What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to jump in front of the spotlight around Ted Turner's death.

Media mogul Ted Turner died today at age 87. Turner was the founder of several early cable networks, most notably CNN and TBS. He was a connoisseur of movie history, first leading the charge to colorize black and white movies, and then—as an act of contrition to the film purists he'd outraged—creating the cable channel TCM, known for its ad-free presentation of culturally and historically significant movies. His success as a cable pioneer and as a businessman in general made him a billionaire, and he adopted a flamboyant lifestyle to match. He bought two sports teams to provide fodder for his growing cable empire: the Atlanta Hawks and the Atlanta Braves. He even appointed himself manager of the Braves for one game in 1977 (a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates), a stunt that played to his flair for the dramatic but which is remembered surprisingly fondly by baseball's old guard.

 

Turner and Trump, who turns 80 next month, were superficially similar in many ways. Both were married three times and had five children, although Turner had a much warmer relationship with his wives and children. Both have courted controversy with crass remarks: Turner for making hoary jokes about Polish people, and Trump for saying that Americans who don't support him are traitors and that entire races of people are vermin with subhuman intelligence. Both owned sports teams: Turner with the occasionally good Hawks and the dynastic Braves, and Trump with the New Jersey Generals of the short-lived USFL. Trump and Turner were both billionaires, with Turner's fortune coming from a local billboard business he started and parlayed into a multimedia empire, and Trump's coming from $400 million in tax-evaded inheritance that he used to repeatedly bankrupt businesses until he began to successfully monetize the presidency during his second term through crypto scams and pay-for-access bribes. 

That may be why Trump took the unusual step of remembering Turner fondly today in a post to his boutique social media website. Normally, Trump uses the occasion of a person's death to insult them and avenge whatever grudges he may have had against them, a tactic he's deployed against everyone from celebrity filmmakers to icons of the civil rights movement to American troops killed in combat. But he called Turner "one of the Greats of Broadcast History" and claimed that he was "a friend of mine," adding, "Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause!"

That makes it sound like Turner liked Trump or his politics. In reality, Turner explicitly endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, and addressed that endorsement to Trump in the first line: "From one billionaire to another, Donald, I prefer Hillary." 

On almost every political issue imaginable, Turner opposed Trump. He was an avid environmentalist and conservationist who railed against environmentally devastating coal mines, while Trump believes conspiracy theories about wind turbines causing cancer. Turner was staunchly in favor of women's rights to abortion, while Trump—at least since he started trying to get elected—has engineered the destruction of that right. 

Turner also prided himself on his philanthropy, establishing the Turner Foundation, which has given more than $400 million in grants for environmental protection projects. Trump's charity was dissolved after a trial found it to be fraudulent, used by Trump to make illegal political contributions and pay for personal expenses like oil paintings of himself and sports memorabilia. 

Why does this matter?

• Jumping in front of the spotlight when someone famous and well-liked dies is narcissistic and needy even by Trump standards. 

• If Ted Turner had liked and supported Donald Trump, Donald Trump wouldn't be the only person saying he did.