The loneliest man on earth
Being Donald Trump might be punishment enough. (Well, not really, but it's still bad.)
I’ve never seen The Last Emperor, one of these prestige Best Picture Oscar winners that no one really remembers, but the tag line from its poster always stuck with me:
It’s what I thought about when I read about the former President TRUTHing furiously this past weekend. Does this look like the work of a man who’s happy with his lot in life?
Former President Donald Trump is not having a good weekend, if the postings on his TRUTH Social account are any indication of his mood. In multiple posts, some directly from his account and some shared (or “ReTruthed” — TRUTH Social’s term for retweeting) from others, Trump conveyed his vexation with a wide range of targets including Twitter, the Wall Street Journal, and his former endorsee Alabama Senate candidate Mo Brooks.
Oh, and Trump also shared what seemed to be a call for civil war.
[…]
The former president seemed to be making up for lost time this weekend, dropping rants on a variety of topics and echoing the daily Festivus-style airing of grievances tone of his former Twitter account.
One post that drew particular notice was shared from an account called “MAGA King Thanos” that added the caption “Civil war” to a screenshot of a Lara Logan post from the President of El Salvador saying that the “most powerful country in the world” was “falling so fast” and “[s]omething so big and powerful can’t be destroyed so quickly, unless the enemy comes from within.”
That’s the same President of El Salvador who bet his entire country’s economy on cryptocurrency, by the way. A fellow really stable genius, obviously.1
Other posts expressed Trump’s frustration with Twitter, which permanently banned him after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump has claimed he doesn’t mind not being on Twitter, but still negotiated his agreement with TRUTH Social to allow him broad freedom to post on Twitter if he is ever allowed back on.
Trump shared a post from a user named “Jarvis Patriot” that called for all Jan. 6 “political prisoners” to be freed, portraying the situation as a “Grandmother who took selfies in the Capitol” being jailed without bail while Jussie Smollett, Alec Baldwin, and Hunter Biden were all “free.” Smollett has been sentenced to 150 days in jail plus $145,000 in fines and restitution but has been allowed to remain out on bail during his appeal; Baldwin and Biden have not been charged with any crimes. And the Jan. 6 defendants are facing charges that encompass behavior far more troubling and horrifically violent than simply “taking selfies.”
The man has millions of dollars at his disposal and Russian oligarchs suckers lenders still willing to give him more. He has luxury apartments and a country club stocked with literal gold-plated furniture. A beautiful wife, adorable grandchildren, and enough free time to play all the golf he wants, a private jet (maybe) and a literal army and millions of cultish followers ready to do his every bidding, even trying to overthrow the government.
And I wouldn’t trade places with him for any price.
I’ll have a book review post on the subject later this week, but I’m actually still crypto-agnostic. I don’t think the recent crash means it’s done for good. In fact, I’m buying the dip - on an extremely small scale.
But it’s one thing to throw a little bit of beer money at it, like I’ve done, and another thing to bet the national treasury on Bitcoin.