Before we go too far down the rabbit hole, here’s the TL; DR: Former President Donald Trump thinks he’s going to be arrested soon, and he’s freaking out about it online.
Not too long ago, there was a time when former President Donald Trump’s latest Twitter panic was pretty much news du jour. Of course, the Republican Party big man has since quit Twitter — even after Elon Musk unbanned him and practically begged him to come back — so the latest rant was posted on Truth Social, Trump’s own site.
Just for clarity: it’s not entirely clear if, or when, Trump will be charged and, in turn, arrested. The former president repeatedly claimed he was going to be arrested on Tuesday, without providing any evidence as to why he believed it. After making that statement on Saturday, the former president essentially called for mass protests in a shocking way similar to the Jan. 6 Capitol uprising.
“IT’S TIME!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “WE CANNOT ALLOW THIS ANY MORE. THEY KILL OUR NATION WHILE WE SIT AND WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
Since then, it’s basically been an extended rant.
Now, you’d be excused if you lost track of why, exactly, Trump might be arrested. After all, there have been countless investigations, cases and scandals. At issue is a New York grand jury’s investigation into Trump’s alleged silent money payments to cover up sexual encounters. It’s the whole Stormy Daniels scandal coming home.
So, believing he’s going to be charged and arrested, Trump goes back to his usual playbook. You can see it all at his Truth Social page(Opens in a new tab), but the beats are relatively predictable. The country lived through it for, oh, I don’t know, five or six years?
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He attacks his presumed enemies. he is affirming(Opens in a new tab) Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is being paid by “‘TRUMP’s’ radical left-wing enemy George Soros.”
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Trump is both affirming(Opens in a new tab) he didn’t do anything wrong and anyway, even if he did, they can’t do anything about it. “There are MANY years past the statute of limitations which in this case is TWO YEARS. More importantly, THERE WAS NO CRIME!!!” he wrote on Monday.
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he is ditching(Opens in a new tab) his former pal and lawyer Michael Cohen, calling him a “CONVICTED LIAR, FELON AND JAILBIRD.” Cohen went to jail(Opens in a new tab) for paying off Daniels and model Karen McDougal.
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he is pleading(Opens in a new tab) with the NYPD for not arresting him, saying (in all caps, of course): “CAN YOU IMAGINE THE GREAT NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT…TO DEFEND AND PROTECT THE “DEFUNDERS” & “COP “HATERS OF THE RADICAL LEFT WHO WANT TO PUT THEIR GREATEST CHAMPION AND FRIEND IN JAIL FOR A CRIME THAT DOESN’T EXIST (?)”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But you catch the drift. In recent days, Trump has treated Truth Social like he’s treated Twitter for years. He throws attacks, ideas and justifications at the wall like so many strands of spaghetti, hoping for a stick or two. Of course, Truth Social is nothing more than an echo chamber of sycophants, so its hardcore supporters eat it all up. Slightly different from Twitter, when people have built all of their characters online(Opens in a new tab) around responding indignantly to Trump’s messages.
The tweet may have been deleted
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It’s almost impossible to sum up all of Trump’s complaints and rants over the past few days. But it all pretty much touches on the rhythms listed above. He repeatedly attacks Bragg; he evokes Soros; and he says he did nothing wrong. Hilarious he is assignment(Opens in a new tab) screenshots of tweets on its own competitor site.
Seeing Trump In fact to be charged for it would be to be strange – the man has twisted(Opens in a new tab) the worst – the rest looks very familiar. Trump is a problem and he publishes relentlessly. Only this time he screams into a void of his own creation.
