Washington: Former US President Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of ‘fury and bitterness’ on social media focused on his legal woes in his Christmas message to supporters, giving a virtual trailer on his personal obsessions and discords he will inflict on the nation in 2024.
Most global political, spiritual and national leaders mark Christmas with a plea for peace, or by stressing the virtues of family and unity. But that’s not Donald Trump’s style.
The ex-President unleashed an online torrent of fury and bitterness, largely over his legal plights, spanning Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, previewing the discord and personal obsessions he will inflict on the nation in a pivotal election year in 2024, media reports said.
Trump said that he will include ‘thugs’ of United States who are ‘looking to destroy our once great USA’.
“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former President posted.
Trump raged at President Joe Biden and special counsel Jack Smith making “expansive and false claims” that his attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 elections represented a vital defence of American democracy and were thus perfectly legal, CNN reported, analysing his social media posts, particularly on his own Truth Social.
Trump virtually laced his rhetoric with extreme views on immigration, drawing a parallel with Nazism of the 1940s and presented an outlook of unlimited presidential power which critics feared would unveil his autocracy if he wins the 2024 electiona. True to his statement of being dictator for a day in his presidency.
Even as moderate right-wingers in his party have asked him to forget 2020 and focus on 2024, Trump, the front-runner in GOP, continued to underscore his alleged claims about ‘stolen’ elections three years ago, making it the sheet anchor of his 2024 political campaign.
Trump’s tirades come at a time when Americans celebrate Christmas with loved ones and seek a moment of peace, that clearly shows his furious state of mind and extreme state of denialism.
”These are likely to raise new concerns about his temperament and suitability to serve again as commander-in-chief and are a dark omen as to what another Trump term could bring,” experts in the CNN wrote.
In one of his posts, Trump showed a mixture of anger and self-pity while making multiple false or questionable claims.
He claimed the government spied on his campaigns, lied to Congress, cheated on FISA, rigged Presidential elections, allowed millions, many from prisons and mental institutions, to invade the country.
“They screwed up in Afghanistan and Joe Biden’s MISIFTS & THUGS like deranged Jack Smith are coming after me at levels of persecution never seen before in our country,” Trump posted in his Christmas message.
His mood barely changed even during the festive season as he accused Biden of presiding over election interference, in a reference to the 91 criminal charges and four criminal trials he is awaiting. Biden was not even the President when the charges of tax fraud were brought against Trump.
Trump’s legal cloud hangs heavy over him: Trump appeared particularly exercised by the massive legal cloud over his future, especially the probes related to alleged election interference.
He slammed Smith, who is bringing a federal case against him in Washington, and pushed his legal team’s claims that his attempts to overturn the 2020 elections were in fact merely the act of a President doing his duty to ensure a free and fair elections.
Such claims will be considered by an appeals court and ultimately probably the US Supreme Court.
Trump also lashed out at the Colorado Supreme Court that ruled that he was ineligible for office because of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists. This case is also expected to end up before the US Supreme Court.
Trump’s claims that he was acting in line with his presidential authority fly in the face of evidence already available about his own behaviour, for instance his phone call in which he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes to help him overturn Biden’s victory in a critical swing state.
And just last week, the Detroit News reported on a recording of a call in which Trump urged two Michigan county officials not to certify election results from Detroit in 2020.
His strong rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have not denounced him for his behaviour but only attacked his policies, reports said.
The fact that Haley and DeSantis, competing to be Trump’s alternatives, do not dare to hammer the ex-President over the January 6, 2021 Capitol attacks, because Trump’s lies on election fraud that have been disproved with hard evidence still become orthodoxy for the grassroots GOP base, CNN experts wrote.
–IANS