President Donald Trump set aside his Election Day push to voters on Tuesday to complain about how the press covered his “joke” about renaming the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after himself.
Trump, while speaking at the site of the flop renovation job on Monday, said the administration was “giving serious thought to changing the name to the Trump Reflecting Pool” before adding, “I’m only kidding. Please don’t report it.”
Well, the Daily Mail went against Trump’s wishes and reported on it anyway.
And Trump — in a midday post to his Truth Social platform, buried in a sea of other last-minute messages to voters — whined that the tabloid “wrongly took” him seriously and “pretended it wasn’t a joke.”
“Their dishonest, false headline states: ‘Trump delivers final midterms speech to just 60 people at the renovated Reflecting Pool and threatens a major rename,’” he wrote.
He went on, “It wasn’t a ‘Final Midterms Speech’ that only had 60 people, it was a NEWS CONFERENCE, nobody was invited, it was closed to the Public — Just Reporters. My Final Midterms Speech was the day before in lowa and Kansas, where we had 50,000 people. This just shows you how FAKE the News is. I said, very clearly, ‘I’m joking.’ The Fake News is so corrupt!”
It’s worth noting that the president and his administration have a record of using “joking” to dismiss concerns about his talk on more serious matters, like canceling elections and running for an unconstitutional third term.
Trump also hasn’t let a dead predecessor or their legacy get in the way of his tendency to slap his name on things in Washington and beyond, either.
He’s threatened to demolish the Kennedy Center — a “living memorial” to the 35th president — unless a federal court rules OK the return of his name to the building after a judge ordered it to be removed from the venue back in May.
Minutes after plopping his press pool complaint onto his platform, the president used another post to slam Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) for what he called a “knowingly malicious, false, and defamatory statement” in response to his renaming “joke.”
Lieu — in a post to social media on Monday — highlighted how gas, diesel and grocery prices have “skyrocketed” under Trump before adding, “What are trump and his Republican enablers focused on? Changing the name of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the trump Reflecting Pool. Punish them at the ballot box. Repudiate them. Vote.”
Trump quoted all of “lightweight” Lieu’s post except the part about prices and fumed that he didn’t mention that he made the remarks in a “jocular manner.”
Lieu, in response, joked that he’s “tickled” the president noticed he lost weight, given that he’s been “commenting on men’s bodies lately.”
