Throughout the Jan. 6 committee hearings, former President Donald Trump has maintained his spiteful brand of slamming anyone who dares go against him. He stayed the course following Tuesday’s hearing in which Mark Meadows’ former aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified about Trump’s involvement in the violent insurrection that inspired the committee’s investigation in the first place. Among the standout details of Trump's behavior on Jan. 6? The president had a full-blown tantrum while in one of the presidential vehicles, screaming expletives at his staff over their refusal to get him to the Capitol. At one point, Trump grabbed the steering wheel of the vehicle and even tried to assault a Secret Service member.
He wasn’t done taking out his rage, though. Trump threw a cheeseburger at the wall of the West Wing, its ketchup grotesquely dripping down until some lowly staffer cleaned up his mess. Thanks to Truth Social, Trump is free to throw the same type of fits on social media. There is no clean-up crew, though there are plenty of positive comments from members who are so far gone in MAGA-Land that they support Trump’s support of their own calls to hang Make Pence. Truly, it’s a love-fest on that platform, as you can see from the more than a dozen “truths,” or posts, Trump sent in the wake of the hearing’s conclusion.
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Trump claimed not to know Hutchinson, though her office when she worked under Meadows was a 10-second walk from the Oval Office. He slammed her firing his hand-picked attorney and replacing him with an ally of Jeff Sessions. He even claimed that Hutchinson was a bullshit artist, a phony, and was unstable—which, he posits, we know because of her handwriting.
Hitchinson’s handwriting was visible in a note displayed as evidence during the hearing. She had taken down statements from Meadows, on his own stationery the night of Jan. 6, for the former Trump chief of staff’s call for a statement to be put out condemning the illegal actions of the insurrectionists storming the Capitol. That statement was ultimately never given. But Trump’s criticism sure is rich given his signature looks like an EKG, he’s sleazier than a used-car salesman, and his lying is so legendary that entire fact-checking teams have formed just to monitor his outbursts.
It also hurts Trump’s non-existent credibility in claiming he didn’t melt down by being unable to lead his own attempted coup. There is nothing more believable to me than Trump being driven around like a screaming toddler in an attempt to soothe his horrid temperament, nor is it at all surprising that the White House continued to work around the president instead of alongside him as he issued statement after tweet after statement condemning Vice President Mike Pence, whom he secretly said “deserved” to be hanged after catching wind his own followers were chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Even the cheeseburger detail adds up, given Trump’s own penchant for overdone meat with ketchup on it. In taking to Truth Social to speak his piece, Trump is only further digging his own grave.