It’s been over a month since Donald Trump was booted from much of social media, and things have been pretty quiet online. There’s even a good chance you now go a day or two without even thinking of Trump, much less hearing his voice or reading his tweets. That all changed on Tuesday, when the former president, unable to tweet, released a long, meandering, Blogspot-worthy statement, mostly about dragging the man who helped save him from a Senate conviction.
https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1361795296590770176
“The Republican party can never be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump began. He was just getting warmed up. He took the Senate Minority Leader to the woodshed and beyond, claiming his “business as usual, status quo policies” are what led to his recent demotion — not that the GOP had gotten behind a highly unpopular, hugely divisive president who was on his way out.
There were other accusations. Trump claimed that Senate and House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer play McConnell “like a fiddle” and “they’ve never had it so good.” He said he has “no credibility” because of his family’s “substantial Chinese business holdings.”
There were insults, too. “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.” He made vague promises that “where necessary and appropriate,” he will “back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First.”
The statement comes mere days after McConnell essentially instructed much of his party to acquit Trump of inciting the failed MAGA coup of January 6, which had gotten him impeached for a second time in the House. Then again, immediately following the vote McConnell did launch into a lengthy broadside against Trump, essentially admitting that he was guilty but was spared on the technicality that he was no longer in office. But then, it was McConnell who had delayed the Senate vote, which could have come during his final days on the job. Seems Trump’s being at best semi-ungrateful.
The former president wasn’t only trying to further split a party that’s already in shambles. While he stopped short of election misinformation, he did point out that he “received the most votes of any sitting President in history, almost 75,000,000.” (He didn’t mention that Biden received more.) He claimed he “single-handedly saved at least 12 Senate seats,” and averred that many Georgia Republicans ‘voted Democrat, or just didn’t vote’ due to their anger at some of his other favorite punching bags, Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.”
He then laid down the gauntlet, essentially trying to do what he did back in the run-up to the 2016 election: taking aim at establishment Republicans and offering himself as a deranged alternative.
Of course, back then he wasn’t banned from his favorite social media service. This statement is a dense text, but in the before-time he would have spread this over an epic thread.
https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1361796553799839747
Will Trump be able to once again destroy the Republican party via occasional lengthy screeds that could stand an editor? Stranger things have happened. In the meantime, right now McConnell’s dour face must sure be red.