President Donald Trump used his executive time Friday morning in an hours-long Truth Social session, attacking late night television hosts and a Republican senator while pushing two of his primary agenda issues and celebrating the rising stock market.
His posts paint a president securing the Republican future and vanquishing his enemies. But his targets suggest a president focused on threats, real and perceived.
“Stop playing games and pass the Save America Act!” Trump wrote, seemingly out of nowhere Friday morning, ignoring the tumult and GOP anger his $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund and $1 billion White House ballroom security request had, disrupting vital funding legislation this week. The Save America Act is — at least at the moment — effectively dead in the Senate, and not on the list of the majority leader’s top priorities.
Trump has been repeatedly promoting the Save America Act, declaring if it passes Republicans won’t lose a race for the next 50 years.
“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward,” he wrote. It has not gone forward and is causing massive upset in the Republican-controlled Senate. “I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal break in of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune. Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, justice!”
Trump’s claim he could have settled what was a $10 billion lawsuit is contradicted by reports showing the IRS was preparing to fight him, until Trump’s DOJ intervened.
Critics of the proposed $1.8 billion fund say it rewards criminals and could incentivize his supporters to take violent action on his behalf in the future.
Trump also attacked Stephen Colbert after his final show Thursday night — and appeared to threaten other hosts with a similar fate.
“Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS was the ‘Beginning of the End’ for untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television Hosts,” he wrote. “Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they all Rest in Peace!”
But Trump saved his enmity for an outspoken critic from his own party, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis calling him “weak and ineffective” while taunting him for retiring.
The North Carolina Republican lawmaker, Trump charged, “didn’t have the courage to fight it out in the Senate, remain in place, and run again for office, a thing he desperately wanted to do.”
“When I told him that I would not, under any circumstances, endorse him for another run, too much work and drama (he couldn’t have won, anyway!), he immediately quit the race and publicly announced that he was going to ‘retire.’ I said, ‘Wow, great news, that was easy!’ The media said how brave he was to take me on, but he wasn’t brave, he was just the opposite – he was a quitter!”
Despite reports that Trump’s actions may hamper his agenda and GOP congressional majorities, the president wrote that Tillis can now “have all the fun he wants for a few months, with some of his RINO friends, screwing the Republican Party. In the end it will only get bigger, and better, and stronger, than ever before!!!”