Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:31 pm
As thousands of protesters took to the streets for the second night in a row to express their opposition to Donald Trump, the president-elect took to Twitter and struck the exact wrong tone.
Big surprise.
Instead of using the moment to call for unity and calm, Trump made things substantially worse by insulting the protesters and lying about their motive for speaking out.
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Tweet:
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
One of the unanswered questions following Tuesday’s election results was how Trump would conduct himself now that he is officially the president-elect. Would he tone down his erratic behavior and act, well, presidential?
In some ways, he has at least pretended to do that by offering complimentary words about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the last couple days – a huge reversal from his pre-election rhetoric, when he questioned Obama’s birthplace and promised to lock Clinton up.
But his tweet on Thursday night – rooted completely in the lie that thousands of protesters from all across the country are essentially being paid off – proves that the old Trump is still alive and well, and also never gets tired of blaming everybody else for problems he creates.
This is the exact wrong response by the president-elect in a moment when he should be doing everything he can to bring people together.
It’s no wonder Trump had his Twitter account taken from him in the closing days of the campaign.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
