Following his meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday, Donald Trump appears to have been given access to his Twitter account again, and it didn’t take long for a classic late-night outburst to happen.
Despite having had a long day of meetings at the White House, the president-elect was tweeting at 2am about, what he called, “professional protesters incited by the media.” A conspiracy he called “very unfair.”
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
He was, of course, talking about the post-election protests that have erupted in cities across the country in reaction to his election win. The nation-wide protests he was criticizing, however, aren’t unlike the kind that he had called for in a series of older, recently-deleted tweets when Obama was re-elected in 2012
At the time, despite the fact that Obama had won both the electoral college vote and the popular vote, Trump called for “revolution” and a march on Washington to end the “phoney [sic] electoral college” system.
The irony, of course, being that it’s by that same “phoney electoral college” system that Trump has ascended to office, while Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.
By Friday morning, after some sleep presumably, the angst had subsided and Trump issued an entirely fresh perspective on the protesters:
Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
Not everyone online is convinced of his sincerity:
This psychological tactic is called "negging" pic.twitter.com/cvArsnOUOw
— Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) November 11, 2016