Amid rising confirmed coronavirus case counts, and a dying toll that has begun to plateau, President Donald Trump spent a lot of Sunday lashing
Amid rising confirmed coronavirus case counts, and a dying toll that has begun to plateau, President Donald Trump spent a lot of Sunday lashing out at politicians, attacking the media, and bragging about his ballot numbers. He additionally appeared to counsel Covid-19 is a cosmic or biblical pressure — and one which has already been stopped.
Sunday morning, the president panned former President George W. Bush’s recent call for bipartisan unity within the face of the coronavirus pandemic, arguing his predecessor ought to have spoken up on his behalf throughout Trump’s impeachment course of.
“Allow us to bear in mind how small our variations are within the face of this shared menace,” Bush stated Saturday in a video message to the general public. “Within the closing evaluation, we’re not partisan combatants.”
Trump felt this was inappropriate, nevertheless, quoting feedback made by Pete Hegseth, a weekend cohost of Fox & Buddies, who requested “the place [Bush] was throughout impeachment calling for placing partisanship apart.” To this, Trump added, “He was nowhere to be present in talking up towards the best Hoax in American historical past!”
.@PeteHegseth “Oh bye the way in which, I admire the message from former President Bush, however the place was he throughout Impeachment calling for placing partisanship apart.” @foxandfriends He was nowhere to be present in talking up towards the best Hoax in American historical past!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2020
After sending out the tweet about Bush, Trump proceeded to ship out one adversarial and divisive put up after one other.
He deemed NBC and CNN “Chinese language puppets who wish to do enterprise there” and “the enemy of the individuals.” He boasted about his approval rankings amongst Republicans and stated {that a} new Gallup ballot reveals “Trump beating Sleepy Joe Biden.” (It doesn’t.) He stated there have been “many complaints coming in” over Maine’s coronavirus response (regardless of the state authorities’s rising approval rankings) — after which added that he received the state. He additionally retweeted a few of his outdated tweets, one through which he declared a video of a ship proprietor who painted Trump’s title onto his boat “very cool,” and another through which he falsely claims Democrats need “OPEN BORDERS.”
He capped off his spree with a tweet about America coming collectively as a nation — and it was an odd one, through which he described an America rising from the “dying and destruction” brought on by “a terrific and highly effective Plague” that led to “misplaced souls everywhere in the World:”
….After which got here a Plague, a terrific and highly effective Plague, and the World was by no means to be the identical once more! However America rose from this dying and destruction, all the time remembering its many misplaced souls, and the misplaced souls everywhere in the World, and have become larger than ever earlier than!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2020
Trump’s tone within the tweet, which didn’t appear to have any apparent contextual rationalization, was roundly mocked on social media by his critics. “Camus wept,” quipped Charles Pierce, a politics author for Esquire. Speaking Factors Memo founder Josh Marshall tweeted, “tfw you attempt to bible-speak on twitter.”
The tweet appeared to counsel the hazard posed by the coronavirus had largely handed, provided that it was all written prior to now tense, however with its biblical language additionally appeared to put blame for the virus on some pressure larger than Trump himself, and one which he didn’t have management over.
Whereas it’s true that the coronavirus is believed to have come from nature, in actuality, Trump has botched numerous alternatives to struggle towards the virus. Amongst many different issues, he downplayed its risks, dismantled the bureaucratic experience required to handle a pandemic, refused to swiftly take steps to supply People with protecting gear and medical tools, and conditioned support to states on political favors.
These newest tweets have come throughout a interval of heavy Twitter exercise by the president. Basically, Trump seems to tweet extra when he feels beneath siege and desires to push again towards explicit narratives or Democratic assaults that undermine his fame. On condition that Trump is consistently beneath hearth today for his catastrophic mismanagement of the American coronavirus response, it’s not precisely stunning that he took to Twitter to unleash a wave of assaults.
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