A concentrated pre-dawn burst
Peter Baker on Trump’s Twitter frenzy yesterday…
… embracing fringe conspiracy theories claiming that the coronavirus death toll has been exaggerated and that street protests are actually an organised coup against him.
In a concentrated pre-dawn burst, the President posted or retweeted 89 messages between 5.49am and 8.04am on Sunday on top of 18 the night before. He resumed on Sunday night.
Cool that he has so much free time, as well as so much good sense, discipline, sense of proportion, conscience, dedication…
In the blast of social media messages, Trump also embraced a call to imprison New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House; attacked CNN and NPR; embraced a supporter charged with murder; mocked his challenger, former vice-president Joe Biden; and repeatedly assailed Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call, demanding his resignation.
Couldn’t he just get sick right now? Not fatally sick, necessarily, just sick enough that it would make him shut the fuck up? I mean fatally sick would be ideal, but I don’t want to over-demand.
Trump likewise reposted messages asserting that the real death toll from the coronavirus was only about 9000 — nowhere near 183,000 — because the others who died also had other health issues and most were of an advanced age.
“So get this straight — based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9000 American deaths to the China coronavirus,” said the summary of an article by the hard-line conservative website Gateway Pundit that was retweeted by the President, denigrating his own health advisers, Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx.
It’s what psychopaths do.
But Trump also retweeted a message calling for Cuomo to be locked up because of the high death toll from the coronavirus in New York nursing homes earlier in the pandemic. “#KillerCuomo should be in jail,” said the message by actor James Woods, a strong supporter of the President.
Of course he did. He doesn’t have the pedantic obsession with “consistency” that you inside the Beltway reporters and treasoners have.
And the President even “liked” a tweet that offered support for Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump supporter who has been charged with homicide after two demonstrators were shot dead in Kenosha, Wisconsin. “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump,” the tweet said.
Murderers forevaaaaaaaa!
A man shoots and kills another man. Several bystanders pursue and attack the shooter, one getting killed and another maimed in the process. I would think the pursuers would be the perfect example of “fighting back”, of “standing your ground”: trying to take down a deadly criminal without the assistance of law enforcement. But no, the criminal was on the “acceptable” side, and his victims on the “unacceptable” side, and only the “acceptable” side is allowed to do things like “fight back”.
One of the people I work with said the same thing the other day, but said that everyone who died was already sick and probably died of something else.
People really can fool themselves, can’t they?
If there was a god, he would be trying to make atheists believe in him right now by doing some Old Testament level smiting…Trump, Kushner, various assorted Trumps (we can spare Barron; he’s young and it’s not his fault who his father is), McConnell and the Republican Congress, Brett Kavanaugh…the list is long. If I were a believer, I would pray. I would say, “Please God, start smiting. It’s time. Fire and brimstone. Smite.”
Too bad I’m not a believer; I don’t have the comforting delusion that I don’t have to do anything because “God’s got it”. Right now, if God’s got anything, it must be coronavirus.
Seems to me that on a lot of his missions, the Old Testament god didn’t use a lot precision guided munitions, resulting in a lot of collateral damage. I wouldn’t be too quick to call on divine drone strikes until he’s improved his aim.
Yeah, that’s true. He’s more of a carpet bomber. A very large carpet.
@Sackbut,
You’re missing some important context, though. One of the guys that got shot had a gun in his hand, presenting a clear threat to the poor little wannabe cop with the gun, so clearly little would-be cop was justified in shooting.
You know, good guys with guns….
Yeah, I’m wondering (not really) why the guy who got shot wasn’t a “good guy with a gun”. Seems like the perfect set-up. Except the sympathy lies with the wannabe cop, no matter what the circumstances were, because he was going after the protesters. They aren’t interested in “good guy with a gun” unless it’s the correct “good guy”.
I recall some stupid dust-up regarding open carry and “good guy with a gun” when two vigilantes confronted each other about being armed in a store. They were each trying to be the “good guy with the gun” and take down the other. I’m surprised that doesn’t happen a lot more often.