AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura
Former President Donald Trump came close to out-doing his long legacy of questionable social media posts on Tuesday when he compared his own plight to Dominion Voting Systems, the company that sued Fox News for defamation and won a $787.5 million settlement.
In a Truth Social post parading a staggering ignorance of U.S. legal system, Trump mused: “So Dominion gets almost a Billion Dollars and I, after years of Fake News, Hoaxes, Scams, and Investigations, am entitled to NOTHING? Is that really the way it’s supposed to work? I don’t think so!”
Future historians will likely debate this for decades to come, but having studied and written about Trump’s social media musings for years, I would like to personally submit this entry as the dumbest social media post Trump has published in years.
To be clear, Dominion sued Fox News for defamation. Fox settled with Dominion, paying the company nearly a billion dollars, to avoid a trial. It’s all very simple.
Trump can sue whomever he likes for defamation. Whether he wins would presumably depend on whether he was actually defamed. But he is not “entitled” to any sort of payout over what he sees as his mistreatment over the years.
There is no comparison between Dominion’s defamation case against Fox News and Trump’s relentless victimhood complex. The former centered around a bevy of false claims made by a news organization about a private company. The latter is just Trump whining. Not to mention that the largest purveyor of fake news is Trump himself.
The question before us, with regards to this post, is whether Trump is truly dumb enough not to understand how defamation laws in America work. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he does — and assume his comment “Is that really the way it’s supposed to work?” is rhetorical whining and not genuine confusion.
If that’s the case, then Trump most think his fans are so spectacularly stupid that they believe he is truly entitled to a large amount of money — from some entity — because of vague claims to being a victim.
So, to answer our headline, I would say yes. This is Trump’s dumbest social media post yet! Print the Truth Social post and maybe frame it for posterity, for we are living in a Golden Age of moronic political commentary. Embrace this historic moment!
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
