As he faces multiple investigations that could very well result in criminal charges for him or close associates of his, former President Donald Trump is still mad.
He was posting around midnight on his personal account on his knock-off social media site Truth Social, again getting basic facts wrong about events during his time in office and speaking in disturbingly apocalyptic terms about the prospects for the United States if he’s not re-elected president. While it’s obviously objectively utter nonsense, actual belief in this kind of stuff among some of the ex-president’s most ardent followers helped propel the Capitol riot and could help lead to something similar in the future.
“I was the one that brought China to everyone’s attention,” Trump claimed Saturday. “Under “Trump,” China was paying us a fortune in taxes and tariffs for the “privilege” of selling their products to the U.S. No other President got 10 cents from a very smart and savvy China. I got Hundreds of $BILLIONS of Dollars, gave $28 Billion Dollars to our great FARMERS. But now China is really going at the good ol’ USA, and we have no one to defend us. Our Country does not have long to live, or even survive. We better WIN in 2024!” As it appears, many import taxes imposed by Trump were paid by Americans doing the disputed importing. Tariffs are “almost always paid directly by the importer (usually a domestic firm), and never by the exporting country,” a 2018 article noted. Trump, though, as someone disconnected from reality is well-established. It’s his rhetoric about the supposed death of the United States unless he’s re-elected that’s probably more troubling.
At after 1 a.m. on the East Coast, Trump was still posting, this time about Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis. Trump sounds worried about the possibility of facing DeSantis in a Republican presidential primary contest, with polls showing the governor, should he decide to run, as probably the best positioned to actually defeat the ex-president. “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious “Meatball” Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will,” Trump claimed online. “Even though FoxNews killing lightweight Paul Ryan is revered by him, Low Energy Jeb Bush is his hero and always at his side, his beaches and State were closed for long periods of time, his testing, testing, testing for the China Virus didn’t work out too well, and his loyalty skills are really weak, it would be totally inappropriate to use the word “meatball” as a moniker for Ron!”
The simple fact is that it’s unclear DeSantis himself ever even directed a closure of Florida beaches. After allowing some restrictions from local officials, DeSantis demanded these measures mostly all stopped by September 2020 as COVID-19 kept spreading. It’s obviously ridiculous it’s even some kind of demented popularity contest to see who actually ignored COVID-19 more, or something, but those are the facts. It’s difficult to refute an argument from Trump as bonkers as his complaint about testing for COVID-19, as though just not detecting the virus would’ve made the problem go away.
