Donald Trump: as phony as a three-dollar bill

You can't make this stuff up.

POTUS has tweeted a manipulated piece of footage from CNN of African American and white toddler playing happily together. with the phony caption, "Terrified Todler (sic) Runs From Racist Baby."

The tweet, ironically, was a complaint about "fake news," a commodity Mr. Trump manufactures in quantities unmatched in the history of the presidency but a term he applies to anything, however well-documented, that puts him in a bad light, seeks to hold him accountable for anything, or merely disagrees with some wild and ill-informed theory he's come up with

I don't know whether some alt-right slimeball altered the clip and convinced a gullible and eager Mr. Trump that it was real or whether Mr. Trump himself was in on the deception. I prefer to think the former, and on balance, I think it more likely; I doubt that Mr. Trump would be that creative, and after all, one of his defining characteristics is that he believes what he wants to believe, however unlikely it may be. It's a characteristic he shares with most of his supporters.

But whoever came up with this particular form of rather ironic dishonesty seems not to be very bright. The piece of altered footage- together with a CNN logo displaying the caption in a font other than the one CNN actually uses- is so transparently ridiculous that most people would assume that it's satire. A toddler fleeing a "racist baby?" Really? I can only assume that whoever came up with this embarrassing bit of dishonesty assumed that those who saw it would realize how silly the concept is, but that it somehow didn't register that was too ridiculous for CNN to have run even if it had been the news network rather than TrumpWorld that was trying to put one over on us.

I won't even get into Mr, Trump's irresponsibility of using this particular moment to post this lie.

Twitter, to its credit, labeled the footage "manipulated" and CNN tweeted the truth about the clip, chiding the president and telling him that he can do better than this.

And now, breaking news: Mr. Trump has become a satirist again.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany defending President Trump tweeting this fake video says Trump was making a "satirical" point about CNN. She won't answer why he used two toddlers to make that point and instead is lashing out at CNN and reporter Jim Acosta.