Happy Labor Day, America. On this day paying homage to the hard working people of the nation, Donald Trump posted fourteen tweets lavishing undeserved praise on himself. As usual, he can’t spend five minutes on any subject other than how awesome and successful he is. Nevermind that he is despised by a majority of voters and his record is overflowing with failure.

Most of the tweets make demonstrably false and misleading claims about glorious economic successes that exist only in his diseased brain. Things like unemployment and stock market performance were already greatly improved during the Obama administration, and there were only slight advances since then. In all cases Trump’s record lags the positive direction established by Obama. Surprisingly, he also bragged about his polling which is horrendous by any standard. He trails all of the top Democrats by double digits national and in the battleground states. And many of the tweets were simply cribbed from stuff he was watching on Fox News.

One tweet in particular was worthy of notice due to its impressive amount of unsustainable and idiotic assertions. Trump really managed to cram a tweetstorm’s worth of derp into this one painfully stupid tweet:

The LameStream Media has gone totally CRAZY! They write whatever they want, seldom have sources (even though they say they do), never do “fact checking” anymore, and are only looking for the “kill.” They take good news and make it bad. They are now beyond Fake, they are Corrupt..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 2, 2019

Let’s take a few minutes to break that sucker down. First of all, Trump is borrowing a phrase from one of the great dimwits of the 21st century, Sarah Palin, who coined (or took credit for) the “lamestream media” catchphrase. She’s not exactly the sort of intellectual that any credible person would quote. Although she may be a step up for Trump.

Next Trump asserts that the media “has gone totally CRAZY.” But how could it have just gone crazy when he’s accused it having done that dozens of times before. Did he forget, or is he just exhibiting more signs of dementia? Not to mention that Trump calls everybody crazy. Here’s a collection of a dozen times he’s used this as an all-purpose insult.

Then Trump whines that the media gets to “write whatever they want,” because he just hates that First Amendment (and much of the rest of the Constitution) with such ferocity. Then repeats another of his frequent complaints that the media doesn’t have the sources it claims for its stories, or that they make them up. That’s a peculiar criticism that he is never able to prove, and the media’s sources have often been found within his inner circle. What’s more, no one uses anonymous sources more than Trump, who is constantly claiming that “some people say” some ludicrous things that support his lies.

The notion that the media doesn’t do any fact checking is hysterical. While Trump has been president, the fact checking industry has gone through the roof. The Washington Post has compiled a compendium of more than 12,000 lies and misstatements by Trump since his inauguration. Daniel Dale is a dedicated fact checker for CNN. PolitiFact continues to monitor Trump’s comments, 70 percent of which have been deemed “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.” And those are just a few of the better known fact checkers. Almost every journalistic enterprise does their own fact checking. Trump doesn’t really believe that there isn’t any fact checking, he just doesn’t like the results that reveal the extent of his dishonesty.

As for the media “looking for the ‘kill,'” and making good news look bad, that really isn’t necessary. Trump is entirely capable of making himself look horrible without any help. Take for example his frighteningly comical assertion that he has never heard of a Category 5 Hurricane, even though there have been four just during his presidency.

Finally, Trump lashes out at the press that he routinely attacks in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” He has now determined that they are beyond fake and have advanced to corrupt. Once again, he doesn’t provide any examples of what he insists is the media’s corruption. He just expects his Deplorables to buy whatever he says because he said it. That is the definition of a cult.

Trump’s Twitter feed is always full of crackpot conspiracies, ludicrous lies, and ego-soaked exaltations of himself. That’s true for the fourteen tweets he fired off this Labor Day. But he deserves some special credit for being able to stuff so much grade A stupidity into this composition in only 280 characters.

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