I’m about four hours late to this story because I was watching Ivy Meeropol’s excellent documentary about the very evil Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s mentor, on HBO. And then I stayed to watch Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney in a terrific film called “Bad Education.”
And while I was watching “Bad Education,” the story of the latest awful thing Donald Trump has done started popping up everywhere. Apparently he Tweeted out a fake video on his account. The video was actually Fake News. Someone manipulated a real news story about two little toddlers, black and white, greeted each other with an enthusiastic embrace on the street. It really happened, and many news outlets reported it the other day.
But the manipulated version added fake chyron from CNN, turned in into a story of hate, so that the headline is “Terrified Todler Runs from Racist Baby.” Todler is spelled wrong. Whoever worked it up dressed it as if it had been a CNN story. It was all fake. A woman named Amy wrote to me on Twitter and said it was just a joke, no one should take it seriously. I am afraid not just for her sanity, but her a moral compass that doesn’t exist.
But this was Tweeted by the President of the United States. He thought it was funny. It’s a racist joke, and he thought it was funny. He thought it was okay to present it under his aegis as a “real” video. Donald Trump is a very sick man. He’s angry that LGBTQ people now cannot be fired from jobs because of their sex or gender preference. He’s horrified that DACA people– literally 700,000 young people — now have the right to stay in the United States. And now this. He’s a demented, sick person who must be voted out of office in November. How could anyone in their right mind want him to represent us? He’s morally and mentally debased.
Basically, he is so demented that he hates everyone.
It’s been four hours since this started. In that time, no one in the White House has taken down this Tweet. What does that say about these people? Have they lost their minds, if they had minds to begin with? I am thoroughly nauseated. I hope you are, too.
The people or person who made the video is called Carpe Donktum. Twitter has added a warning that their video is “manipulated” but didn’t remove it. I can’t believe Jack Dorsey has let this go on so long. It’s very disappointing.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020