Donald Trump watches a lot of TV. That’s something everybody knows.

And we learned today that it’s not only Fox News that the president enjoys – it’s apparently Turner Classic Movies as well.

That’s one of the somewhat plausible explanations for a presidential tweet today referencing “Mutiny on the Bounty,” a classic novel and 1935 film that has been redone twice since.

Here is the tweet:

“Tell the Democrat Governors that ‘Mutiny On The Bounty’ was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!”

The “mutineers”  here include Phil Murphy and five other Democratic governors from northeastern states. They met via conference call Monday to talk about “reopening” their states simultaneously.

Today, the Republican governor of Massachusetts joined the group making it bipartisan.

One may think that any talk of re-starting business as usual would be applauded by the president. After all, he said a few weeks ago that the cure for COVID-19 may be worse than the disease and that he wanted the country “open” by Easter. That didn’t happen, but it’s clear what the president wants.

Then again. If Democrats want to do it, that’s bad.

The president also has put forth the idea that he has ultimate authority to end business closures all over the country. And more importantly, if he says the governors can not open their states, by golly, they can’t.

This is ridiculous from a constitutional point of view as every sensible person understands. It’s not as if the president of the United States controls local school districts.

But putting that argument aside brings us to the tweet.

It suggests that the Democratic governors would be staging a mutiny against presidential authority if they seek to ease virus-related regulations on their own.

But in his next breath, Trump says that’s fine and dandy because he’d find the whole thing invigorating.

Of course, those familiar with the movie know that the mutiny didn’t end well for the tyrannical Captain Bligh. In fact, he was put on a boat and sent adrift on the high seas. This would be akin to the governors putting Trump and a few loyalists in a canoe and shoving it into the Potomac.

Now, when this tweet came up today – as it obviously would – at Murphy’s daily briefing, the governor, as has been his custom, avoided any criticism of Trump.

But he did speculate that the president may be more a fan of Marlon Brando, who starred in the 1960s version of the film, than of Clark Gable, who appeared in the original.

Sounds reasonable. Trump’s probably a fan of Vito Corleone as well; he didn’t care much for mutineers either.