President Donald Trump and his supporters are not taking TIME’s recent award to teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg of their person of the year designation well. Now, the Trump campaign itself has joined in with the mockery and criticism, which comes in addition to Twitter posts about the award from Donald Trump himself and Don Jr., among others. In an inescapably outlandish spectacle, the Trump campaign has now tweeted a photoshopped version of the TIME cover featuring Thunberg that has Trump’s head in place of Thunberg’s. It’s a bizarre display — and inescapably petty that the president of the United States can’t just let this global protest leader have this moment to herself.
The Trump campaign tweeted their edited version of the Thunberg TIME cover alongside a list of campaign promises that it claims Trump has fulfilled while in office. Sometimes, Trump’s relationship to his campaign promises has already gotten bizarre. For example, he’s claimed, in his words, that he’s fulfilled promises that he didn’t even make — although it’s not exactly clear how that would work. What’s he going to do — just take credit for anything good that happens now?
The Trump campaign tweeted:
‘When it comes to keeping his promises, there’s only one Person Of The Year:
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✅Booming Economy
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✅Record Job Creation
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✅Historic Tax Cuts
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✅#AmericaFirst Trade Deals
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✅ISIS Destroyed
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✅Building the Wall’
When it comes to keeping his promises, there's only one Person Of The Year:
✅Booming Economy
✅Record Job Creation
✅Historic Tax Cuts
✅#AmericaFirst Trade Deals
✅ISIS Destroyed
✅Building the Wall#TIMEPOY #PromisesMadePromisesKept pic.twitter.com/bEt9yqInqY— Trump War Room (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TrumpWarRoom) December 12, 2019
Making their grossly egomaniacal display even more of a wreck — a number of those supposed promise fulfillments are questionable at best. Although they include conveniently vague claims like a “booming economy” — which was doing increasingly well according to concrete metrics like the unemployment rate before Trump ever arrived in D.C., the Trump campaign also features more easily contestable claims. For example, the overwhelming majority of southern border construction that the Trump administration has completed is basically just replacing old fence. Fully new construction projects, let alone those including an actual wall, have been extremely minimal. Only in November did a Trump official (Mark Morgan) say they’d just been breaking ground somewhere new.
That’s not about to stop the Trump team! Besides the campaign’s strange gambit for attention with the photoshopped TIME cover, Trump himself has already complained that the person of the year award for Thunberg is “so ridiculous.” He mockingly added that Thunberg “must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!”
So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill! https://t.co/M8ZtS8okzE
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2019
Check out Twitter’s response to Trump’s campaign below…
