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It appears US president Donald Trump didn’t pay much attention to the recent No More Kings protests, as the Republican has once again deployed the language of royalty to suggest it is “almost treasonous” to criticise him.
Seemingly forgetting about the existence of the first amendment, the convicted felon took to Truth Social in the early hours of Thursday morning and fumed: “Worked really hard, 24/7, took in Trillions of Dollars, and [Senate Democratic leader] Chuck Schumer said trip was ‘a total dud’, even though he knows it was a spectacular success. Words like that are almost treasonous!”
The trip in question concerns Trump’s visit to China to meet with its president, Xi Jinping, and in comments issued in the Senate on Wednesday, Schumer did indeed describe the trip – then underway - as a “total dud”.
He said: “President Trump’s trip to the Asian continent could have been a real opportunity to make progress with America’s vital trading partners. He could have used this trip to end his reckless trade war, to stop alienating our allies, to show strength and unite our allies against the Chinese Communist Party, and, most importantly, to help Americans struggling with high costs here at home.
“But so far, his trip has been a total dud. By the end of his trip to Asia, it could be the case that we somehow have higher tariffs on our neighbor Canada than we do against our biggest rival China. How on earth does that make sense?
“In fact, the biggest news out of this trip is that Donald Trump seems to have realized he can’t run for a third term. That just goes to show you how fruitless this trip has been.”
To be clear, treason is a crime in the United States, but it goes quite a way beyond merely being critical of the president and their administration.
It concerns instances where a person “owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere” – and we can’t believe we’re writing this, but that obviously isn’t happening here.
And so, the latest overreaction from Trump to any criticism has been met with ridicule online:
Democratic content creator Harry Sisson tweeted that the rant is “exactly why America hates [Trump]”:
Fellow political commentator Richard Angwin branded it “the tantrum of a fragile ego terrified of accountability”:
And policy consultant Adam Cochran said “being critical of leadership is as American as apple pie”:
It’s not the only wild moment to occur on Truth Social recently, as Trump also had another ‘covfefe’ style blunder on his social media platform…
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