Outside the Beltway

Outside the Beltway

Trump Begins 2019 With All-Caps Rage Tweet

President Trump began 2019 pretty much how he ended 2018, with irrational rants on Twitter.

Doug Mataconis
54

President Trump began 2019 pretty much the same way he ended 2018, with a deranged Tweetstorm, but this one was unique:

President Donald Trump rung in the new year Tuesday morning with a word of advice for Americans: “Just calm down and enjoy the ride.”

In his second post to Twitter of 2019, Trump wished everyone — “including the haters and the fake news media” — a caps-lock happy new year.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” the president wrote on Twitter. “JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!”

Trump’s new year’s message arrived on the 11th day of a partial government shutdown that has no end in sight. The White House has butted heads with Congressional Democrats over funding for the president’s long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, with Trump insisting on money for the wall as a condition for his signature on any legislation to reopen the government.

Here’s the President’s “Happy New Year” Tweet in all it’s bizarre glory:

As I said on Twitter, “CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE” sounds like something you’d hear from a deranged man driving a bus 120mph the wrong way down a highway. In other words, it’s a perfect metaphor for Trumpidian America.

, , ,

54 responses to “Trump Begins 2019 With All-Caps Rage Tweet”

  1. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    I don’t follow Trump on Twitter; I don’t have to, I follow enough people who retweet the things that he says. I do however, follow Obama on Twitter, and it’s good for the mental health and happiness. Remembrance of things past.

    19
  2. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    It is truly bizarre.

    10
  3. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    This is bizarre even for Trump.

    7
  4. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE,

    someone on Twitter suggested this is the sort of thing you hear when the homeless schizophrenic guy commandeers the city bus and starts driving a hundred miles an hour down the wrong direction.

    13
  5. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    @Teve:

    I said that myself.

    6
  6. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    SERENITY NOW!

    9
  7. SenyorDave Avatar
    SenyorDave

    Maybe I need Pearce to explain why I’m wrong to expect it, but can’t Trump at least pretend to be the president of all Americans, not just those who support him.
    IMO, the fake media crap alone makes him unfit for the office.

    14
  8. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    @Mister Bluster:

    Serenity now, insanity later.

    7
  9. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    @Doug Mataconis: weird! I went to Twitter and searched for that phrase to see where I saw it, but Twitter returned 55,000 results, so lord only knows where.

    2
  10. Timothy Watson Avatar
    Timothy Watson

    As I said on Twitter, “CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE” sounds like something you’d hear from a deranged man driving a bus 120mph the wrong way down a highway.

    Also sounds like something a rapist would say.

    Oh, that’s right.

    10
  11. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    @Teve:

    It’s a very easy analogy to make so I’m not surprised others did.

  12. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    @Timothy Watson:

    I was tempted to make that analogy but went with the lunatic driving the bus instead.

    5
  13. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    @Timothy Watson:

    That was also all over Twitter.

    2
  14. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    I’M FINE! I’M FINE, DAMMIT. GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! CALM DOWN GODDAMMIT! WAIT ARE YOU SECRETLY WORKING WITH MUELLER? THAT’S IT ISN’T IT! EVERYONE’S OUT TO GET ME! IS THAT A STRAIT JACKET? GET THAT AWAY FROM ME, I’M FINE! NO! NO! I’M F-I-I-I-I-NE!

    14
  15. Timothy Watson Avatar
    Timothy Watson

    @Doug Mataconis: @Teve:

    I guess I overestimate the originality of my sarcastic comments!

    1
  16. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    @Timothy Watson: there’s a reason Trump sounds like a sexual abuser.

    4
  17. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    interesting graph.

    In the last 4 years every voter demographic has moved towards the Democrats except 2: the elderly, and whites with no college.

    4
  18. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    @Teve: @Doug Mataconis: As far back as 2009, quite a while before Trump entered the political scene let alone became POTUS, one comedian described Trump as what a hobo imagines a rich person to be.

    http://www.cc.com/video-clips/the4zg/comedy-central-presents-donald-trump

    5
  19. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    I guess I overestimate the originality of my sarcastic comments!

    What goes around comes around.
    (I’ve always claimed that this utterance is a lame ass cliché.
    I guess it all depends on your interpretation.)

    King James Version
    Ecclesiastes 1:9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

    Wycliffe
    Ecclesiastes 1:9 What is that thing that was, that that shall come? What is that thing that is made, that that shall be made? Nothing under the sun is new, (What is that thing that was, but that which shall come again? What is that thing that is made, but that which shall be made later? Nothing is new under the sun,)

    The murderous history of Bible translations
    In 1427, Pope Martin ordered that John Wycliffe’s bones be exhumed from their grave, burned and cast into the river Swift. Wycliffe had been dead for 40 years, but his offence still rankled.

    2
  20. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    Trump owns a shrinking Republican party.

    3
  21. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    To be chronologically correct I should have listed Wycliff first and King James next.

    2
  22. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Mister Bluster: They’re both kind of terrible and verbose, but at least the King James Version rhymes.

    1
  23. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    There was a bit of a hubbub back in 1990 when a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas said that if a woman was being raped, and she couldn’t do anything about it, she should just “lie back and enjoy it”.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/26/us/texas-candidate-s-comment-about-rape-causes-a-furor.html

    It’s apparently a statement so stupid that I remembered it 28 years later.

    3
  24. dmhlt Avatar
    dmhlt

    What might have been …
    Compare it to Hillary’s New Year’s greeting:
    https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1079764115688747009

    4
  25. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    @Gustopher:

    There was a bit of a hubbub back in 1990 when a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas said that if a woman was being raped, and she couldn’t do anything about it, she should just “lie back and enjoy it”.

    His statement came when bad weather conditions threatened to spoil a campaign event, and he offhandedly remarked that weather was like rape in that “If it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.” He came into the race with a double-digit lead over his opponent, Ann Richards, who ultimately managed to eke out a narrow victory, becoming the most recent Democratic governor of Texas, before she was defeated by George W. Bush one term later. It’s popularly believed that Clayton Williams’ “joke” cost him the election (whether it did or not is up for debate, as it was merely the first of a string of blunders), making him a forerunner to the two 2012 Senatorial candidates who blew elections by making dumb, offensive remarks about rape. It’s apparently something that even red states don’t put up with.

    7
  26. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    @Gustopher:

    There was a bit of a hubbub back in 1990 when a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas said that if a woman was being raped, and she couldn’t do anything about it, she should just “lie back and enjoy it”.

    A NYC weatherman named Tex Antoine said something similar during a broadcast in November 1976.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex_Antoine#Rape_quip_and_final_years

    I lived in NY till June 1976 and remember Antoine. Antoine was drunk on the air more than once.

  27. Mr. Prosser Avatar
    Mr. Prosser

    I thought it funny that your photo of tweeting trump was juxtaposed next to a photo of a snarling bear entering a tent on the From the Web stuff on the right hand side.

  28. gVOR08 Avatar
    gVOR08

    @Teve:

    In the last 4 years every voter demographic has moved towards the Democrats except 2: the elderly, and whites with no college.

    That old people, my cohort, who depend on SS, heavily vote R just makes me crazy. Surely there’s some way Ds can package the truth about Rs and SS into a convincing message.

    4
  29. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    @gVOR08: GOP leadership has been very clear that they want to cut social security and Medicare. Perhaps if you watch Fox news all day you just never hear that?

    3
  30. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    @gVOR08: @Teve: Oh, they’ve heard it. But they know any cuts will only affect those not yet retired. So they don’t care.

    It’s another manifestation of the Republicans’ overriding motto: “Fuck you, I got mine.”

    4
  31. Stormy Dragon Avatar
    Stormy Dragon

    JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!

    Is this the Trump equivalent of “close your eyes and think of England”?

  32. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Considering that in New Year’s 2019 America achieved the most distant fly-by ever in space, you’d think someone concerned with making their country great “again” could have led the day’s Tweets with that.

    Even Nixon ad the sense to attach his name to the famous Earth Rise photo taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts.

    3
  33. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    @Kathy: for weeks Trump bragged about the stock market on Twitter, then it fell 20%, so now he’s bragging about gas prices and not saying anything about the stock market.

    3
  34. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Teve: Maybe if he starts bragging about how high the gas prices are, and how good that is for our oil companies, gas prices will drop 20%

    3
  35. rachel Avatar
    rachel

    @Kathy: How? Nixon was just a candidate then.

  36. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @rachel:

    President elect.

    He brought up the photo in his inauguration.

  37. Just nutha ignint cracker Avatar
    Just nutha ignint cracker

    @Teve: Well duh… why would Fox News tell old people that the GOP wants to cut SS and Medicare? Where’s the listenership for THAT?

    2
  38. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    Farmers were already hurting under Trump. they’re about to hurt even worse.

  39. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    @Doug Mataconis: Originality is just undiscovered plagiarism.

    And yes, I plagiarized that.

    1
  40. James Pearce Avatar
    James Pearce

    @SenyorDave:

    Maybe I need Pearce to explain why I’m wrong to expect it, but can’t Trump at least pretend to be the president of all Americans, not just those who support him.

    No matter the result of 2016, we weren’t going to get a president who even pretended to represent “All Americans.”

    Tribalism. It’s great, ain’t it?

    1
  41. Michael Reynolds Avatar
    Michael Reynolds

    @James Pearce:
    Yeah, because Hillary was a girl. And a girl can’t represent dudes, amiright?

    3
  42. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    OT but interesting bit from Max boot a couple of months ago:

    In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites. As I now look back with the clarity of hindsight, I am convinced that coded racial appeals had at least as much, if not more, to do with the electoral success of the modern Republican Party than all of the domestic and foreign policy proposals crafted by well-intentioned analysts like me. This is what liberals have been saying for decades. I never believed them. Now I do, because Trump won by making the racist appeal, hitherto relatively subtle, obvious even to someone such as me who used to be in denial.

    3
  43. James Pearce Avatar
    James Pearce

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Yeah, because Hillary was a girl. And a girl can’t represent dudes, amiright?

    No, because she separated the electorate into deplorables and non-deplorables, and then lost a very winnable election to a bizarre, unprofessional reality TV star.

    Sorry, dude, but Clinton being a woman is neither here nor there. It’s the legacy of failure that I can’t stand.

    2
  44. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    @James Pearce: There are 2 kinds of people who voted for trump: The racists, and those who are OK with a racist in the white house. I don’t find either one admirable in any way shape or form.

    2
  45. James Pearce Avatar
    James Pearce

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    There are 2 kinds of people who voted for trump: The racists, and those who are OK with a racist in the white house. I don’t find either one admirable in any way shape or form.

    62 million people voted for him. You think they all fit your stereotype?

    1
  46. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    @OzarkHillbilly: There was at least one other group that voted for Trump. That group could be best described as “what do I have to lose. I vote for politicians all the time and they keep fcking me maybe he’ll do something different”… I also talked to more than one person that thought for sure Trump’s amazing business skills would be fantastic as president….

    There is a relatively sizable portion of people who are tired of getting fcked but can’t be bothered to spend the time to investigate who is fcking them. Of those a large portion get their news from Fox…..

    1
  47. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    @James Pearce:

    62 million people voted for him. You think they all fit your stereotype?

    By definition they do. Perhaps not all to the same depth or extent, but every one was willing to excuse, look past, or feign blindness to blatant and overt racism.

    I don’t say this lightly. People I love did this. It saddens me greatly.

    2
  48. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    @James Pearce: @Matt: The statement that anyone who votes for Trump is okay with a racist in the White House isn’t a stereotype, it’s a logical implication of the fact that Trump is a racist.

    2
  49. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    @Kylopod: Trump didn’t display much in the way of blatant racism until he was already elected. Almost all the stuff people like to point out as evidence of Trump’s racism came well after the election was over.

    Not everyone pays attention to stuff like you do or they wouldn’t of had the belief that Trump was some kind of master businessman..

    1
  50. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    @Matt:

    Trump didn’t display much in the way of blatant racism until he was already elected.

    Are you f’in kidding me? Were you asleep through the entire 2015-16 period? Let’s go down the list (and this is all from memory, not even looking anything up):

    * Launched his campaign describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.
    * Called for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the US.
    * Retweeted from open white nationalists and neo-Nazis, including a bogus stat about African American crime and a graphic featuring Hillary Clinton next to a Star of David atop a pile of cash.
    * Called a judge unfit to preside over his case due to his Mexican ancestry, in a remark even Paul Ryan referred to as a textbook example of a racist statement.
    * Described African Americans in general as living in a slummish hellhole, apparently unaware that most African Americans are middle class.
    * Referred to an African American in his crowd as “my African American.”
    * Refused initially to disavow David Duke’s endorsement, before finally issuing a vague, anodyne disavowal after being raked over the coals by the press for a couple of days. (According to reports, this incident turned out to be the most crucial one in winning over white nationalists.)
    * Hired as a leading advisor a man who proudly described his own website as a “platform for the alt right.”
    * And none of that is even getting into his long history of racism prior to the 2016 campaign, including his becoming the most prominent face of the birther movement, his comments on the Central Park Five, and his involvement in the housing discrimination case in the ’80s–which was brought up at one of the debates.

    None of what I’ve described was obscure; nearly all of it received a great deal of publicity and helped define Trump as the candidate willing to “go there” and become unusually explicit on issues of race in a way that previous Republicans had been more cautious about. While it’s possible there were some very unengaged voters who paid no attention to the details of the election and simply cared about the R after his name or the fact that they liked him on The Apprentice or whatever, I doubt this was more than a tiny slice of the electorate. Most knew exactly what they were getting–they were either racists themselves or they managed to find a rationalization for why it was okay to elect a racist (e.g. he may like David Duke, but at least he didn’t use a private email server!). I think that is an accurate generalization.

    Now I know there are people who to this day deny Trump is a racist. But they don’t make any distinction between what he said before the election and afterward; to them it’s all PC nonsense. I really don’t understand where you’re coming from in which you’re acknowledging he’s a racist but saying it wasn’t evident until after he was elected. What’s the friggin’ difference?

    1
  51. Tyrell Avatar
    Tyrell

    @Mister Bluster: Look what happened to Tyndale. King Henry VIII had him hunted down and killed for translating the Bible into English. Then he turns around and does the same thing!
    Henry VIII – “Defender of the Faith”, one of the early Protestant leaders (Luther, Calvin).

    1
  52. James Pearce Avatar
    James Pearce

    @Mikey: @Kylopod: I know this is not really going to fit in with the narrative, but Donald Trump is not woke. If he’s racist, he’s racist in the most boring, mundane way. Doesn’t want to put black people in chains, just wants them to aspire to white respectability. Gets sad when the basketball players won’t come to the White House, but gets excited when Kanye sends him a DM on Twitter.

    I don’t like how Trump has attempted to use racism to his political advantage, but in that way he’s not much different from your average lefty, many of whom decry racism from the cloistered protection of their all-white neighborhoods. Why do you think I’m such a critic of performative wokeness?

    It inspires performative non-wokeness, and Trump is their avatar.

  53. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    @Kylopod: @Kylopod:

    Are you f’in kidding me?

    I wondered that about you. It’s clear you have reading comprehension problems so I suggest you go back to the start. If you can’t be bothered then I’ll just break it to you now. I was paying attention and I’m not arguing what you are claiming.

    What you state isn’t as nearly clear cut as you say. Those barely paying attention might of heard the Mexican comment but they also heard the part about not all of them being rapists/blahblah.

    I’ve never seen Muslim listed under race when filling out applications.

    I don’t even pay attention to Trump’s tweets and I’m a political junkie. You’re average voter doesn’t give a fck or even know who those people are.

    You know what forget it I just don’t feel like wasting any more energy on this. It’s not worth my time to try to show you how the average non-informed Trump voter would of missed what you considered obvious signs. Because in the end it doesn’t matter because you’re just going to misunderstand the post and my point. As you have already done.

    I also know he’s lost a few of them and about to lose more of them especially if income tax refunds start being delayed.

  54. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @James Pearce:

    If he’s racist, he’s racist in the most boring, mundane way. Doesn’t want to put black people in chains

    This underscores the reason there are often questions about how seriously you take racism. The bar for being racists isn’t wanting to put black people in chains.

    And the boring, mundane racism has real effects. Like laws that result in voter suppression of blacks.

Trending