Photo courtesy of Shealah Craighead, Wikipedia
Donald Trump is no stranger to tweeting some of the most nonsensical statements ever seen by human eyes. Even with the increased character count on Twitter, he still tweets sentences that are so poorly written, they sound like something a second grader wrote in a desperate attempt to get their work pinned up on the fridge.
Last Wednesday was no different, although it was more shocking than the usual morning Twitterstorm from the President.
Trump retweeted three videos from Britain First, a far-right, nationalist group based in the United Kingdom. The first video depicts a Muslim beating up a boy with crutches. The second video is of a Muslim smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary. The final video is of a group of Muslims pushing a boy off of a building. The veracity of these videos is in question, with at least one being an obvious fake.
Trump’s love for Anti-Muslim propaganda is common knowledge, but it’s interesting to note that Trump did not comment on the videos when he retweeted them. This led to a lot of speculation as to why those videos were retweeted at all. This could be intended as a distraction from something or as more propaganda for his message of stronger borders. Every tweet that followed the videos were about tax reform.
Indeed, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders mentioned that the videos were pushing Trump’s initial messages for stronger borders and strong national security.
"That is what the President is talking about, that is what the President is focused on, is dealing with those real threats, and those are real no matter how you look at it," she said.
This seems to be pretty par for the course, as far as Donald Trump’s use of Twitter. Trump tweets about everything from women’s dresses to actual policy issues. I will say though, that is interesting to note that he didn’t comment something along the lines of, “Watch this poor man get attacked by radical Islamists! Sad!”
While people in other countries find it offensive and absolutely appalling, I can’t help but be moot about the whole thing. There are so many other things that the President should be focused on, and he chose to retweet some videos. While I will say that the videos were in poor taste, it’s Twitter, and anyone can post whatever they want to. I don’t condone the videos in the slightest, but choosing to press on about this is pointless. He won’t address the situation and anything he does say will be completely unrelated and will end up leaving us with more questions than answers.
It’s time we as a collective whole stopped worrying about what he tweets.
It’s pointless, it leads to more speculation than substance and it’s agitating to watch pundits waste their time trying to decipher “covfefe” and other nonsense. Instead, we should ignore him, and the entire cabinet.
Reporters and journalists should focus on state governments because they have a direct impact on the lives of our nation’s citizens on a day-to-day basis. Come 2018, we should reclaim the house and senate, and in 2020, take our country back from this man that I am forced to call my President.
kferlita@ramapo.edu
