Donald Trump offered Joe Biden some sarcastic encouragement on Truth Social on Saturday in light of recent calls by some — including a few Democrats — for the president to bow out of the 2024 race following his highly criticised debate performance.
Trump’s post — filled with numerous misrepresentations about the president’s policies — “encouraged” Biden to ignore his critics and to continue his 2024 candidacy.
“Crooked Joe Biden should ignore his many critics and move forward, with alacrity and strength, with his powerful and far reaching campaign,” Trump said, before dropping the guise of genuine encouragement.
He said Biden should be “sharp, precise, and energetic, just like he was in The Debate.”
Trump then went on to falsely accuse Biden of having an open border policy, of ending Social Security and encouraging what he described as a “woke military”.
He also made wild claims that Biden only allows electric vehicles, is subservient to China and “other countries”, and is “putting America Last”.
Trump ended his rant by encouraging “Sleepy Joe” to “continue his campaign of American Destruction and, MAKE CHINA GREAT AGAIN!”
The former president’s barbs come amid fierce scrutiny, including among some Democratic lawmakers, over Biden’s capability to successfully run against Trump and — more importantly — govern the nation for another four years following his dismal debate performance last week.
Biden and the White House have brushed off the criticism, saying during a high-stakes interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday that he merely had a “bad night” and insisting it was a one-time flub.
The president insisted that he intends to continue his campaign, vowing: “I’m staying in the race.”
The frenzy around Biden’s debate performance comes at a convenient time for Trump, who is trying to distance his campaign from the nakedly authoritarian national makeover outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan.
The distancing comes just days after the far-right Heritage Foundation head Kevin Roberts warned of a “second American Revolution”.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said during Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast on Tuesday.
Trump has since claimed on Truth Social he has nothing to do with the plan and has no knowledge of it, and that he even disagrees “with some of the things they’re saying.”
Yet many of those working on Project 2025 have ties to Trump. Russ Vought, who formerly worked at Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, authored one of the project’s chapters while Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s former advisors, is the head of a legal group on the project’s advisory board.