As a rule, it’s tough for a president to screw up an Easter message, but early Sunday morning, Donald Trump apparently thought it’d be a good idea to publish a 185-word tirade airing a variety of grievances — it’s possible he confused Easter with Festivus — while condemning a series of perceived foes.

Indifferent to the point of the holiday, the Republican president whined about “Radical Left Lunatics,” “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges,” and his 2020 election defeat, before turning his attention to his principal target.

In his bizarre and error-filled missive published to his social media platform — which, again, was ostensibly about one of the most important Christian holidays on the calendar — Trump went on to refer to his Democratic predecessor as a “highly destructive Moron.”

One of the more common criticisms of Trump’s personality is his apparent narcissism. The president is the hero of all of his stories. Every event he describes focuses on developments as they relate to him. He is his own center of gravity — and if you doubt that, he’ll gladly tell you the stories about the big guys who called him “sir” and who cried as they told him it’s true.

But it’s not altogether true to say that Trump sees literally everything through a self-centric lens. There are plenty of other things he also sees through a Biden-centric lens.

The idea of “Biden Derangement Syndrome” never really caught on as a phenomenon during Biden’s term, but to the extent that the ailment exists, there’s reason to believe his successor has contracted a virulent strain, which has gone completely untreated.

Consider last week, for example.

Asked about Russia’s war in Ukraine, Trump responded by talking about Biden. Asked about trade tariffs, Trump responded by talking about Biden. During a late-night exchange aboard Air Force One, a reporter noted the late hour and Trump responded by talking about how Biden would be asleep. Soon after, while talking about his recent cognitive exam, he claimed that the first question he asked his physician was whether Biden took the same test.

At one point last week, Trump declared: “Jimmy Carter died a happy man. You know why? Because he wasn’t the worst president. Joe Biden was.” He wasn’t asked about Carter or Biden, but it was a thought the Republican wanted to share with the press anyway.

Last week was hardly unusual. A week earlier, the Republican spoke to congressional Republicans and asked whether they preferred “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe” as rhetorical lines of attack, as if this were an important consideration. The week before that, during remarks about trade tariffs, Trump made repeated references to Biden.

When the Signal chat scandal broke, Trump talked about Biden. When NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally returned to Earth, Trump talked about Biden. When lawmakers prepared to approve a budget resolution, Trump talked about Biden. When American hostages returned to the United States, Trump talked about Biden. When he delivered a national address to a joint session of Congress, Trump referenced Biden 16 times.

An analysis conducted by The New York Times found that during the first 50 days of Trump’s second term, he mentioned the name “Biden” an average of 6.32 times per day. The Times’ report added, “It is among his most frequently used terms (he said ‘Biden’ in more speeches than he had said ‘America,’ for example).”

The Washington Post had a similar report a couple of weeks after Inauguration Day, noting, “He brought him up just after he was inaugurated. He ridiculed him while touring disaster sites in North Carolina, laughed about him in Las Vegas and pilloried him while delivering a virtual address to business leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Joe Biden’s presidency ended two weeks ago. His photos no longer hang on the walls. His artwork choices in the Oval Office are gone. But inside the head of President Donald Trump, he is still very much top of mind.”

Even during the 2024 election season, after Biden announced the end of his re-election campaign, Trump couldn’t bring himself to stop talking about himdespite the fact that the Democrat was no longer running.

As for why in the world the incumbent continues to obsess over the retired Democrat, it might have something to do with the fact Biden was unpopular, and Trump might very well think he’ll look better in the eyes of the public when compared with his immediate predecessor.

But I tend to think the explanation is more straightforward than that. Notwithstanding his forgotten Reform Party bid a quarter-century ago, Trump has run three national campaigns, and he won two of them. The third he lost, by a healthy margin, to Biden.

And by all appearances, he’s still not over it.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

It started with a weird letter. On April 11, Harvard University officials received a series of outlandish written demands from the Trump administrationincluding a “request” to install outside auditors who would monitor the school’s academic departments.

The university realized that failure to comply with the ridiculous demands would result in governmental punishment. But left with little choice, Harvard balked anyway.

The retaliation was swift: Immediately after Harvard said it would not comply with the apparent extortion attempt, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard. (There are federal requirements in place when imposing financial penalties like these, and the Republican White House appears to have ignored those requirements.) The Department of Homeland Security secretary also canceled nearly $3 million in agency grants to Harvard, and at Trump’s behest the IRS reportedly began scrutinizing the university’s tax-exempt status.

But what if the match that lit this fuse was dropped in error? The New York Times, citing multiple sources, reported that the original letter to Harvard “should not have been sent” and was “unauthorized.”

If the administration’s letter “should not have been sent,” was the White House prepared to retract it? Actually, no: Not only did a senior White House official tell the Times that the administration was standing by the letter, the same official went on the record to say it was “malpractice” for Harvard’s lawyers not to call administration officials about the contents of the ridiculous letter.

Or put another way, the White House effectively argued, “This mess is Harvard’s fault for not realizing that we shouldn’t have sent our absurd correspondence.”

Harvard representatives issued an official response of their own, noting that the original letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised.” The university added, “Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government — even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach — do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

What’s more, even if the April 11 letter was sent in error, that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from scrapping grants to Harvard — in legally dubious ways — amid reports that the White House might yet pull additional federal funds from the school.

I won’t pretend to know what might happen next in this multifaceted fiasco, but the apparent fact that the Trump administration accidentally sent its threatening demands to Harvard — a point the White House is not contesting — is emblematic of Team Trump’s broader incompetence crisis.

Indeed, it’s hard to even know where to start compiling a list. The Signal chat scandal was obvious evidence of the administration’s incompetence, but so was Team Trump’s decision to fire important government employees it scrambled to try to rehire.

Alas, we can keep going. When Donald Trump and his team disclosed Social Security numbers while releasing documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination, it was a reminder that this White House has a competence problem. When the president and his team sent non-criminals to a prison in El Salvador while falsely claiming that they were gang members, it was a reminder that this White House has a competence problem.

When Team Trump’s DOGE operation repeatedly stepped on its own tailincluding an instance in which it confused $8 billion and $8 million, it was a reminder that this administration has a competence problem. When the White House royally screwed up its Office of Management and Budget spending “freeze” memoit was a reminder that it has a competence problem.

The common thread tying together too many of the developments surrounding Trump’s White House: These guys just don’t seem to have any idea what they’re doing.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

On Thursday, a student at Florida State University shot and killed two people, while injuring six others, according to police. Soon after, a reporter asked Donald Trump for his reaction to the latest deadly school shooting, specifically inquiring as to whether the president would consider new legislation to prevent gun violence.

The Republican characterized the developments at FSU as a “shame,” but added“These things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting — the people do.”

I suppose there’s a degree of truth to that — guns don’t pull their own triggers — but it’s also true that killers don’t throw their bullets at their victims. Rather, they use weapons, and those weapons can be regulated by the state.

The president, however, apparently doesn’t want to take any such steps. On the contrary, as The New York Times reportedhe and his administration seem eager to move in the opposite direction, with plans to “roll back an array of gun control measures.”

When thinking about the differences between the president’s first term and his second, this issue is high on the list. As I noted in my first book (see chapter 8), it was in February 2018, in the wake of a mass school shooting, when Trump held a televised, hourlong discussion with a group of lawmakers from both parties about gun violence. As part of the conversation, then-Vice President Mike Pence raised the prospect of empowering law enforcement to take weapons away from those who’ve been reported to be potentially dangerous, though he added that he expected to see “due process so no one’s rights are trampled.”

“Take the firearms first and then go to court,” Trump interjected. At the same event, the then-president endorsed a law enforcement model in which police officers confiscated some Americans’ guns “whether they had the right or not.”

When Republicans derailed those negotiations and nothing passed, there was another mass shooting a year later, at which point Trump again wanted a gun billincluding restrictions on assault rifles — which, according to multiple accounts, was one of his long-sought goals.

In other words, as recently as his first term, the president sought ambitious gun reforms — up to and including extrajudicial gun confiscations.

Last week, after the FSU murders, the Republican added, “I have an obligation to protect the Second Amendment.” But in the recent past, Trump had those same responsibilities, and it didn’t stop him from endorsing measures that might’ve saved lives. Now, evidently, he no longer wants to bother with the effort.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”