This is all perfectly normal. No reason to get excited or to worry about the fate of the nation. Just because the President of the United States spent two hours Saturday morning posting sixty-two (that’s 62!) retweets of mostly ultra-rightist douchebags piling up worshipful praise for their Dear Leader, Donald Trump.

This happens all the time. Although usually in countries where the dictators in charge mandate wholehearted support and unconditional love. That’s rapidly becoming the standard for the U.S. under Trump who repeatedly refers to himself as “your favorite president.” Never mind that he is the most despised president in modern times with poll numbers that have never reached fifty percent. He openly pines for the sort of devotion that his idols (Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, etc.) receive.

Trump regards brutal tyrants as his models of strong leadership. No, really. He seeks to emulate them with public remarks that advocate shooting asylum seekers. He congratulated Duterte of the Philippines for personally murdering drug dealers. He goaded his rally-goers into assaulting protesters, and promised to pay their legal fees. He has eliminated the daily White House press briefings, revoked press passes of reporters that aren’t sufficiently obedient, and routinely uses the Stalinist phrasing of “enemy of the people” to describe the media as a whole.

So the sixty-two rage-tweets that gushed from Trump like explosive diarrhea are now part of the official presidential record. They include twenty-nine tweets about the Russia/Mueller affair. Other hot topics include the tariffs on China, the border, and even a bunch about – don’t laugh – Hillary Clinton’s emails! He also threw in some jabs at Joe Biden and a few pompous exaltations of himself. Nineteen of the retweets mentioned Don Jr. This accounting of the tweet topics tells you what Trump is most afraid of.

Trump has also been consumed with abusing his power by exploiting his Justice Department to persecute his political opponents. That’s another character flaw that Trump shares with authoritarian dictators. He aimed his prosecutorial wrath at Joe Biden, John Kerry, and James Comey. Those are in addition to his similar previous attacks on Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and various other Democrats and FBI officials.

In the meantime, Fox News is continuing a boycott of Twitter that they began last November. Their stated reason at the time had something to with how Twitter handled a protest at the home of Tucker Carlson. But Twitter apologized and suspended the account of the user that triggered Fox’s complaint. And six months later they still haven’t posted a single tweet.

Perhaps Fox News is satisfied with the job that Trump is doing promoting their programs and hosts. Trump spends much of his day watching watching Fox News and live-tweeting what he sees. It’s hard to tell if Trump is serving as President of the United States, or president of Fox’s marketing and PR division. In addition to posting videos by his favorite Foxies (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, etc), Trump randomly posts demands that his cult followers watch the network’s programs. See? Not at all unusual.

Trump has three times the number of Twitter followers that Fox News has, although most of those are probably Russians or bots. So maybe Fox thinks they get better PR by letting Trump handle it than doing it themselves. Trump is clearly able to commit an extraordinary amount of time and effort to it. And now that Trump fans like Alex Jones have been booted from Twitter, he can (and does) take up their cause and advance their crackpot conspiracy theories. So Fox News can relax and let the President handle their Twitter promos. At least until Trump gets banned for his obvious and dangerous hostility and hate speech.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.