President Donald Trump started his Monday (Oct. 12) in his typical fashion: with a Tweetstorm that made Kanye West look calm level-headed. In this massive rant, full of racism and campaign slogans, Donald, 74, vomited hate towards all his enemies, including California, New York, and Illinois. “California is going to hell. Vote Trump!” “New York has gone to hell. Vote Trump!” “Illinois has no place to go. Sad, isn’t it? Vote Trump!” It should be noted that all three states’ governors – California’s Gavin Newsom, New York’s Andrew Cuomo, and Illinois’ J. B. Pritzker – have criticized Trump’s COVID-19 response (or lack thereof).
All three states also were Hillary Clinton-supporting in the 2016 election, and former Vice President Joe Biden currently has a 30-point polling lead over Trump in all three states. It appears that Trump asserting these states have “gone to hell” was just another attack on his political rivals. During the Oct. 12 tweetstorm, Trump also took a shot at Antifa, the favorite boogeyman of the right (“Taking advantage of fools. Law & Order! Portland, call in the Feds!” “These are Biden fools. ANTIFA RADICALS. Get them FBI, and get them now!”) He also said that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “should have been prosecuted” for saying that Trump’s appointed Supreme Court justices would “pay the price” if they chipped away at women’s reproductive rights (h/t Washington Post)
Trump also continued to sow distrust in the upcoming election by retweeting stories about post office incidents while repeating the word, “Rigged!” During all this, Trump erroneously retweeted Astead W. Herndon (@AsteadWesley), a national politics reporter at The New York Times and a CNN political analyst. Astead tweeted, “ppl may have other answers, but they’re wrong. This was firmly Trump’s best tweet.” The tweet in question? “A$AP Rocky released from prison and on his way home to the United States from Sweden. It was a Rocky Week, get home ASAP A$AP!”
Donald has famously gone after Astead’s employers, calling them childish insults like “The failing New York Times.” It’s possible that Trump – who Melania Trump reportedly said was “vain” – searched for “Trump” and “Best” for something to retweet to his followers, and found @AsteadWestley’s comment.
Donald Trump, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 2, will return to the campaign trail tonight (Oct. 12) at an event in Sanford, Florida. The event will take place at an airport in the battleground state. On Sunday (Oct. 11), Trump tweeted that he got “a total and complete sign off from White House Doctors yesterday. That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it.” There is no evidence that people are immune from COVID-19 after contracting it, per CNN, and Twitter flagged the tweet for “violating the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19.”