‘We voted for mean Tweets’: Trump’s embarrassing Truth Social post is dividing the internet
Donald Trump has taken to the internet to do what he does best: bully people.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared an AI generated image of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie binge-eating Big Macs that are being delivered by a fleet of flying drones. A user on X reposted the image with a somber and baffled headline “posted by our president elect.”
It’s a mean image. A cruel image. A shameful reminder of the state of “discourse” in U.S. politics. For Donald Trump, it’s nothing new.
When campaigning for president in 2016, Trump came out swinging with a series of schoolyard jabs. Trump coarsened the debate stage with personal attacks on his opponents. He publicly mocked a reporter with a disability. He name calls his political adversaries. When the infamous Access Hollywood tape came out, many thought that Trump’s “grab em by the “p*ssy” comments spell his political doom, and yet he went on to win the presidential election. And then he won again.
“We voted for Mean Tweets” says one user, in reference to a recurring Jimmy Kimmel sketch where celebrities read negative Twitter statements written about them out loud.
“He’s got a mandate for this stuff,” the user continues. While Trump’s slim 2024 election win margin is a far cry from an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” that he claims to have been awarded, Trump’s supporters have indeed given their candidate of choice carte blanche to be cruel. Cruelty has become a sort of lingua franca among Trump supporters, if one look at the comments from Trump supporters responding to this post is any indication.
Trump’s penchant for cruelty has permeated his base, and has grown, or rather, degenerated from schoolyard meanness implicit threats of violence. While on the campaign trail, Trump made America’s undocumented migrant population a frequent target of his rhetorical assaults. Trump attacked immigrants with dehumanizing language, calling migrants “animals” that are “poisoning the blood” the country, in a chilling echo of white supremacist beliefs around blood purity. Trump has also used authoritarian language when referring to his political opponents, labeling them “vermin” as would a dictator of yesteryear.
As this user points out, Trump is soon to become the leader of one the strongest militaries in the world – and all the terrible power invested therein. The idea that such power will soon be wielded by a man so ill-equipped to respect it, and so inhumane as to perhaps use it, has generated an outpouring of existential anxiety – so much so that some fear the U.S. nuclear weapon arsenal is another thing that should be made “Trump-proof.” While Donald Trump lacks the individual power to plunge the world into nuclear war entirely on his own, it’s a foreboding sign that some Americans believe that their president would launch an ICBM against an enemy nation with the gusto that a fifth grader shoots a spitball. And yet, this is our political reality – and will be for the next four years.
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