9 times Trump was owned by his own tweets
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Culture
There's always, always a tweet.
Donald Trump tweets incessantly, a habit he began well before he became president and one that opponents are now using against him.
Whether it's in response to something Trump says, one of the many moments of chaos that occur every week of the Trump presidency, or just an old tweet that aged poorly, people are happy to throw old tweets back at Trump.
It's surprisingly easy -- just use Twitter's advanced search option and a few keywords -- but that doesn't make it any less wild how often Trump has gone back on previous statements. Sure, it's one thing for politicians to evolve, but this happens with enough regularity there's even an entire subreddit dedicated to it.
It's impossible all of these as there are literally hundreds. But below find some of the bigger examples, including a few very recent ones, that just go to show that
A laughing stock
Trump was, of course, relentlessly critical of President Barack Obama. One of his favorite insults was to insist that, under Obama, the United States was a laughing stock or that the world was laughing at us.
On September 25, 2018, though, the world quite literally laughed at Trump during his address before the United Nations.
It's quite something to see, especially when you consider how quickly those aforementioned criticisms of Obama were rendered moot in a matter of seconds.
How do you feel about Nikki Haley?
On Tuesday, Nikki Haley resigned from her position as the United States' ambassador to the United Nations, and Trump took time to heap praise upon the former South Carolina governor. "She's done a fantastic job, and we've done a fantastic job together," Trump said.
Those comments were a far cry, however, from how Trump felt about Haley back in 2016 when he was still fighting it out for the GOP nomination.
Of course, the bad blood was mutual with Haley being sharply critical of Trump. At least until Trump won, anyway.
The eye of a hurricane
On Wednesday, Trump went ahead with a planned rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, even as Hurricane Matthew blew onshore in Florida, leaving destruction in its wake. His reasoning: he didn't want to disappoint attendees who had lined up ahead of time.
Of course, it didn't take long for folks to find two great examples of Trump taking shots at Obama on the 2012 campaign trail during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, including one in which he blasted Obama for a fundraising stop two weeks after the storm.
On the road again
Speaking of travel, Trump has been quite the jet-setter himself, spending an inordinate amount of time away from the White House, either at one of his properties, playing golf, or holding one of his many "MAGA" rallies ahead of the midterms.
He's already done six rallies in the first 10 days of this month, with two additional rallies scheduled by October 13. Earlier this fall, the Washington Post noted that Trump had spent 48 of the 92 days between June 7, 2018 and Sept. 7, 2018 at either a rally or at one of his properties.
So of course there are old tweets in which he criticized Obama's traveling and golf during his presidency.
Guns in school
Like Clinton, Bush, and Obama before him, Trump has had to face the sad reality of school shootings as a too-common occurrence. The most high-profile example during Trump's tenure so far was the Parkland school shooting, which spawned a new anti-gun movement led by survivors, a meeting with gun violence victims in which Trump had some curious notes, and the president suggesting that teachers should be armed.
This is exact opposite of what he proclaimed on the campaign trail in 2016, when he tweeted that he didn't want guns in schools.
Striking Syria
During Obama's second term, Trump was highly critical of Obama's handling of Syria, the Bashar al-Assad regime, and the possibility of military action. Just as with everything else, he wasn't afraid to share his opinion, including in all-caps.
Obama would eventually order a strike on Syria in Sept. 2014, about a year after Trump sent the above tweets.
In April 2017, Trump decided it was time for action, ordering a strike on a Syrian air base in response to a Assad's use of chemical weapons as part of Syria's civil war. A year later, in April 2018, following another of Assad's chemical attacks, Trump ordered yet another military strike on Syria.
The fight over LGBTQ rights
During the 2016 campaign, Trump swore up and down he would do more than Hillary Clinton protect the rights of the LGBTQ community.
Well, here we are, almost two years into the administration and, so far, Trump's agenda has been horrible for LGBTQ rights.
- Trump has twice -- TWICE -- tried to band transgender citizens from serving in the military but has been rebuffed by the courts.
- Trump has repeatedly pushed judicial nominees that have anti-LGBTQ records, including Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch.
- Trump's Department of Justice filed a brief siding with a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple, essentially siding with the right to discriminate against customers on the basis of sexual orientation.
And that's just scratching the surface. (Vox and Buzzfeed have pretty detailed lists of the Trump administration's anti-LGBTQ actions and they are harrowing reads.)
So much for campaign promises.
Hail to the chiefs
As we've seen, Trump was always up to take shots at Obama whenever he could and that extended to Obama's staff and the heavy turnover at the top. Indeed, Obama went through four different chiefs-of-staff during his first term. (Though Denis McDonough served in that position for the entirety of Obama's second term.)
But before Obama won re-election, Trump let fly with a crack aimed at the revolving door in the Obama administration.
While it's true that Trump has been through only two chiefs-of-staffs so far, it still remains a real possibility that he equals or even betters Obama's number of chiefs.
And the tweet seems even worse in hindsight, given the chaos that has engulfed Trump's White House with an "unprecedented" turnover in staff less than two years into his first term.
A failed agenda
In 2016, Trump ascended to the White House with both the House and Senate in Republican control, paving the way for what should have been a legislative steamrolling.
And, sure, Trump has managed to get plenty of bills and other key items approved -- namely two Supreme Court justices and his tax cut legislation -- his first two years aren't any sort of improvement over Obama's first two years which he was highly critical of.
Trump has faced some big league failures as well, as his own health care and immigration legislation have both been defeated, and he's failed to secure funding for his long-promised border wall.
It's led to great consternation on Trump's part as these defeats have revealed, whether or not he realizes it, that it's a lot easier to hurl criticisms about political agendas than it is to actually pass an agenda.
If anything, Trump has learned how to chip away at things piecemeal, as evidenced by the way he's slowly altered the health care system previously laid out by Obama's Affordable Care Act.
And, like Obama, Trump is likely to learn that no matter what legislation you pass in those first two years, voters will reward a president by taking away his party's congressional advantage.
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