By Jean Godden

You have to give President Donald Trump a smidgeon of credit. He does know how to fixate on phony outrage hoping the public will overlook another of his failings.

The latest example of the president's attempt at changing the subject was the flap over Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to her neighborhood hair salon. You've all probably heard the story which pre-occupied the president, Fox News and even a few easily distracted commentators like (would you believe it?) Newt Gingrich. 

The facts about the salon episode, as explained by the San Francisco Chronicle, Pelosi's hometown paper, are that the Speaker made an Aug. 31 appointment for hair styling. Pelosi says she was first reassured by her stylist, Joseph DeNardo, that having her hair done inside the shop would be OK since she would be the lone customer and would be masked except briefly during a shampoo.  

But, most unfortunately, it was not OK. Rules in San Francisco County vary from those in 

adjacent counties. The city's rules are stricter.

The owner of the shop, Erica Kious, videotaped Pelosi and turned the tape over to the 

White House where it was shown on a continuous loop by Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. 

Afterwards, Owner Kious appeared on Fox news to air a grudge against Pelosi whom she mistakenly blamed for the county's tough closure rules.

In the aftermath, Speaker Pelosi shouldered responsibility for her lapse, but she protested that she had fallen for a set up. How else explain video tapes of her hair appointment being promptly delivered to the White House? 

Meanwhile Trump did Twitter backflips over salongate. He tweeted that the press was "deciminating" Nancy over her hair appointment after she has lectured others on wearing masks. He referred to her as "Crazy Nancy," using one of the insulting nicknames he reserves for women. Accusing the Speaker of hypocrisy is a textbook example of projection (attributing one's own bad behavior to someone else). 

As an account in Vanity Fair noted, it was a ludicrously false equivalence to equate a slip-up in salon rules to the president's mismanagement of the pandemic and his failure to require masks at rallies that have led to unnecessary U. S.  deaths.

It just happens that the salon episode turned up at the precise moment when Trump was digging himself out of one of his most recent transgressions. He needed a distraction. He was being censured after he urged his North Carolina audience to vote twice: once by mail and then again at the polls. To vote twice in that state -- as in many others --- would be illegal, a felony offense. 

The attempt to switch the topic by tweeting about Speaker Pelosi's salon misstep apparently was better for Trump than admitting he had been wrong to call for voters to commit a felony by voting twice. 

But we live in volatile times, fueled by a divisive administration and the approaching election. Comes now the horrific news from the Atlantic that, according to reports, the president has disrespected the nation's military and maligned our fallen troops.

President Trump allegedly has called those who fight and die for our nation "suckers" and "losers." This is stunning news --- disgusting news -- and only becomes more credible each passing day. At any rate, this revelation should put an end to Trump twittering over the Speaker's falling for a hair salon set-up and appearing for a single brief time without a mask. The Nancy Pelosi salon visit wasn't much of a scandal and no amount of twittered insults and put-downs could make it so.