It’s finally happened. Donald Trump has finally tweeted something which could actually end his presidency.
He will probably go down as the Tweeting President, and he’s never been one to shy away from controversy, but it seems he might have gone one step too far this time.
The leader of the free world has been known to post incendiary tweets about Kim Jong-un or getting caught up about a few NFL players protesting (legitimately) the racial inequalities in America.
One of his more recent Twitter gaffes has even put the ‘special’ relationship between the US and the UK in jeopardy – for retweeting hate-filled posts from the deputy leader of far-right hate speech peddlers, Britain First.
But this tweet is the cherry on the cake, the potential final nail in the coffin, and it’s all his own fault.
He tweeted yesterday:
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies.
It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
This might seem like an innocuous statement and a condemnation of a man who has admitted to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the supposed links between Trump’s campaign and Russia, but it is far from that.
Trump has long claimed ignorance of the lies which came from Michael Flynn’s mouth, but it appears Donald Trump knew full well that Flynn was lying all along.
He wrote the reason he fired Flynn was because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI, which basically amounts to getting rid of Flynn to obstruct an investigation into Russia ties.
People were quick to point out just how damaging this tweet really is, including Walter Shaub, the former director of the US Office of Government Ethics, who was astounded by the tweet.
He posted in a series of tweets:
…just couldn’t resist commenting on Flynn.
Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?
Tell us, @realDonaldTrump, did you know Flynn had lied to the FBI when Counsel to the President Don McGahn snubbed Yates as she tried to warn the White House Flynn had been compromised?
Before we slipped into an alternate universe of unabashed corruption, this tweet alone might have ended a Presidential administration.
Other people have been quick to call Trump out for his brazen confession of the knowledge of Flynn’s lies.
One user wrote:
You just admitted
a. you knew he lied to the FBI
b. you thought that was no big deal
c. you tried to solve the problem by firing Comey.
You know what that amounts to: Obstruction of Justice
What the f*ck, America?
Obviously, this is Trump’s America, and he feels no real need to even delete the tweet, and is kind of wilfully ignoring the matter and trying to defect attention from it.
He tweeted earlier today:
So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hilary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday ‘interrogation’ with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times… and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard.?
Trump even went balls-to-the-wall and said he didn’t ask Comey to stop investigating Flynn, even though he absolutely did.
It seems the ground is shrinking under the feet of the President.
