AUGUST 30, 2022
Donald Trump is having a meltdown on his Truth Social platform. The former president, believed to be under multiple criminal investigations, is lashing out at his opponents, rapidly reposting memes from his supporters celebrating him and attacking President Joe Biden and the Democrats, and promoting falsehoods about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and vaccines.
Trump’s meltdown, which includes dozens of posts and reposts per hour, comes amid his baseless demand on Monday to either be named president again or have the nation hold a new election “immediately.”
“Trump is spending his morning on Truth Social directly posting 4chan and Q messages, a day after calling to be reinstated as president. He’s doing explicitly what he used to try to shade or use coded language for,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney observes, offering several examples.
Trump even posted a meme with his photo pointing to gas at a price of $1.22, implying it had been that low when he was president. The last time it was in that range was 2002, twenty years ago.
He also reposted a photoshopped image that falsely shows President Joe Biden embracing Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and kissing the side of his face.
Trump even reposted a meme with a quote from George Orwell that he apparently did not understand, and is not flattering, but shows his face projected on a large screen in a theatrically dystopian view. It has a logo, presumably from its maker, at the bottom that reads: “Democratic Socialism Now!”
At 1:46 AM Trump posted this falsehood:
“The Presidential Election was BADLY & IRREPARABLY TAINTED by the FBI’s FAKE description of the ‘Laptop from Hell’ to Facebook & the LameStream Media – & for MANY other reasons as well. Declare the rightful winner, or hold a new Election, NOW! Our Country, which is failing badly, knows the ‘score,’ and will never accept Criminal Election Interference. The FBI just fired its Special Agent In Charge of this outrageous & very illegal assault on the Constitution of the United States of America!”
Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed the FBI fired the agent in charge of executing the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, a claim even Fox News reports is false.
Overnight, historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote: “Lots of news swirling around about the boxes of classified information Trump took from the United States and held at Mar-a-Lago, but the most telling window into all those stories is that the former president took to his Truth Social network this morning,” referring to his Monday outburst, “to demand that he be declared the winner of the 2020 election, or that the election be redone again ‘immediately!’”
“This is distraction at its purest—no one is going to redo the 2020 election—but it no longer works,” she notes. “As Trump has lost the power to command attention, his demands have gotten more and more outrageous.”
