Oh look, Donald Trump has sent another tweet inspired by Fox News, almost certainly from that unsecured old Android phone he’s still using at the horror of his aides, and the entire world.
This time he’s got Chelsea Manning square in his sights, and oh boy, he’s going to let her have it!
Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
Here’s the deal: We live in America. So he should probably get comfortable with the fact that freedom of speech extends to all of us, even those locked up in prison, like Manning.
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How about we take this to the next level?
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We don’t want to get too into the woods here, but there’s also this thing called nuance. Chelsea Manning can be both grateful to Obama for commuting her sentence, while also being critical of how the last eight years went down. And since those years resulted in Trump’s ascent to power, she probably has a point or two.
Trump was reacting, or so he thought, to an op-ed by Manning in The Guardian about the Obama years.
“The one simple lesson to draw from President Obama’s legacy: do not start off with a compromise,” Manning wrote. “They won’t meet you in the middle. Instead, what we need is an unapologetic progressive leader.”
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So in essence, she wasn’t really calling him a “weak leader,” just saying that trying to be nice from the get-go didn’t pay off like we’d all hoped it would. That’s a pretty reasonable argument.
But that’s not how it played on Fox News, and we all know that’s where Trump gets his tweeting material — tweeterial, if you will. (Please don’t.)
Fox ran a banner during the story that read “UNGRATEFUL TRAITOR,” while Fox News commentator Abby Huntsman described Obama “as a weak leader with few permanent accomplishments.”
Presto-chango-avada-kedavra, and you see how Trump’s clumsy thumbs managed to hammer away in the order they did.
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Manning was incarcerated in 2010 after stealing roughly 700,000 military dossiers and diplomatic cables and turning them over to Wikileaks, which arguably contributed to the public good by exposing illegal and unconstitutional activity on the part of the government.
Last week, three days before Obama left office, it was announced he’d commuted the bulk of her sentence, allowing her to go free May 17th after serving seven years.
Two days later she Tweeted her gratitude to President Obama:
Thank you @BarackObama for giving me a chance. =,)
— Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) January 19, 2017
Let’s not forget how Trump began his political career — by knowingly spreading birtherism, a false and racist narrative that Barak Obama was not a “legitimate president.” He later called Obama the “worst president” in out nation’s history.
So if Manning is, as Trump claims, an “ungrateful traitor,” what does that make Trump?
whatevz
a creepy old lying racist feces stain
Heywood Jablowme
It makes Trump a GRATEFUL TRAITOR who is Putin’s slave!
NateOcean
Why does Chelsea Manning use her male photo on her twitter profile?
seaguy
She is not allowed to wear makeup or dress as female in prison, in fact they don’t allow her magazine because prisoners have been known to use the ink from the pages to make prison lipstick and other crude forms or makeup. So she probably just uses her male picture because she does not have a suitable female one.
Xzamilloh
Donald Trump is LAUGHABLY obtuse or maybe he says so much crap he can’t keep up (I can relate on that front). The thing is, Manning is right, even though she does come off as an ingrate. But she can say what she wants. It’s like not calling out LGBT allies on other things they are wrong about just because they support us. And Obama was not a progressive… he was a centrist that was nowhere as liberal as we on the left liked to claim. He was progressive on gay marriage, regressive on Islamic Extremism and foreign policy, and ordered more drone strikes and deportations than any other president.
It also stands to reason that if both Sanders and Clinton ran on the campaign of rebuilding America, they clearly were not impressed with Obama had done in the last 8 years. Let’s face it: even though I do not blame Obama for this, race relations have gotten progressively worse and continue to do so.
woodroad34
Obama was elected because he offered hope after the Machiavellian constructs of the Cheney presidency (I wrote that correctly); with the likes of “Fungible Assets” Rumsfeld and scurrilous Wolfowitz and pudgy little Peter Pettigrew twin, Karl Rove….any other direction had to be up. Drone strikes came about because we weren’t getting anywhere in this war that Republicans created–I can’t imagine being given information and figuring out what other options are to be had after several years of trying different strategies, could you? That becomes backseat driving. Republicans have gone soooo far right in the political tug of war (and influenced public thinking with their vitriol and venality) that any Democrat that gets elected has to be a centrist (or play one). I think getting marriage equality, affordable healthcare and raising us out of an historically debilitating recession (which was expected by both liberal and conservative economists to take 20 years) are major progressive strokes in the stinking quicksand of Republican opposition, which Obama constantly tried to bridge, but was always blocked by the ill-will of those sad said Republicans. Every new candidate that comes in has to separate themselves from the former President–and I think Obama understood that. I always find it helpful to think of my office environment and the people in charge and what they have to go through to keep a happy, productive office environment with the milieu of bitchy secretaries, over-bearing managers or inept supervisors.
woodroad34
Well, evading taxes and consorting with a known enemy of America….I’d say Drumpf would have to look in a mirror the next time he calls someone a traitor
seaguy
I did find it a little rude of she would go off on Obama who just saved her ass from spending many more years in that prison that she hates so much she has tried to commit suicide twice now. But Trump should not be spending him time trolling twitter to be a hater now that he is the liar in chief of our country.
Trump’s calling Chelsie Manning a traitor is like the pot calling the kettle black since Trump was likely working with Putin to rig the election.
Billysees
” I did find it a little rude of she would go off on Obama who just saved her ass from spending many more years in that prison that she hates so much she has tried to commit suicide twice now. ”
A little rude???? You’re kidding of course. Terrible Trump said. He’s correct. In fact, it’s worse than terrible.