{"id":132120,"date":"2016-11-28T08:53:19","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T15:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/28\/trump-the-tweetster-2016-11-28-i-am-the-champion-edition.html"},"modified":"2016-12-15T22:18:21","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T05:18:21","slug":"trump-the-tweetster-2016-11-28-i-am-the-champion-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/28\/trump-the-tweetster-2016-11-28-i-am-the-champion-edition.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump the Tweetster &#8211; 2016-11-28 (I Am the Champion Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I will give Trump credit for this: he certainly is not afraid to just broadcast out there whatever thought pops into his head, fact-based of not.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday and Sunday, he went on a warpath about efforts by Jill Stein and the Greens to push forward with recounts in some key battlefield states. There are some dodgy issues around all of this, to be sure, but whereas a &#8220;normal&#8221; President would simply issue a press statement, Trump had to go on the Twitter offensive &#8212; and, as always, overplay his hand.<\/p>\n<p>===<\/p>\n<p><b><i>The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated &amp; demoralized Dems<\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[<a class=\"ot-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802671162383802368\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802671162383802368<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Why are recounts &#8220;impossible&#8221;? As far as I know, this is all within the normal deadlines for recount requests in the states in question.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also amused by not just a slam at the Greens, but a gratuitous spitball (&#8220;badly defeated &amp; demoralized&#8221;) at the Dems. Never let an opportunity pass to attack someone, right, Donald?<\/p>\n<p><b><i>The Democrats, when they incorrectly thought they were going to win, asked that the election night tabulation be accepted. Not so anymore!<\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[<a class=\"ot-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802723588759375873\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802723588759375873<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Trump then goes on to note how, back when <i>he<\/i> was the one calling into question what the results of the election would look like, the Democrats (and, ahem, a lot of Republicans) were appalled by the rhetoric, but now that he&#8217;s won, the Dems are being hypocrites.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with that argument is that Trump was just making vague, unsubstantiated (but damaging) assertions that the vote was &#8220;rigged.&#8221; The recount requests involved here have a bit more foundation behind them.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, it&#8217;s already-classic Trump to attack someone for making an argument that you previously made.<\/p>\n<p>Trump goes on with <i>seven<\/i> more tweets[1], noting that Clinton conceded (which is a polite formality, not a legally binding or even necessary action), and that Clinton had decried Trump&#8217;s suggestion that he wouldn&#8217;t accept the results of the election, ending with (concluding q quote from Clinton&#8217;s concession):<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Trump is going to be our President. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.&#8221; So much time and money will be spent &#8211; same result! Sad<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>So much time and money! How much time and money would you have had spent were the elections &#8220;rigged&#8221; the way you described.<\/p>\n<p>And then Trump went on, upping the ante by moving into the &#8220;fact-free&#8221; realm:<\/p>\n<p><b><i>In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>There is no evidence that &#8220;millions&#8221; voted illegally. None. And Trump certainly presents none. But, hey, it&#8217;s obviously not enough for him to claim the Electoral College victory (not really a landslide, but this is a sales guy talking), Trump seems suddenly worried that he won&#8217;t be consider &#8220;legitimate&#8221; unless he also won the popular vote.<\/p>\n<p>But he&#8217;s losing the popular vote &#8212; by over 2 million votes last I checked. That cannnot stand &#8212; so Trump seems to think he can simply assert victory by making up millions of &#8220;illegal&#8221; votes. Which, in turn, will magically become part of the partisan &#8220;truth&#8221; about this election.<\/p>\n<p>Crikey.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!<\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[<a class=\"ot-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802972944532209664\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802972944532209664<\/a>, <a class=\"ot-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802975667197386752\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/802975667197386752<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>He made this comment back right after the election, too. Because it&#8217;s not enough to win, you have to have won handicapped by the system and win everything and everyone else is losers because you are the biggest winner. Right?<\/p>\n<p>And then &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California &#8211; so why isn&#8217;t the media reporting on this? Serious bias &#8211; big problem!<\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[<a class=\"ot-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/803033642545115140\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/803033642545115140<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Because it&#8217;s not possible that Donald could have lost such key states. So obviously there was &#8220;serious voter fraud,&#8221; which nobody is reporting because it&#8217;s not a real story.<\/p>\n<p><del>Does anyone else find it ironic that Donald Trump on the one hand dismisses as &#8220;sad&#8221; efforts at a recount in battleground states he won, but then is willing to turn around and allege, without foundation, massive fraud in states that he <\/del><i><del>lost,<\/del><\/i><del> and in the overall vote count? No, wait, did I say &#8220;ironic&#8221;? I meant &#8220;sad.&#8221;<\/del><\/p>\n<p><del>I will repeat an earlier observation: Donald Trump is possessed of an ego more fragile than any president since Nixon. He must always be the greatest &#8211;<\/del> any disagreement or assertion to the contrary is simply wrong, is being said by a poopy head, and, yes, he is absolutely the greatest, every time, and anyone saying otherwise is probably part of a conspiracy of illegal activity, abetted by the lying media. Right?<\/p>\n<p>===<\/p>\n<p>Having exhausted that topic (for the moment), Trump has moved on this morning to something else to bluster about:<\/p>\n<p><b><i>If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban\/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal.<\/i><\/b><br \/>\n[<a class=\"ot-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/803237535178772481\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/803237535178772481<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Except that there isn&#8217;t a &#8220;deal&#8221; &#8212; just a recognition that treating Cuba as some sort of bizarro pariah state makes no sense for the US. While not the Worker&#8217;s Paradise its autocratic government would have the world believe, Cuba is hardly worse than any number of other countries we deal with (like the government of China, whose banks have helped finance so many Trump deals). Opening up to trade and engagement with the US can only help the Cuban people (and Cuban Americans, and the US).<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll leave aside the irony of Trump having searched for ways to get into business on the island some years back.<\/p>\n<p>I had really hoped that 2016 would mark an end of the &#8220;Florida Cuban Americans drive foreign policy&#8221; meme. Alas, it seems not to be, as long as Trump can seem like a bold, forceful, knowledgable leader on the subject.<\/p>\n<p><del>&#8212;-<\/del><\/p>\n<p>[1] Maybe he ought to look into a more long-form social media tool. Either that, or number his tweet sequences.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/photos\/101083456815352083930\/albums\/6358047964192853265\/6358047960627145874\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"max-width: 650px;\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-LOxaAjqpdP8\/WDxS7w4T7JI\/AAAAAAAEMtw\/EStmyB9kgT0vXPYLErQaUW0Jk3UCaX9MACJoC\/Donald%2BTrump%2BTwitter.PNG?imgmax=660\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/+DaveHill47\/posts\/PRvd19kP4y2\">View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I will give Trump credit for this: he certainly is not afraid to just broadcast out there whatever thought pops into his head, fact-based of not. Saturday and Sunday, he went on a warpath about efforts by Jill Stein and the Greens to push forward with recounts in some key battlefield states. There are some &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/28\/trump-the-tweetster-2016-11-28-i-am-the-champion-edition.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Trump the Tweetster &#8211; 2016-11-28 (I Am the Champion Edition)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,532,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-elections-2016","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Donald+Trump+Twitter.PNGimgmax=660.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":131737,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/06\/the-good-ol-days.html","url_meta":{"origin":132120,"position":0},"title":"The Good Ol&#039; Days","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Oct-16 10:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It is a truism that we look at the past with rose-colored glasses. Even if we remember particular bad things, it's against a romanticized background, of when people were better, morals were higher, the world was brighter and better. Originally shared by +Quotations - WIST - Wish I'd Said That:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":219,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/27\/taking_historic.html","url_meta":{"origin":132120,"position":1},"title":"Taking historical recreation a bit too far","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 27-May-03 11:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"Eric Muller recounts a bit of unexected discrimination at (of all places) Colonial Williamsburg. Weird....","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ZT &amp; PC&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ZT &amp; PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":577,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/09\/15\/my_least_favori.html","url_meta":{"origin":132120,"position":2},"title":"My least favorite commercial (of the moment)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 15-Sep-01 7:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Taxi driver recounts how he had heartburn. His passenger surprises him by asking him to try some of the Zantac he just happens to have with him. \"What are you,...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Media &amp; Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Media &amp; Culture","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":129540,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/23\/the-gop-choice-between-the-unthinkable-and-the-impossible.html","url_meta":{"origin":132120,"position":3},"title":"The GOP Choice between the Unthinkable and the Impossible","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 23-Jan-16 6:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"In what sane world does the GOP campaign come down to a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz? And, even more crazily, how is it that there are so many significant GOP figures actually lining up for Trump vs Cruz?And, at that (and as a Democrat who fears either\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130222,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/17\/can-the-anti-trump-gop-mount-a-3rd-party-opposition.html","url_meta":{"origin":132120,"position":4},"title":"Can the Anti-Trump GOP mount a 3rd Party opposition?","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 17-Mar-16 11:00pm","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a very weird tangle between the laws of states (who control how elections are run) and the rules of parties (who can choose candidates, in theory, however they want). Both the GOP and the Democrats have rigged the deck against third parties to keep them from winning, or keeping\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132403,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/20\/welcome-to-the-kleptocracy.html","url_meta":{"origin":132120,"position":5},"title":"Welcome to the Kleptocracy","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 20-Dec-16 11:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"People make fun of Russia with its corrupt oligarchs and bribery and influence-peddling and nouveau-riche Mafiosos grabbing public wealth and power.Which makes Russia-loving Donald Trump's current activities all the more fitting:1. Trump businesses contacting foreign officials and suggesting it might be keen if they moved events over to Trump properties\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/blog_trump_international_hotel5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132342,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132120\/revisions\/132342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}