President Donald Trump sent out a flurry of tweets on Thursday morning defending himself against media critiques of his disjointed speeches that have varied wildly in tone in the last several days.
He made several spelling and grammatical errors in the initial messages that were immediately noticed and mocked by social media users, prompting him to send out new versions that he layered on top of the existing statements. The older tweets were later deleted.
‘The Fake News is now complaining about my different types of back to back speeches. Well, their was Afghanistan (somber), the big Rally,’ he said the first go around, ‘(enthusiastic, dynamic and fun) and the American Legion – V.A. (respectful and strong).To bad the Dems have no one who can change tones!’
President Donald Trump sent out a flurry of tweets on Thursday morning defending himself against media critiques of his disjointed speeches that have varied wildly in tone in the last several days
He made several spelling and grammatical errors in the initial messages that were immediately noticed and mocked by social media users, prompting him to send out new versions that he layered on top of the existing statements
The two tweets contained several mistakes, including the use of ‘their’ when he meant ‘there’ and ‘to’ instead of ‘too.’
Trump tried again a half-hour later in a set of tweets that correctly deployed the word ‘there’ – but let in place the grammatically incorrect ‘to.’
A third attempt did the job, with Trump tweeting five minutes after the first correction: ‘(enthusiastic, dynamic and fun) and the American Legion – V.A. (respectful and strong). Too bad the Dems have no one who can change tones!’
The Washington Post, a favorite target of Trump’s in his ‘fake news’ broadsides, had assessed Wednesday evening Trump had adopted a chameleon-like approach to giving speeches in a desperate effort to save his presidency.
First came Trump’s measured remarks on Afghanistan and Charlottesville from Fort Myer on Monday, where the president read from a teleprompter and told the nation, ‘When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate.’
The next day he told a large crowd of his supporters in Phoenix that it was the ‘damned dishonest’ media that was dividing the country as he mused that many in the press are ‘bad people.’
‘I really think they don’t like our country. I really believe that,’ he said.
The older tweets were later deleted and replaced with ones that cleaned up Trump’s grammar
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had reeled at the president’s remarks on CNN afterward. He questioned Trump’s ‘fitness’ for office and his ‘motivation’ for being in the White House.
Later on Wednesday Trump spoke to the American Legion in Nevada.
‘It is time to heal the wounds that divide us and to seek a new unity based on the common values that unite us,’ he said, swinging the pendulum back on the other direction.
Clapper said in reflective comments on Wednesday that America was seeing the ‘real Trump’ in the off-the-cuff remarks and commented his ‘Jekyll-Hyde’ act is ‘very disturbing.’
Trump took a swing at him, too, on Thursday morning.
‘James Clapper, who famously got caught lying to Congress, is now an authority on Donald Trump. Will he show you his beautiful letter to me?’ Trump said in a tweet that made reference to Clapper’s mea culpa in 2013 that he made a ‘clearly erroneous’ statement to Congress about domestic spying.
The Washington Post described Trump’s maneuvering in a piece that posted on Wednesday night as ‘whiplash’ that ‘exemplifies the confusion and chaos that have come to define his presidency.
‘Is Trump trying to heal the wounds of a country torn over this month’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville? Or is he trying to pull it further apart?’ White House Correspondent Phil Rucker asked.
In addition to Clapper, the Post brought up Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee’s comments last week about the president.
Corker, the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said after Trump’s response to Charlottesville, ‘The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.’