Donald Trump opened his morning with a series of claims so ludicrous, they seem more like the answer to a challenge than real statements. Can Donald Trump create a stone so big that even Donald Trump cannot lift it? Of course he can. And while he’s lifting it, he’ll tweet about it. Losers.
It’s a morning that plays like a Trump low-lights reel: personal insults, racism, sexism, false claims about the economy, lies about foreign policy, a swipe at President Obama. It’s all in there, as Trump uses his PJ-wearing executive time to explain how he saved the world for you ungrateful wretches.
Trump started out by pushing a series of insults and lies about Maxine Waters, with some Nancy Pelosi on the side. Because what could be more frightening than reminding his followers that Democrats not only believe in women in positions of power, but women of color in positions of power. But that was just the warm-up.
From there Trump moves on to ICE. ICE, baby. In a pair of tweets, Trump’s praises the agency that snatches children from school buses and wheels patients from hospital rooms as “tough” guys who are clearing out the “infestation” of MS-13. We’ve yet to hear anything from the towns that have been “liberated” from this infestation—a claim that Trump made last week—because they’re either too busy celebrating. Or entirely fictional. One or the other.
Trump gathers his breath with a post on global trade, providing the simple explainer that countries would have given the US a better trade deal, but we never asked. And other countries are happy to comply! Except that … none of them have. Trump has so far negotiated a grand total of zero trade deals. Where zero is the generous view of the multiple trade deals he’s attacked while driving up prices for US consumers through tariffs and negotiation tactics that have wrecked relationships around the globe.
All of which leads up to a tweet that is an absolute distillation of Trump. Essense of the Donald. Eau de Trump toilette. Or at least toilet.
Donald Trump saved all your lives, you ungrateful sons of bitches. Now go buy a hat.
In the real world, commercial satellite imagery has revealed that North Korea is continuing to expand both a factory where it builds nuclear missiles and the reactor complex where it creates the plutonium used in creating its bombs. According to NBC News, North Korea has actually increased its capacity to build nuclear weapons since the Trump–Kim meeting.
It’s almost as if Donald Trump’s insistence that he and Kim meet alone was so that he could tell the North Korean dictator “You know, Mr. Un, you do go whatever you want, and I’ll claim we stopped a war. It’ll be good.”
When did North Korea last have eight months without a missile launch? That would be 2016. Or 2015. Or … just about any year except the one where Trump was running the show.
Trump’s claims that America was on the brink of war with North Korea when he took office are entirely, entirely, fictional. North Korea claimed one successful missile launch in 2016, and even that one traveled less than 20 miles. In 2017, with Trump at the helm, North Korea held 14 launches, including one where four missiles were fired at the same time. Every missile that passed over Japan. Every sign of progress that terrified citizens in Hawaii, that was all on Trump’s watch.
Donald Trump spent all of 2017 attacking “Little Rocket Man.” What it achieved was driving North Korea to a rapid pace of test launches and development, drastically scaling up their ability as Trump absolutely convinced Kim that the path of developing nuclear weapons had been the right choice. Then Trump capped this crap show by showering Kim with attention, weakening sanctions, and positioning North Korea to become an accepted member of the world community with nuclear weapons.
But he saved you from imaginary war. So, be grateful, dammit.
Oh, and then Trump tweeted that Barack Obama gave citizenship to 2,500 Iranians during the negotiation of the Iran treaty. Which absolutely did not happen. It’s a complete lie. But they said it on Fox News, so Trump dutifully repeated it.
This … did not happen. But if Trump won an imaginary war this morning, it seems only right he should also blame Obama for an imaginary invasion.
Tune in tomorrow, when Trump takes credit for the Fourth of July, hot dogs, and those things you use to hold an ear of corn. And be grateful. Or he’ll send ICE to your house. Which … isn’t nearly as damn funny as it should be.