At some point on Wednesday, someone clearly told Donald Trump that he needed to act “presidential” or at least give himself some plausible deniability re: inciting the violent mob that stormed Capitol Hill and where one person was killed. We know this because he appeared in a video telling his supporters to “go home” and tweeted something to a similar effect. And we know he didn’t mean a word of it, and he was seemingly loving the domestic terrorism occurring in his honor, because of everything else he said.
In the video, in addition to telling people to leave the Capitol, he also continued to insist that he won the election and told the mob, like only a truly insane narcissist can, “You’re very special” and “we love you,” which is not something normal people hoping to discourage certain actions do. And in a subsequent tweet, he wrote this astonishingly fucking crazy series of words, as though he was signing his favorite domestic terrorist’s yearbook: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Shortly thereafter, Twitter deleted both:
That followed Facebook’s call re: the video, with an executive for the company writing:
Unfortunately, Trump is clearly so far gone that he is still—at this very moment!—claiming he not only won the election but did so in a “landslide,” so we’re sure he’ll find a way to continue getting his message out, even if it means taking a major news network hostage in order to air his incoherent rants, or releasing a series of videos on whitehouse.gov featuring him humming the tune of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” to his supporters.
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