Trump Wakes Up, Says ‘Fake Media’ Is Trying To Hide The Stock Market, Says Dems Want ‘Crime Producing Borders’

Donald Trump is running his own 24-hour propaganda channel on Twitter.

In the early days of his administration, commentators would joke about who his propaganda minister was. Well, guess what? It’s him. Donald Trump is his own propaganda minister.

Last night, unable to let it go after two of the worst PR debacles this administration has seen to date (the Corker fiasco and the Mike Pence NFL publicity boondoggle), Trump got back on Twitter and accused the “fake news” of spreading rumors about John Kelly. It wasn’t 100% clear exactly which story he was referring to, but the fact that he’s concerned about public perception re: Kelly probably means there’s some truth to rumors that Kelly might ultimately resign or be fired (remember: Trump’s tweets are something of a contrarian indicator when it comes to staffing).

Well this morning, he’s tweeting before dawn again, and he seems to be acutely aware of the fact that his war of words with Corker might have deep-sixed tax reform because he’s acting pretty defensive about it on the way to plugging the stock market:

Now for one thing, that would be the very same stock market he said was “artificial” almost exactly a year ago, but you know how that goes. It’s only “fake” if he can’t take credit for it – same with the jobs data. Also, he seems to be aware that “tax cuts” sounds bad to the extent his base will interpret that as tax cuts for people like him, so he put “and reform” in parentheses.

But beyond that, it is patently absurd to say that the media isn’t covering the stock market. Record high stock prices are plastered all over every mainstream media outlet, every single day. In fact, he retweets screenshots proving just how much coverage it’s getting all the time. So he’s constructing a straw man – he’s telling his base (a lot of whom probably don’t pay attention to the stock market) that no one is talking about it in order to perpetuate the “fake” media narrative.

Additionally, it seems like someone has tapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he ends up undermining tax reform by feuding with Congress, it’s going to imperil his beloved market, which has at least partly priced in tax reform. So what he’s doing in the tweets above is laying the groundwork to blame Congress in the event tax reform doesn’t go smoothly and the market falls as a result. That is not a “theory”, that is precisely what’s going on there and you wait and see: if tax reform doesn’t get done and stocks react poorly, he’ll blame Congress for market declines.

Finally, he said this about Democrats:

Got that? “Soft, crime producing borders.” I don’t think I need to tell you how silly that sounds. No one wants borders that “produce crime.” That’s laughably ridiculous.

Stay tuned, because you can be sure he’s just getting started. Oh, and remember: he’s the President, which means he’s got all kinds of things he could be doing right now other than tweeting. You know, things like playing golf.