Hey Donald Trump, we all know you’ve let an impersonator take over your Twitter account
Hey Donald Trump, just a heads up: you’re not fooling anyone on this one. Unless you woke up with an entirely new personality, new vocabulary, and new technical skills, that’s not you on Twitter anymore. You’ve allowed one of you handlers to take over your Twitter account and begin impersonating you in a more mild mannered fashion – and it’s not a particularly convincing impersonation.
Take a look at the first tweet posted by “Donald Trump” this morning, in which he makes a self deprecating joke about his “covfefe” incident from the night before. But Trump doesn’t understand self deprecation. This is not his handiwork:
Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
Then we’ve got the rant about Carter Page rant which also supposedly came from Donald Trump today. But if you’ve been following Trump on Twitter and in real life, you’re aware that he doesn’t know what a word like “excoriated” means, nor would he know how to spell it:
So now it is reported that the Democrats, who have excoriated Carter Page about Russia, don't want him to testify. He blows away their….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
And then there’s this attack on Kathy Griffin, in which he seeks empathy for his son Barron Trump. It’s the kind of reaction that a normal father might have. But there’s nothing in Donald Trump’s psychological makeup that suggests he understands concepts like empathy:
Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
Finally there’s this tweet in which Trump refers to Republican Senators as all being “good people.” This is not how Trump speaks about members of Congress, not even those from his own party. It would never occur to him to shower them with blanket praise in the hope of getting them all to come around to his way of thinking:
Hopefully Republican Senators, good people all, can quickly get together and pass a new (repeal & replace) HEALTHCARE bill. Add saved $'s.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
So who’s taken over Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account on Twitter? Is it his longtime social media handler Dan Scavino? Is it his new attorney Marc Kasowitz? Is it someone in his newly assembled Trump-Russia war room? That’s still unclear. But what it clear is that none of these tweets came from Trump himself. And so now we have someone impersonating the President of the United States, in the first person, on his Twitter account. This is even more troubling than covfefe.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report