“We have a totally corrupt previous Administration, including a President and Vice President who spied on my campaign, AND GOT CAUGHT…and nothing happens to them. This crime was taking place even before my election, everyone knows it, and yet all are frozen stiff with fear. No Republican Senate Judiciary response, NO ‘JUSTICE’, NO FBI, NO NOTHING. Major horror show REPORTS on Comey & McCabe, guilty as hell, nothing happens. Catch Obama & Biden cold, nothing. A 3 year, $45,000,000 Mueller HOAX, failed – investigated everything. Won all against the Federal Government and the Democrats send everything to politically corrupt New York, which is falling apart with everyone leaving, to give it a second, third and fourth try. Now the Supreme Court gives a delay ruling that they would never have given for another President. This is about PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT. We catch the other side SPYING on my campaign, the biggest political crime and scandal in U.S. history, and NOTHING HAPPENS. But despite this, I have done more than any President in history in first 3 1/2 years!”
Note, Trump published all of this in a series of tweets, then deleted the borderline-incoherent rant, then re-published his tirade.
It’s tempting to go through this, oddity by oddity, pointing to every error of fact and judgment. In reality, for example, no one “spied on” the Trump campaign. There was no “crime.” The Mueller probe wasn’t a “hoax”; it didn’t “fail”; it didn’t “investigate everything”; it didn’t last three years; and it didn’t cost $45 million. The idea that Trump is the most accomplished president in American history is obviously ridiculous.
But in a situation like this, presidential dishonesty is just part of a larger problem.
Trump’s lengthy tantrum combines whataboutism, self-pity, paranoia, pointless attacks on law enforcement and his own ostensible allies, and delusions of grandeur.
It’s the sort of tirade one imagines the president sharing with aides in the Oval Office, which in this case, Trump felt compelled to write out in a series of hysterical tweets — twice.
It’s a peek into the president’s state of mind, which in this case, points to Trump continuing to unravel under pressure.
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