US President Donald Trump unleashed an especially intense barrage of Twitter messages over the weekend, embracing fringe conspiracy theories claiming that the coronavirus death toll has been exaggerated and that street protests are actually an organised coup d’état against him.
In a concentrated predawn burst, the president posted or reposted 89 messages between 5:49 am and 8:04 am on Sunday on top of 18 the night before, many of them inflammatory comments or assertions about violent clashes in Portland, Oregon, where a man wearing the hat of a far-right, pro-Trump group was shot and killed Saturday after a large group of Mr Trump’s supporters traveled through the streets.
He resumed Sunday night.
In the blast of social media messages, Mr Trump also embraced a call to imprison Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York; threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House; attacked CNN and NPR; embraced a supporter charged with murder; mocked his challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden; and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation.
One of the most incendiary messages was a retweet of a program from the One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel that advances extreme theories and that the president has turned to when he feels that Fox News has not been supportive enough.
The message he retweeted Saturday night promoted a segment accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Mr Trump’s downfall.
“According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganised,” the tweet said.
“However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.”
Mr Trump likewise reposted messages asserting that the real death toll from the coronavirus is only around 9,000 - not nearly 183,000 - because the others who died also had other health issues and most were of an advanced age.
For his part, Mr Biden issued a statement condemning the violence in Portland as “unacceptable” regardless of one’s political views and criticising Mr Trump for trying to raise the temperature rather than lower it.
