We have to give President Donald Trump credit: He’s a master of distraction. Whenever his administration finds itself in crisis, especially one of Trump’s own making, he invariably creates some kind of diversion to draw the nation’s attention to a different subject.

Trump’s announcement of plans to invoke a trade war over steel imports is a perfect example. The off-the-cuff announcement March 1 came as a surprise, catching White House staffers off guard. The president’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, was so blindsided he resigned. Since the announcement, trade, tariffs, steel and stock market reactions have dominated the national news.

Notably gone from the front pages was the one subject that had been consuming national attention for the previous two weeks: guns. The momentum for gun control had been fierce after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., fueled in no small part by Trump’s own surprising statements favoring a ban on bump stocks and the seizure of firearms without due process from gun owners deemed mentally unstable.

Trump’s statements placed him directly at odds with a key financial and political backer, the National Rifle Association. Try as the White House did to extricate the president, the pressure only continued to build for gun control. Today, nobody in Washington is talking about it.

That’s how quickly Trump can distract from disaster. And this was hardly the first time.

In early October, the administration was struggling to address two major crises. The U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico was crippled by massive damage from Hurricane Maria. Federal aid shipments faltered, and more than 70 percent of the island remained without power several weeks after the hurricane hit. Try as Trump did to explain it away, his administration’s mismanagement could not be denied.

On the night of Oct. 1, gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on concert-goers in Las Vegas, killing 58 and causing injuries to 851 more. The national fury over civilian access to bump stocks and military-style assault rifles reached fever pitch. Trump appeared to struggle for answers, getting no help from the NRA.

In a stroke of genius, Trump tweeted out a series of critical remarks about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, and suddenly, the national conversation turned to race relations. Guns and Puerto Rico became an afterthought.

He’s used other tactics, such as threatening to attack North Korea, to distract from other crises such as a spate of White House resignations or embarrassing developments regarding the probe of his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.

Like a political magician, Trump deliberately provokes chaos over here to distract the nation from that other, worse chaos over there. Americans should never confuse this as leadership. It barely even counts as damage control. This is no way to run the most powerful office in the land.

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Louis Farrakhan, hate-spewing leader of the Nation of Islam, gave a speech in Chicago recently in which he attacked “powerful Jews” and portrayed himself as an enemy of white people.

“White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew,” he told a large audience gathered at Wintrust Arena for the Nation’s Saviours’ Day event on Feb. 25. Farrakhan included other anti-Semitic remarks in his speech, the same type of bilge he’s preached for years. A 2015 report by the Anti-Defamation League chronicled Farrakhan’s long history of repellent views.

Farrakhan is the ill-informed leader of a large organization. It’s important that his comments be condemned by other influential voices in the community, such as a member of Chicago’s congressional delegation. But when The Daily Caller, a conservative publication, asked Rep. Danny Davis, D-Chicago, the congressman laughed off his close relationship with Farrakhan, saying he had no problem with him and wasn’t concerned by Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism.

“That’s just one segment of what goes on in our world,” Davis told The Daily Caller. “The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth. For those heavy into it, that’s their thing, but it ain’t my thing.”

Davis’ words were thoughtless and irresponsible. He responded later with a strong statement condemning anti-Semitism and all forms of hatred. He also attacked The Daily Caller for trying to impugn his character. But as our colleague John Kass noted in a column, what Davis didn’t do in his three-paragraph March 5 statement is criticize or even mention Farrakhan. Not a word. That leaves Davis open to the charge that he’s complicit in Farrakhan’s bigotry.