault on Access Hollywood (which he recently claimed were inauthentic), has a defensive tone to it. "I’ve never said I'm a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not," he said in a video statement back in October 2016. "I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me, know these words don’t reflect who I am." He then brought up abuse allegations against Bill Clinton.
But wait, his tweet gets even weirder: Somehow, he brings Anna Wintour into it. "Anna Wintour, who was all set to be Amb to Court of St James’s & a big fundraiser for CH, is beside herself in grief & begging for forgiveness!" he fired off from his golf course in Palm Beach.
Wintour has been the editor-in-chief of Vogue (not Vanity Fair) since 1988, and took over as artistic director of Condé Nast, which publishes both magazines, in 2013. Vanity Fair's new editor-in-chief is Radhika Jones.
Bringing up the ambassadorship seems to be quite the leap in logic. Back in 2012, there were rumblings of Wintour potentially becoming President Obama's ambassador to the UK, and some "Washington insiders" later said that Hillary Clinton would have appointed Wintour to the post had she won the 2016 presidential election — but nothing ever came of it. This unverified information appears to be what Trump is referring to in the tweet. (The position is formally known in the UK as Ambassador of the United States to the Court of St James'.)
As for whether Wintour is "beside herself in grief and begging for forgiveness," you can draw your own conclusions, but we do know this: She's not on Twitter, perhaps to avoid moments with trolls exactly like this one.