Trump goes to a second round in media feud in Saturday afternoon Twitter posts
Visiting Twitter today was like venturing outdoors in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic when you thought the streets were empty and you could safely go for a walk without encountering any potentially dangerous sources of infection.
After Don “Quixote” Trump tilted at windmills on the social media platform all afternoon, and you thought that he had finally exhausted his stash of grievances and ludicrous self-congratulations and you could finally scroll through your feed in peace, back he comes like the monster in the final reel of a grade-B horror flick that the audience thought had already been vanquished.
Apparently, the president was not done airing his resentments towards the media that he continually labels “FAKE NEWS” simply because they insist on publishing facts rather than repeating his willful fantasies designed to paint his administration as “perfect.”
Trump is no longer satisfied with bashing only the so-called “liberal” media, however. After tarring Fox News’ weekend programming as “a total waste of time” earlier in the day in one of the only truthful opinions he’s ever managed to muster, the president went after the bastion of conservative business journalism at The Wall Street Journal, the print-based corporate cousin to the Murdoch family-controlled Fox News. Perhaps Rupert and Donnie had a tiff.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board doesn’t have a clue on how to fight and win. Their views on Tariffs & Trade are losers for the U.S., but winners for other countries, including China. If we followed their standards, we’d have no Country left. They should love Sleepy Joe!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2020
It may be news to the editorial board at The Wall Street Journal that their job descriptions included a facility for martial arts, but at least, unlike Trump, they understand how tariffs work and who pays them.
With the president continually falsely insisting that it is China and not US importers (and ultimately American consumers) who pay the enormous taxes — which are what tariffs actually are — that he has imposed on certain imported goods, he’s the last person to criticize anyone’s views on tariffs and trade.
While it is not certain how many companies the members of The Wall Street Journal editorial board has bankrupted, it is likely less than the president has. And, with his Make America Great Again slogan turning out to be so diametrically opposed to the actual results he has delivered for the country, Trump is the last person to accuse others of diminishing the nation.
It’s unlikely that the wealthy financial mavens who make up the editorial board at the WSJ are big fans of former Vice President Joe Biden, but it’s likely that they would love to see anyone else besides Trump (with the exception perhaps of Bernie Sanders) in. the White House right now.
Trump also returned for a second attack on The New York Times of the day after questioning the use of anonymous sources by the Times and The Washington Post earlier in the day.
The president’s antipathy towards objective science is a given these days, but his skeptical ignorance reached new heights in this gem which he apparently had to delete and repost after a grievous syntax error in the first version.
Here are the original and the corrected versions of his tweet. See if you can spot the difference as a fun game while you’re locked up at home.
Who would expect someone pushing untested and potentially harmful drugs as unproven cures for COVID-19 to know anything about genome sequencing and viral mutations? Who would expect someone who can’t figure out whether he wants to accuse The New York Times of some sort of projected quid pro quo like the type he would do or of simply making up the sources for the story to write a coherent sentence? And what is this vendetta that he has against dogs?
Sadly, Trump didn’t bother checking his facts – or reading the article in The New York Times that he is criticizing — since the story makes it perfectly clear where the sources of the information about the prevalent strain of coronavirus infecting New Yorkers originated: in research by geneticists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine. Perhaps Trump wanted their names and social security numbers?
The president clearly does not want his narrative blaming China for the origination of the virus to be contradicted in any way.
With one less scapegoat to point at, the public may finally begin to realize that the person with the biggest blame for America’s world record in the number of deaths from the pandemic is the man who downplayed the seriousness of the crisis in its initial days and ignored the warnings that he started receiving as early as November of last year — Donald Trump himself.
Too bad he doesn’t “take responsibility at all” because it will be thrown at his feet where it belongs in the November election.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
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