Donald Trump Just Won’t Stop Making Drama: There was another terrible mass shooting in America with ten people killed during a Chinese New Year celebration in Monterey Park, Calif.
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By the end of the day, the suspect in the shooting, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, was dead of what police called a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The shooter, police said, had later tried to go to another dance studio, where he had his gun taken away and then fled on foot.
After a manhunt, he was found dead in Torrance, Calif.
People across the political spectrum often react to such mass shootings by beating their favorite political hobbyhorses.
Donald Trump Opens His Mouth and Looks Horrible
Former President Donald Trump did just that on Monday, but his reaction was even further afield than what is usually the case, even for Trump.
“10 dead in California shooting, horrible gun wielding ANTIFA protest against our great police in Atlanta – Nothing will happen to them despite night of rage and destruction,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday. “Yet our January 6th protestors, over a Rigged Election, have had their lives ruined despite nobody killed except true Patriot Ashli B. This situation will be fully rectified after 2024 Election. Thank you!”
What the tragedy in California has to do with January 6 protesters and their legal plight is unclear.
The line about the “horrible gun-wielding ANTIFA protest” appeared to be a reference to protests ongoing in Atlanta, where police killed an activist, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, who was shot while protesting the construction of a police training facility called “Cop City.”
“Nothing will happen to them despite night of rage and destruction” appears to be a reference to the widespread belief on the political right that participants in the type of protest and unrest associated with the political left are never caught or arrested, as opposed to the hundreds of arrests of participants in the January 6 riot.
Atlanta police have said that “several people” have been arrested in the recent unrest, and in the protests around the country that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020 resulted in “thousands” of arrests.
As for the idea that “nothing will happen” in the case of the California shooting, the suspect is already dead.
Trump Ready For a New Social Media Direction?
In the meantime, Truth Social’s days as the exclusive home of Trump’s unhinged rants may be coming to an end.
According to a Rolling Stone report on Sunday, the former president is “laying the groundwork for his big, bombastic return to major social media platforms”- and this will entail abandoning his own network, Truth Social.
Trump has an exclusivity agreement with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the owner of Truth Social, that runs through June, and he has told confidants that he does not plan to re-up that agreement.
Devin Nunes, the CEO of TMTG and a man who gave up his seat in Congress to take that job, said recently that the former president “has no interest in going back to Twitter.”
But others in Trump’s orbit disagree and believe that he will return to Twitter soon.
Elon Musk, upon taking over Twitter last fall, reinstated Trump’s account, which had been banned days after the January 6 Capitol riot. This meant Trump’s years of tweets returned to the platform, but Trump has not posted any new ones since then.
Trump’s campaign also wrote a letter last week to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asking for his account to be restored to that platform as well. Trump’s removal from Facebook, also in January of 2021, had been characterized as a two-year suspension, rather than a permanent ban.
The company has said they will announce a decision to the coming weeks on the status of Trump’s account.
NBC reported last week on how exactly Trump might announce his return to Twitter, and that he’s considering “a tweet that features a slickly made, WWE-style campaign video about the ex-president returning to the platform, and then to the White House.”
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Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
