The U.S. is in the throes of multiple national crises, and President Donald Trump is spending his Saturday afternoon on Twitter. This Saturday afternoon, among about 17 tweets and retweets that he posted in a little more than an hour, Trump claimed that if the Obama administration had struck a deal to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, then the media would lavish praise on Obama for it. He seems to conveniently skip over the fact that Obama did strike a major Middle East peace deal — the Iran nuclear deal — and that Obama-era deal covered more immediately relevant ground (the Iranian nuclear program) than the Israel-U.A.E. agreement, which publicly admits to basic diplomatic negotiations that have already been going on behind the scenes, as journalist Mehdi Hasan noted.
If Obama did this, they would speak of nothing else. Biden could NEVER do it! https://t.co/1djK42xawI
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2020
Trump also, among other tweets, hurled insults at the media over their new positive coverage for Democratic vice presidential pick Kamala Harris and alleged, yet again, that “absentee” and “mail-in” ballots are two distinct things and — not only that — but that “mail-in” ballots are bad and “absentee” ballots are good. Trump is a profoundly ignorant, staggeringly moronic individual, it seems. Mail-in ballots and absentee ballots are the same thing — the terms are synonyms. (How does he think that absentee ballots get to election authorities? Via the mail!) The Trump team has tried to suggest that they’re different because, as they describe it, voters have to qualify for “absentee” ballots — but it’s not as though any form of ballot just gets handed out on street corners to anyone passing by. Furthermore, in a state that Trump singled out as supposedly handling mail-in voting the “right” way (Florida), any voter can get a mail-in ballot, no questions asked.
Fake News! https://t.co/OedkKwkcd0
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2020
More Fake News! https://t.co/8P2Kax00s7
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2020
The honorable thing to do is drop the Mail-In Scam before it is too late! Absentee Ballots, like they have in Florida, are good! https://t.co/uuVyliWEwS
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2020
In another tweet, Trump again referenced reports of issues surrounding mail-in ballots in an attempt to drum up opposition to mail-in voting on a national level, but these reports do not change the facts: yes, there are issues, and those issues are consistently found out and dealt with, and this is neither news nor grounds for trying to question the systematic integrity of elections across the country. Mail-in voting is already used at a rather high rate across the country, and it’s been used for a very long time.
Voter Scam! https://t.co/BY6SEJfUZh
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2020
Trump is, again, lying.
Check out Twitter’s response to the president below:
